a question
Posted Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Why are the 3 aspects of Galatians 3:28 - race, gender, class - such blocks for the church to living out the whole gospel?
Spanglish Gringo
Stories, thoughts & insights on Jesus, college students, and the Bible; Los Angeles, immigration, politics, ethnicity and culture, and also about my daughter Isabel - from a spanglish gringo father living in, learning from, leading & loving life in East L.A.
Stories, thoughts & insights on Jesus, college students, and the Bible; Los Angeles, immigration, politics, ethnicity and culture, and also about my daughter Isabel - from a spanglish gringo father living in, learning from, leading & loving life in East L.A.
April 25th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
We use these identities, race, gender, and class, as distinctions, as ways to separate and elevate ourselves in relationship to others. So often this is fundamental to how we understand our own self worth. This is incongruent, however, with Jesus’s upside down kingdom where even the least have an honored place, and our value is rooted not in our distinctions/power but in our relationship with Jesus. How then can the gospel go forth in our lives if we do not allow it to transform the very core of who we are, if we don’t lose life/distinctions in order to gain the kingdom, for us and for the world.
April 25th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
I once had a pastor tell me that that passage had only “vertical implications;” that is, in salvation, Jesus doesn’t see the 3 distinctions, but there are no implications as far as “horizontal” equality between people. I’m pretty sure that would qualify as a block to a church living out the whole gospel…
April 25th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Funny how things haven’t changed much in the past two thousand years. You’d figure that with all the theologians that have come and gone, someone would have figured it out by now.
April 26th, 2006 at 11:13 am
So which of the 3 wreaks the most havoc?
May 1st, 2006 at 4:08 am
I think class has a much more profound affect than race and gender. Often class and race are conflated gender doesn’t matter as much for the rich and powerful and some argue that race is gendered.