a little more musin'
Postmodern Negro (http://postmodernnegro.wordpress.com) has a post up about the plight of African American males in this country. The full article is on New York Times' website. The statistics are overall ery unsettling, but there is one fact that sticks out in my mind. The author mentions that back in the day, African Americans lived in one community despite socio-economic status. Certainly some of that had to do with community segregation, but it also had to do with community period. Now middle class and upper middle class african americans can move to the suburbs when given the opportunity. People like, you know, my parents moved to the suburbs to give their kids (I.e. - me) a leg up in education and the like. So what will I do when Its time to decide where to nest? I'm, of course, making the slightly baseless assumption that Marnie and I will be middle class...
Anywho, I talk alot about working across racial and cultural boundaries. But what about building communities across socioeconomic lines? That's kind of an unnatural question that I've only begun to ruminate on, less known any "musing". If you live in an economically unequal society, you will either create envy and jealousy among those who have less, the richer will somehow "oppress" the poorer, or (the more likely situation knowing my wife and I) the person with the greater amount of resources will pressed upon and have to continually give of themselves. That sounds to me like what Christ would do. It also sounds ridiculously hard.
In gospels we were talking about the passage in Matthew 18 about the kingdom of heaven really being a lesson in church ethics. The greek suggests that the "little ones" doesn't necessarily have to be children, but it could also be the "little ones" in your community; the weaker, the poorer, the more gullable, the more naive, etc... It assumes that you will have those among you. Not just in your isolated worship fortress, but in the community where you actually live. That puts responsibility on those of you (us) that have advantages in this world to give back to our communities, even when its inconvenient.
Jesus never lets us off the hook, does he?
Anywho, I talk alot about working across racial and cultural boundaries. But what about building communities across socioeconomic lines? That's kind of an unnatural question that I've only begun to ruminate on, less known any "musing". If you live in an economically unequal society, you will either create envy and jealousy among those who have less, the richer will somehow "oppress" the poorer, or (the more likely situation knowing my wife and I) the person with the greater amount of resources will pressed upon and have to continually give of themselves. That sounds to me like what Christ would do. It also sounds ridiculously hard.
In gospels we were talking about the passage in Matthew 18 about the kingdom of heaven really being a lesson in church ethics. The greek suggests that the "little ones" doesn't necessarily have to be children, but it could also be the "little ones" in your community; the weaker, the poorer, the more gullable, the more naive, etc... It assumes that you will have those among you. Not just in your isolated worship fortress, but in the community where you actually live. That puts responsibility on those of you (us) that have advantages in this world to give back to our communities, even when its inconvenient.
Jesus never lets us off the hook, does he?
I hope you enjoyed the youth conference. I also hope you enjoyed southern cal. I haven't been down there much. Hopefully this summer.
Thanks for you comments!
Posted by
dlweston |
8:58 AM