A Deceptive Philosophy

Hosea 1: 2-10
Colossians 2: 6-15

Have you ever heard the phrase, "That boy (or girl) was raised right."? It's an expression we use for people who have been taught manners, courtesy, gentleness, and respect. They are what some refer to as the old-fashioned values and as the years go by it seems like less and less of our people have the same values that the previous generations had.

When and how being respectful and kind went out of style is debatable, but it appears the whole country has been infected with this distorted sense of right and wrong. It comes from not being grounded and rooted in Jesus Christ. The writer of Colossians comes out and tells us what is wrong with today's society as a whole. We have swallowed a deceptive philosophy. We have allowed our traditions and values to be eroded in the face of technological advances and immediate access to news and information.

Sometimes it seems like the more we know about the world, the less we truly understand about it. We hear about a tragedy such as the Trayvon Martin case and everyone chooses a side and defends that side to the death with hearsay. Although the information is available, we have been exposed to so much information that we have allowed ourselves to be told what to think by our news channels and newspapers and our fellow facebook friends. We listen to the 30 second sound-bite instead of watching the three hour court interview and think we are educated on the subject.

Can you imagine how Jesus would have been portrayed in today's news media? With his long hair, white robe, and sandals he would have been pronounced a hippie or a new ager. With the radical words of forgiveness in the face of great pain, he would have been called a liberal anarchist. With his talk of love and commitment to God and country; he would have been called an old-fashioned conservative. The media would have had a field day with Jesus! They never would have been able to pin him down and so therefore he'd probably be considered wishy-washy in his opinions despite the overall theme of love, forgiveness, and acceptance that is the basis of everything he talks about in the New Testament.

They would have decimated his mother Mary for being unwed when getting pregnant with him. They would have made Joseph seem like a savior or a fool for marrying her and knowing the baby wasn't his own. They would have interviewed his siblings and looked for all of his weaknesses and all of his strengths. The media would have destroyed Jesus' family and privacy. A man who rarely got any of that to begin with would have had all of his peace taken from him if he had lived in today's time.

And we allow it. We gobble up the gossip magazines and we turn on the reality tv. We choose our news stations and defend its obvious bias toward one affiliation or another to the death. We no longer want news that shows both sides of the story equally. We no longer want the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We have become conditioned to a deceptive philosophy that everything there is to know can be told to us in short clips and news articles, and we now have enough information to form an opinion on someone we've never met and a situation in another country that we have never experienced.

Our old-fashioned values about courtesy and respect do not seem to hold any weight when we're busy making judgments about people and situations that we only know the bare bones about. Jesus encountered a woman one day, a Canaanite woman and as they talked, he basically called her a dog. His own Jewish bred bias' were showing through in that moment, he was after all, both fully human and fully divine. He had limitations just as we do.

The difference is that Jesus knew when to admit to defeat and he knew how to admit he was wrong. Think about that. God knows when to say, "I'm sorry, that was wrong of me." The proof is in the story of the Canaanite woman. Jesus just finishes saying, "I came only to feed the lost sheep of Israel. It is not right to feed the children's bread to the dogs." and she responds with, "Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table!" It is in that moment that Jesus realizes he has done the wrong thing. He has allowed what was probably a long, hot day to keep him from seeing this woman as a sister and instead he allows his Jewish upbringing to raise a fence between them.

However, faithful people do not allow things like fences to keep them from the truth. This woman's faith allows her to humble herself before Jesus, knowing that it is only he that may save her daughter's life. In her humility, she makes Jesus aware of his excessive pride and in that moment Jesus sees that faith in God can be found in every human being no matter their station, their gender, their creed, their color, or their orientation. Faith is not something we just have but is a gift granted by God and cemented through the works and word of Jesus Christ.

This Canaanite woman had faith in a benevolent God who loved all of God's creation including some little woman and her sick daughter. Her faith reminded Jesus of his mission on earth. And her faith should remind us that we cannot think to know the world just because we have read about it. We do not know the people in the Gaza Strip and we do not know the people in Egypt. We do not know if Zimmerman or Martin or perhaps both of them were the culprits that night. However, we hear things and we decide that we have the ability to judge the situation and we stick to our decision with tenacity.

What we need to remember is that every media source has a bias and an agenda. They are appealing to a certain group of people in what they air and how they portray it. If we do not expose ourselves to more news sources we end up with a biased viewpoint.  Jesus shows us that. The writer in Colossians warns us against being so narrow-minded and also reminds us that truth comes from one source - God.

We need to ground ourselves in our love for Jesus Christ. We take too much comfort and pride in the things we think we know and how educated we think we are about the world. What I'm here to tell you is that we know nothing until we have lived it and experienced it. We do not know the hunger and desperation of the people in Gaza and how they may not be Hamas, but secretly they understand why Hamas does what it does since they all have been shut off from the world and resources and opportunities. We do not know what is like to be under a militant regime despite our grumblings that America has fallen downhill, and some people's thinking that the politicians are trying to take away all of our freedoms. The truth of the matter is that in the United States we have the power to fight back if that is true. Whether we choose to exercise that right or not doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And therefore we have NO idea what it is like to live in a country where to rebel means your family is slaughtered while you are thrown in prison for life. We have no idea what is like to live in Mexico with the cartels and the poverty and how desperately the people dream for a better life and so they come to America. Instead we talk about how it's a mess down there and we need to put up some fences to keep those people away from us. Like America wasn't started with the same dreams those Mexican men and women are using to make their way here.

We allow ourselves to become deceived by human perceptions and limitations. We forget God. We forget Jesus. We forget the Holy Spirit's guidance. We forget to be kind, gentle, respectful and courteous, those old-fashioned values we love seeing in others, but forget to use ourselves at times. It's time we get back to praying for people instead of judging and gossiping about them. It's time for us to show understanding and compassion instead of indifference and a lack of empathy. Every person we meet has a story that began long before we ever heard of them. We need to pay attention to the whole story and not just the 30 second clip we've seen so far before we make a decision about them.

We have hurt too many people by being hasty. Thankfully, Jesus shows us the way toward redemption and salvation. May we learn how to follow his ways.

Amen.