When Jesus began his ministry
in the Gospel of Luke, he highlighted two social evils, not personal sins. Jesus did not call attention to the Ten
Commandments and the list of sins highlighted there. Why did he instead emphasize economic
oppression and religious ethnocentrism?
Among the Jews in NT Times,
there was not much legal slavery.
Instead a few rich were oppressing the poor masses. Probably 80 percent of the Jewish people, at
the time, would be classified poor, just a few notches above slavery. For a vivid and powerful description of
economic oppression and poverty in NT Times, read James 5:1-5. This is the poverty and oppression that Luke
4:18-19 is talking about when Jesus called for the releasing of the oppressed.
The second social evil that
Jesus stressed in Luke is found in 4:25-30.
Almost all Jews thought they were superior to all Gentiles and
Samaritans. Jesus reinterpreted the OT
stories of Elijah and Elisha to tell the Nazareth Jews that God loved the
Gentiles as much as the Jews. The
Nazareth Jews tried to kill Jesus on the spot.
So why did Jesus begin
talking about two terrible social evils not personal sins or even the sin of
idolatry?
Both economic oppression, be
it slavery, or be it the rich oppressing the poor, involves large numbers of
people. In Palestine the majority of
Jews were being economically oppressed; in Palestine the majority of Gentiles
and Samaritans were being treated as inferior.
Now let’s apply the social evils
of oppression and ethnocentrism to America.
The Northern Slave Trade followed by Southern Slavery, oppressed
millions of black Americans throughout much of American history. At the same time Anglo-Saxon or British
colonists saw themselves as superior to blacks throughout American history,
even down to 2019:
1.
First came the
slave trade conducted mostly by Northern whites, New England whites – see the
book Inheriting the [Slave] Trade. This is the incredible history of the slave-trading
DeWolf family. Since Northerners tend to
think they are better than Southerners because it was Southerners who owned most
slaves, this will disabuse the Northerners of any sense of superiority. In fact I happen to think people who engaged
in the slave trade are even more evil than people who engaged in slavery.
2.
There were 200+
years of legal slavery in the United States.
Technically ended by the Emancipation Proclamation.
3.
But the
Emancipation Proclamation really did not end slavery. We just moved from slavery to neo-slavery. See the book Slavery by Another Name, which describes in gruesome detail the 100
years after the Civil War, which were dominated by segregation, by economic
sharecropping, by prison gangs and by lynching.
The evils of economic oppression
and ethnocentrism continued on unabated.
4.
The Civil Rights
Movement ended some of the worst features of neo-slavery, but very quickly
there was a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement. Highlighted by the presidency of Richard
Nixon, the law and order president, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan who
started the War on Drugs. Michelle
Alexander describes the era of mass incarceration from the 1980’s to 2019 in
detail in her book The New Jim Crow. Some of the worst features of this backlash
against the 60’s took place in the north.
The social evils of oppression and ethnocentrism continue on in modern
America unabated affecting millions of people.
5.
I retired in the
state of Iowa in 1994. I discovered that
around 2008 Iowa had the worst black/white incarceration ratio in the
Nation. I dubbed this Iowa’s 2 and 24
problem; 2 percent of Iowa’s population was black, 24 percent of Iowa’s prison
population was black. That’s a 12 to 1
incarceration ratio.
I also discovered that 6
percent of white Iowans used illegal drugs and 6 percent of black Iowans used
illegal drugs and 6 percent of Hispanic Iowans used illegal drugs, so why in
the world were blacks being incarcerated for illegal drug use at 12 times the
rate as whites?
Is this another sign of
economic oppression and ethnocentrism?
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