Matthew 5:25-26: Come to terms with your adversary while you are on the way lest your adversary hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be cast into prison. I tell you you will not leave there until you have paid the last penny.
Total disruption of one's life but also the community. Who is going to pay the last penny? Family and friends. The ripples of resentment and anger then continue. We see this in the Middle East. As I understand it, some of the animosity there goes back centuries. We see this with African Americans in Baltimore. Anger ignored breeds anger. And we are ignoring the anger being displayed in so many cities and towns to our peril. We have created a situation in which they have less and less to lose. We have made them angry and then taken away their recourse.
This legacy will take its toll as long as people take sides without trying to understand those opposed to them. This is what the gospel counsels us today - try to understand. The word means think well of. Try to think well of your adversary. That goes against everything we are taught through movies, TV shows, history books. They all say that we are right. But we are wrong. We are not thinking well of minorities in modern America. And it is making our job of reconciling impossible.
Yesterday I wrote about reconciliation. It is impossible without understanding on all sides. The gulf is wide and many would like to ignore that it exists. Many would like to think that black people are routinely treated just like white people in this country. Such is not the case and this disconnect is widening the gulf. Even poor Jon Stewart is tired and frustrated with fighting this battle of ideology against facts. He has fought so hard and has gotten exactly nowhere.
Taking this down to the personal: What is one thing I can do today to understand and put into practice my new understanding of someone from another race?
B
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