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.