What are weird title for a post; the thought occurred to me because I was reading a novel where a spoiled rich youth in Victorian England had learned to his own discomfort that the prostitutes he frequented were women making desperate choices (in order to have food to eat, a place to live), whereas he had spent his whole life not having to worry about anything. His private frivolity was their very public humiliation, and when he realized the truth of the matter his eyes were opened up to all new observations about poverty and crime. It reminds me also of story I read in the paper recently that chills the heart about the child sex slave trade in South East Asia. These children, likewise, have not chosen to live such a life, they literally have no choice...In the end, such things should remind us that our own default judgemental superiority for those less fortunate is a very dangerous thing. It allows us to separate the world into categories of "us" and "them" that are in direct conflict with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was no accident that Jesus spent much of his time ministering to and witnessing to prostitutes and tax collectors. He was mocked and criticized (Mt. 11:19) by the "righteous" people of his day who felt no such need to try to save the sort of people to whom Jesus' message of God's love and forgiveness appealed.
Which group are we in? The one that Jesus belongs to which considers all men, women, and children to be God's own, that puts compassion before judgmentalism and holds out a hand in hope; or, are we members of the group the Pharisees belonged to that is content to work with our kind of people and forget that there is a dark side to this world that we live in where people make choices far less free than our own?
What were Jesus' words to the woman caught in adultery when the Pharisees brought her hoping for a stoning? "Go now and leave your life of sin." (John 8:11) When confronted with the wickedness of the rich, Jesus reacted with anger, when confronted with the wickedness of the poor and wretched, Jesus reacted with compassion. There's a lesson to be learned there.
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