One of the Gang
When we first got married, we had to figure out the whole holiday sharing strategy. I’ve mentioned before that, philosophically, my wife’s side of the family believes holidays should start early and last all day (my side was more of an 11am - 2pm gather and leave philosophy). Anyway, my wife’s grandparents would start making comments, at around 3pm, about needing to leave shortly before it got dark. We discreetly made fun of “the old people.”
For us, at that age and priority, darkness or a snowstorm, for that matter, wouldn’t have stopped us from going someplace we wanted to go. In retrospect, there were a couple of trips that we should have praised God for protecting us from ourselves. I think we’ve all been on those road trips.
But back to “the old people”… today, after our accumulated life experiences, a lot of the caution we remember being expressed by “the old people” sounds a lot more prudent and reasonable than it did back then.
This got me started thinking about other broad generalizations (or stereotypes if you will) that each of us makes about this group or that group. I was just reading an article where it reported that children of families that aligned politically with one party would be less likely to visit a friend of a family from the other political party (which one doesn’t matter). Even trying to write the sentence sounds ridiculous in my mind that children would emulate their parents stereotypes and biases towards others of the opposite political party.
As bad as I think it’s gotten today, I have to realize that this is part of our sinful nature.
“After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, together with the officials of Judah, the craftsmen, and the metal workers, and had brought them to Babylon, the Lord showed me this vision: behold, two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the Lord. One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.” “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. “But thus says the Lord: Like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat Zedekiah the king of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach, a byword, a taunt, and a curse in all the places where I shall drive them. And I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers.”” - Jeremiah 24:1-3, 5-10 ESV
Our nature wants to categorize people into groups - Republicans, progressives, skin color, rich, right handed, women, skinny, good figures…the groupings are varied and meant to separate people from each other. A large part of my nature is to want to and, maybe demand, that we stop that categorization of people into groups. But then I read the Bible and I realize that I’m tilting at windmills.
It’s clear that God uses our nature of grouping to communicate to us through the Bible. There is a large part of me that believes that this is how he chooses to communicate and ultimately he considers us all separate and unique. However, I will defer to his sovereignty and wait to find the answer.
