What my Son Taught me About the Oher
Cross Posted at http://www.mennoworld.org/blog/2012/8/14/labeling-other/
My son came home from a week at our denomination’s local camp, with a lot of questions, and a good dose of outrage.
He had just spent the week with some kids that were quite unlike him. They were conservative, both politically and theologically. They hated Obama, and sang songs about their desire to see him removed from office. If they didn’t like something, they said, “That’s so gay.”
This — in our home — is not how we talk, and it was shocking to him.
But, in his shock and horror about his peers’ views, my son said some things that worried me: “Mom, they are so conservative and Republican.” He said these words with such intolerance.
I had to stop the conversation. The words “Republican” and “conservative” were becoming categories in his mind, boxes where he could put people, according to their worldview.
I worried aloud with him: “So what do we do? Stop talking to people because they don’t think like us?”
In reality, though we’d never talked about it, many of our family members would fit those categories he’s come to despise.
This conversation has me questioning the ways I talk about “those people” in our home. What has he learned from me about “those people”?
While my son was at camp, the Chick-fil-A story was at its height. And I was sick to my stomach all week. The divisions in our society ran deep — we had now become divided between those who ate fast food chicken on Aug. 1, and those who did not.
The categorization of people is a human reality, going back to the beginning of time. In fact, even Jesus put people in boxes.
In Mark 7:24-30, after Jesus debated with the Pharisees, saying, “The people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” he encountered a Gentile woman whose daughter was possessed by a demon. She begged him to cast the demon from her daughter. But, Jesus was not so sure about this woman. Was his message for her, a Gentile? Jesus said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This woman did not let these words from Jesus scare her off. She replied persistently, “Even the dogs under the table get to eat the children’s crumbs.”
Jesus’ eyes were opened. He saw this Gentile as more than a category — unclean, heathen, pagan — and saw her as a person for whom he was sent. And this realization changed him. It changed his ministry. Jesus’ mind and ministry was changed by the other.
Can we, like Jesus, be open to those who are so different from us? Can we see the political other, the theological other as a person — a person who loves God, who loves God’s people and who is trying to do the right thing?
This conversation with my son opened the two of us up to ask ourselves some hard questions. I asked my son, “Why do you think these boys believe what they do?” We brainstormed a little bit and came to the conclusion that maybe they believe what they do because of their own experiences, or because their parents believe it.
In truth, much of what my children believe is because of what I have taught them. This process of seeing all people as children of God is going to take some time. But, as people of faith, no matter what our political or theological leanings, let us — like Jesus — see each other as humans, worthy of the Good News.