Wow, I just realized how big this sort of discussion is. The problems won’t be solved here and not in 100 volumes of the best research, testimony and expert advice… This problem has been around as long as sin… I think about people groups who commit genocide based on the mere race of another (Rawanda, Bosnia, etc.) and it shakes me up.

I saw and excellent movie this evening that told an interweaving story of lives effected in very different was from their own prejudices and the prejudices projected at them. It is called Crash. You should definitely check it out if you haven’t. That film should belong in this conversation thread.

A new self is needed. Not just a self of each individual, but a common, corporeal, tribal, community self, where a group and the individuals see, hear, speak and live new.

“and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Colossians 3:10-11

Cheryl (ok, Mom….There’s a stand up of you in my living room, so I figure I know you well enough), I agree education is a key. We seem to take education for granted here, but we don’t understand what power it has for those who are unable to change their circumstances.

I think the greatest education that we need is an education of who we are. When we begin to understand and embrace our own identities we are free to embrace others. When I see how flawed and broken I am, I can accept (and even expect), the same in others. When I see the look in the eyes of a God who is crazy about me for no reason, I can accept that He must be crazy about all people. If only we could (would?) see ourselves as we really are…

Much of our prejudice amounts to class distinctions, which are as real and prevalent here as in feudal Europe or in India from antiquity to the present.

As Christians, we know that we are not supposed to judge or exclude people based on these superficial dividers, but how can we effectively change the patterns that keep people in bondage?

Besides introducing people to life-changing relationship with Christ, evidence points to literacy and education as prime factors in dissolving class barriers. This may not be true in all societies, but history gives us numerous examples of people in free societies who have overcome prejudice by developing their abilities to a recognizably superior level of accomplishment.

Idealistic? I am no more so than people who think that throwing a few more dollars of public largesse at the disenfranchised will work a miracle in the hearts of those who deny them the dignity of human worth.