Discrimination

Snuggle up with my friend who recently attended my church in Homewood, Alabama and you will see just how friendly they are here in the South. She and her family were invited to several very respectable homes in our church well before the Pastor began his sermon and he even asked them over to his house after the sermon. I told her later that she would be more than welcome to join our church and her response that the welcome was a little much, almost desperate. Another dear friend attended recently, but he was ignored, almost shunned. Why this contradiction? The answer is complex, but the situation was highlighted by a recent request by a local mission to the poor to build a thrift store in an "upscale" suburb of Birmingham.
Click this link to see how the suburb responded.

Interestingly the debate played out through a series of e-mails that were sent to a few members of my church. I knew that the community at large would oppose the thrift store because they didn't want poor people spending too much time in our city, but I wondered if the more outspoken of our community would actually admit their reason. This e-mail exchange actually did well to outline the feelings of both sides. The original e-mail was a forward that basically said "we don't want their kind in our city" and it was responded to by another member of my church who stated that there was room in God's kingdom for the poor. The poor hapless soul that sent the first e-mail simply responded that he had nothing against the poor as long as they were not in his city painting graffiti and fighting amongst themselves.

This feeling is very raw and fresh, but what about my minority friend that attended my church and garnered such attention? She is a black woman married to a fine, upstanding black man. I have been told by many black friends that visit my church that they are quite disturbed with how aggressively they are courted by church members begging them to join our white, upper-class congregation. It doesn't really matter if you are a poor black single mother or a well-to-do black family you are going to be welcomed into my church because we want to appear non-discriminatory. The sad thing is when my dear friend who was a lower middle class, overweight white man from a rural town came to my church he was generally ignored.

Have we not learned? Discrimination is still alive and well here in the South. It doesn't matter if you are against someone that looks black or someone that looks poor we are still judging someone by the way they look rather than the way they are. My dear friend who was excluded by the wealthy of my church is a successful businessman who has also served as an Evengelical Christian pastor for more than thirty years. He may look lower class because he was raised by poor white farmers who built their fortune from the ground up and changed the moral standing of their community by living the most godly example I have ever seen anyone live without adopting the expensive clothes and habits of those in my church. This man who looks below your class will not bat an eye to meet your most basic need emotionally, spiritually, and physically, but the members of my church would rather edge him out of their church, and keep people that look like him from shopping in their city. I feel like my church and city has ignored Christ's call to reach out to "the least of these my brothers".

It is time to look ourselves honestly because we fail our Saviour so easily. I am going to have to do the same because right now I am seeing that I will easily discriminate against the guy driving by in the BMW with his nose in the air. Jesus loves you too, and I may have misjudged you. I hope I have.

What to do with Sarah

I started this post a while back and decided to put it up today.

1 Peter 3:5-6 "For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening."

During adult Sunday School this morning we just barely touched on this passage as we discussed Scripture passages that are often taken out of context. There is a whole bunch of discussion that can be had on the place of submission in marriage as the Protestant Bible describes it, but suffice it to say that I do not believe that the man is the absolute ruler of his home and his wife is to bend to his every silly whim. Sarah, Abraham's wife that was mentioned in the above passage, was upheld as an example that called her husband "lord" and obeyed him. My wife stated that she had trouble thinking of Sarah as a woman whose example should be followed. She probably remembered how Sarah lied for her husband and twisted a plan to get Hagar to bear a child for her, but Sarah is a great example of how God sees past our limited view.

Since Peter references Sarah's faith in frightening times I suspect that he is thinking of the times she was virtually imprisoned in another man's home because of her husband's deception. We westerners often think that she should have insisted on saying she was married the two times her husband passed her off as only his sister, but consider the possibility that women were essentially property in that time and place. If Sarah had tried to convince her captors that she was married it is possible that she would have been punished for lying since her owner's (Abraham) word would have meant more than hers. Sarah knew that Abraham had been promised a child THROUGH HER, and so, if I read Peter correctly, she trusted God to protect her even when not where she wanted to be.

So how do I explain to my girls how to emulate Sarah?
Link: http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=1+Peter+3%3A1-7

Facing Reality

Happy New Year! I hope this year is as good as my last year was. Yesterday Wonderful went through a bunch of the letters I wrote to her over the years and I was reminded of all the chances we had to lose our close relationship that I treasure so much. The same day I learned that another acquaintance has finalized his divorce after his wife left. There are somany reasonsthat a marriage can break up, but two people committed to each other can surmount each one if both are willing to work. Thank you Wonderful for starting another New Year with me. I want you more than ever!

How I succeeded as an iridologist

I sat through many of my father's iridology sessions before I felt confident to do my own, but after practicing for a year I realized that I was beginning to adapt a technique for what many call "cold reading". I began to test my hypothesis, and I realized I could really pull it off with reasonable success. Even now I occasionally have former patients show up to my parents' office looking for me because I was the only one who helped them twelve years ago. Now the times have changed and I seek to do hard science with my patients as a nurse, but those little signals that I learned still give me clues as to what may be wrong with some of my patients. When working in the ER I have fun playing my intuitive game while determining what needs the patient has that he/she is not communicating. Looking back I realize my father is a master cold reader who is so good that he doesn't even realize what he is doing. It began when he started working as a pastor offering counseling. This great video explains how that can occur, though my father never sought to be fraudulent in any way. He is just very good at instinctively picking up on hidden signals.