So, I just started my Sophomore year at Long Beach City College and I happen to be taking Intercultural Communication: not what I thought it would be at all, but that’s ok. It turns out that the class is basically about race, class, gender, and how those all play out in the world.
It has been striking to me how many issues there still are in the world, let alone right here in our own back yards… People hating people, and for what? Skin tone? Country of origin? Come on. I seriously don’t understand how people could hate with little to no reason at all, oh wait, yes I do: it’s sin.
But beyond that, the real conundrum for me is how people who intellectually get it, don’t do anything about it. Logically it just doesn’t make sense to believe something and not act on it. Why would people who understand why racism, classism, and sexism is bad (moreover still, why they happen) not do anything about it?
I think it is time that we believers begin speaking truth into this aspect of earthly life. I think we need to stand up for the weak, the oppressed, the poor, and the marginalized. I don’t know where that starts, or how far it goes, but it needs to happen.
Begin telling people that there is no such thing as actual stratification of worth. There is no better ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status; there is no better human. We all suck enough that we need help and we can’t help ourselves or each other fully. We are all equal. We are all in need of the reality of God, of the realization and actualization of the Kingdom of God in our lives.
As C.S. Lewis said, “If we could only see our fellow persons as they truly are, in all their glory, we would be tempted to fall down at their feet and worship them.
