Member-only story
On Protests and Honor Contests
I want to again examine the intersection of these predominantly white folks condemning the protests with the church. Many of these people would identify at least somewhat with the label Christian. Many I suspect identify strongly. I keep coming back to the thoughts that part of what is wrong with the American Church today is that they don’t really want to be Christ-followers.
American Christianity in too many places has become nationalism with the trappings of the church which is a gross perversion. If the church sat with the generational hatred of the Jewish people towards the Samaritans and vice versa, and if the church sat with the knowledge that a good Jewish man of that day — much less a rabbi — wouldn’t been seen in public talking to a woman that he wasn’t related to, and if the church understood the idea of an honor contest and how Jesus publicly lost one to a woman of an ethnic background that was also despised, then they couldn’t sit in church today and loot scripture for ideas about our present moment that are completely antithetical to who Jesus was.
Jesus said, “I must go through Samaria.” I must go to the country that my people have discriminated against. And then he sat at a well by himself in the middle of the day and waited, knowing that it was the women who came to the well, and knowing that any woman who came in the middle of the day would be a…
