{"id":189,"date":"2017-04-02T09:36:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-02T09:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecrimsonroad.com\/?p=189"},"modified":"2018-05-08T03:56:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T03:56:52","slug":"race-caste-and-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/02\/race-caste-and-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Race, Caste and Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

A story is told of a prince who wants to marry a real<\/em> princess, but is having difficulty because there are many pretenders who are in fact not princesses at all. One stormy night a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince’s castle, claiming to be a princess. So the prince’s mother offers her a bed\u00a0covered by 20 mattresses and 20 feather-beds, with a single pea at the very bottom. In the morning, the guest tells her hosts that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed that has bruised her badly. The prince and his family rejoices. Only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through so much\u00a0bedding!\u00a0So the two get\u00a0married.<\/p>\n

Here is a children’s fairy tale with the subtle message that\u00a0no one is worthy of the prince’s hand except those with the “blue blood” of princesses! Unfortunately it\u00a0reflects a tragic reality that exists even today. An article about Princess Kate talks\u00a0about the class divide that still plagues Britain:\u00a0“She may be beautiful, graceful and fabulously rich, but Middleton is still a ‘commoner’.”<\/p>\n

Coming even closer to home, I hail\u00a0from a country where the\u00a0caste system<\/strong>\u00a0is ingrained in our culture. India’s caste system is among the world’s oldest forms of surviving social stratification. At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins who were mainly teachers and intellectuals and are believed to have come from god Brahma’s head. Then came the Kshatriyas, or the warriors and rulers, supposedly from his arms. The third slot went to the Vaishyas, or the traders, who were created from his thighs. At the bottom of the heap were the Sudras, who came from Brahma’s feet and did all the menial jobs. Outside of this Hindu caste system are the Dalits or the untouchables. Christians in India are also often associated with\u00a0castes that depend on the region and the language spoken.<\/p>\n

Yet another way we humans distinguish ourselves from each other are by our race and ethnicity.<\/strong>\u00a0This is sometimes referred to by the color of people’s skin – red, yellow, brown, black and white. The extreme abuse of this was found in Nazi Germany during the second world war.\u00a0Nazi foreign policy was guided by the racist belief that an enlarged, racially superior German population should establish permanent rule in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and this led to the horrors of the holocaust.<\/p>\n

In addition to caste and race, there is also an underlying thinking about class and pedigree<\/strong>. We just looked at the story of “The Princess and the Pea”. However, even in everyday life,. We talk about the “poor”, the “middle-class” and the “rich”. We also talk about “blue-collar” workers and “white-collar workers”, as well as about the “educated” and the “uneducated”. An extreme abuse of this was found in\u00a0slavery, that used to be practiced until relatively recently. Today the exploitation of human beings still exists in a twisted, evil form now known as “sex slavery”, where typically younger children and girls are forced into prostitution. Even leaving aside these extreme forms of exploitation, considerations about class and pedigree have seeped\u00a0right into our own homes! For example, often the dignity of labor that is taken for granted in America does not exist in third world countries such as India. Most homes employ maids who are not allowed to eat at the table of the home in which\u00a0they serve, but sit on the floor with a different plates and glasses that only they should use, and are often treated as working machines rather than people. All of us (the exploited and the exploiters) have been conditioned to believe that they do not have a right \u00a0to be treated the same way as we are,\u00a0in society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Christian gospel does not give room to us, for using these kinds of differences for social stratification. There are two premises that our fundamental to our Christian faith.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Every single human being is in the same plight – at odds with our Creator, and on the path of His wrath against our sin.<\/strong>\u00a0None is righteous, no, not one;\u00a0<\/span>no one understands;\u00a0<\/span><\/span>no one seeks for God.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;\u00a0<\/span>no one does good,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>not even one <\/span><\/span><\/em>(Rom 3:11-12).<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. God does not accept a person by\u00a0any considerations based on\u00a0race, caste or class.<\/strong> He opens his arms to welcome all of us – all\u00a0who put their trust in Jesus, who died on the cross on our behalf, and bore the punishment for our sins: God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life<\/em>\u00a0(John 3:16). One of the apostle Peter’s early discoveries as a Christian caused him to say:\u00a0I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality<\/em>\u00a0(Acts 10:34, KJV).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Thus the playing field is flat. No one has any intrinsic advantage or disadvantage over anyone else. In fact, often the things that\u00a0we consider to be advantages may actually work against us the other way!\u00a0But I digress\u00a0– more on that in a later post. Flushing this out in detail in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul concludes: He Himself is our peace, who has made us one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall <\/span><\/strong>\u00a0… that He might create in Himself one new man …, so making peace,<\/span> <\/em>and might reconcile us all\u00a0to God in one body through the cross<\/em>\u00a0(Ephesians 2:14-16). And Paul\u00a0<\/span>triumphantly states:\u00a0There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave\u00a0nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus<\/em> (Gal 3:28). This truth should so grip our hearts and minds, that it should spill into all our interactions with others:\u00a0Show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.<\/span> For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in,<\/span> and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, \u201cYou sit here in a good place,\u201d while you say to the poor man, \u201cYou stand over there,\u201d or, \u201cSit down at my feet,\u201d<\/span> <\/em>have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? … If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, \u201cYou shall love your neighbor as yourself,\u201d you are doing well.<\/span> <\/em>But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.<\/em> (James 2:1-4,8-9)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    This radical way of thinking has caused fundamental changes in society that have reverberated across the annals of history. The US Constitution states: …We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.<\/em>\u00a0And after this there has been a civil war and a civil rights movement to uphold this now “self-evident” equality in the dignity and value of all human beings. Unfortunately, even truths such as this are not sufficient to erase centuries-old habits and biasses.<\/p>\n

    More unfortunate however, is the sad fact that although we Christians should be leading the way, we still have not fully embraced these profound truths in our personal lives and families. For example, these differences\u00a0are deeply ingrained in the Indian Christian Community, and are evident in the choice of spouses we make for our children. One of the ripple effects of this is that\u00a0most families do not even consider the option of adoption except when they have a need, such as in cases of infertility.\u00a0<\/strong>Stay tuned for other posts, where\u00a0I unpack the underlying reasons\u00a0why I make these statements.\u00a0May God grant us grace to transform our thinking from the inside, so that behavior\u00a0becomes consistent with the faith that we profess!<\/p>\n

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    A story is told of a prince who wants to marry a real<\/em> princess, but is having difficulty because there are many pretenders who are in fact not princesses at all. One stormy night a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince’s castle, claiming to be a princess….Continue reading Race, Caste and Class<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13,23,49,79],"tags":[102,161,163,168,182],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-commitment","category-god","category-love-of-god","category-theology","tag-caste","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-segregation","tag-unity","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1843,"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/1843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ourauthenticfamily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}