December 16th, 2005
THE OTHER: LESSON I: THE GREAT BLOOD_BOUGHT TOLERANCE
Col 3:11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond [nor] free: but Christ [is] all, and in all.
Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus
Neither Jew nor Greek
For the past 9 or 10 years, I have devoted much of my academic activity to studying the Holocaust or Shoah. When I began to study the Shoah, I did not come to it blindly: I had worked with Thanatological issues for many years, and although before then it was not my main area, I often heard reference to the events of sixty years ago, via philosophers and psychologists who had either survived themselves or studied the Shoah, or thanatologists and theologians who used it often for an example. My reasons for beginning a study of the Shoah though, were not initially an 'academic' issue, but an earnestly human one: after 8 years of university training in Psychology with a specialization in mourning,loss and bereavement, and after now two decades of being a Christian studying the Scriptures, Church history, Bible history, Jewish theology and history on my own, I could not comprehend nor grasp how we could engage in a World War leaving 65 million dead, nor grasp the target : the Jewish genocide at the center of it. More than that, as a child and adult born post-war, looking back to the great and terrible events slightly before I was born, I could not fathom what limits or bonds of humanness had to decay before we were willing to do anything , virtually anything to another human being merely to win power, wealth or whatever other earthly gain we might have imagined. An equally disturbing question for me, was how any Christian person could have been involved or apathetic enough not to help or speak up during the war, and having not grown up with Anti-Semitic attitudes what could possibly motivate the sort of raw hatred it took to try to erase one particular people from off the face of the earth, much less Europe. After the years I have spent studying though, and recognizing I am only at the beginning of it, I have had an additional question growing since the start: how could we not let it change us?
In the sixty years since the end of WWII, as one by one each concentration camp was found with starving frozen corpses which had been abused and murdered, instead of a world in which many survivors and most of their children are still alive having deeply repented and turned, we have instead had genocide after genocide, mounting in numbers, killings in the millions, based on race, geographical location, and national identities: our reasons for war have changed, but we have not.
I say all this at the beginning of a discussion I have called "The Great blood-bought Tolerance", for tolerance is the most we have been able to get lip service for over the past post war years. The field of holocaust studies has abounded: there are more published books on this event than on almost anything in history: they are sound, scholarly, and detailed and one will never get to the end of all of them. Documentaries fill the history channels, and Museums are growing, the press has contributed greatly by constant attention to Holocaust related events, and schools seek to teach tolerance education, what ever that is, but we have not grown more tolerant, nor been changed by the unimaginable number of graves we have foisted upon ourselves in 60 years, not from natural causes but from outright murders.
Hard to live in a world like that. Hard to imagine that after six decades of slaughter, one may be called insane for being too concerned about what is going on: the insanity is decidedly in forgetting, not remembering.
So, to begin this study of 'tolerance' we begin by noting that the tolerance taught by Christ, is not the tolerance of this world, nor some grand 'ecumenical nonsense' of 'all-join-hands' theology, for the truth is though we are called to love others better than ourselves we truthfully do not like one another very much, and our differences if pushed together can cause intolerance and hatred rather than love and tolerance. The tolerance we are called to is a love stronger than any differences in another person and [this is the one we all have trouble with] stronger than anything they do
When Christ died on Golgotha
For Jewish people to start at Golgotha when talking about tolerance would seem offensive, for those of us who have been there to understand, it is the only place to start: it is where our tolerance begins: and not mere tolerance but love. We can only love, because we are loved. When Jesus paid the price there, He paid the price with blood that was divine, He exacted on the Cross what we could never do for ourselves, He took on His back not only the sins of the world, but provided for us the healing not only of our physical and emotional ailments, but also the prejudices, hatreds and intolerances for others: we can not possibly thing, that any one is better than ourselves after dwelling in the covenant of His blood. We were not worth His death and suffering: He could have merely created someone new in our place, but instead, taught us the extremities of real Love. So complete is this salvation that He was not the respecter in giving it with regard to any race, nation, people, or other difference: it is free to all, and we cannot look on another person different from ourselves as holding any less a place in His heart: those who still need healing, He wants healed; those who have received His healing, His Salvation, He wishes to grow to be like Him. So extensive was His Love, and most of us are not there yet, that after He was bound, falsely arrested, tortured greatly, beaten, humiliated, mocked, and abused even on the Cross, He turns to say, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do": He could see beyond to the eternal suffering of those who abused Him so badly, we often lose sight of this. Only He can form this Love in us: it is not of this world. I have mentioned before, that when God sees us, after Salvation, He sees only one color: red. He does not see the nationality or race of a person, He sees only His Son, or a need for His Son. This is evident from John 3:17, the verse most people forget following 3:16:
for God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved. John 3:17
He is not about condemnation on any basis, and yet we spend so much of our time in it. We cannot have kneeled at Golgotha and not walked away knowing we are not more or less valuable to Him than any other person: He could easily have created others in our place: we were not worthy of the act that kept us from eternal suffering, so for us to think that others have any less a place before Him than we do, is not only erroneous, it defiles the knowledge of what He did for us, and keeps others from Salvation. No Christian can hold bigotry or prejudice in his heart without quenching the Holy Spirit and departing from the presence of God.
Not Even Respect of Position
So complete is the teaching that in Christ there are no differences, that even RESPECT FOR POSITION is counted as a 'evil thought.' James notes it in the following:
My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? Jam 2:2-4
If it is even an evil thought to consider inside the House of God that one with more money or position is 'better' or deserving of more regard or respect, then how much more should we erase consideration of such things outside the Church?
The "Mind of Christ" takes on a different view of others and racial, national and ethnic differences than the world. God sees the differences as a reflection of the glory of His creation, not as a vying for position of superiority: none are superior, and none are more than 'created'.
Jew nor Greek
Of the differences mentioned in the beginning passage in Scripture in Galatians, the first to be erased is that between Jew and Greek, a critical separation issue. Mind you, that most of the admonitions are for those 'in Christ', in the Church, where the barriers between Man and God and Man and Others are broken down. In the world, the barriers often still exist, but the believer is called to be wise, but walk in Christ. Jews kept separate from the Greeks in their dress, their worship, and in many other practices, save for commerce. They tried to keep separate from a secular state, but the State made it impossible. More to follow....
Neither bond nor free
Neither male nor female
Neither East nor West
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