Come as You Are

Matthew 22:11 - "But coming in to see the guests, the king saw a man there who had not put on a wedding robe."

The king invited people off the street. Why would he expect them to have access to a wedding robe appropriate for a royal wedding on the spur of the moment? Some of these people were likely homeless or poor. Who benefits from the correct definitions of appropriate clothing in this parable? in 21st century America? How do they benefit?

Manners and clothing can be fraught subjects; especially when it comes to social occasions or work places. That's because those rules are set by people who want an excuse to look down on others, ie rich, white people. Let's start with weddings. I wore black to my wedding because I had a nice, black dress and had no time to go shopping for anything fancier. You might gasp at that. How would you react if a woman who had been living with her fiance for a while wore white to her wedding? Would you disapprove? If you google appropriate wedding attire, it's all white dresses. Even for women guests they show only women in dresses - no nice pants. Why? For the male gaze maybe? In addition, there are very few Black women. Take my advice and don't google inappropriate wedding attire.

What about work? Let's look at the matter of appropriate hair for work. Google it and you will see a bunch of white women in nice hairstyles. As if men instinctively know what suitable hairstyles are. Or they assume men will simply wear short hair? Now, google inappropriate hairstyles for work. You will see mostly Black women in all sorts of nice hairstyles; completely acceptable styles for work. Why is this? Why do we police Black women's hairstyles and give white women a pass? I am currently reading an interesting book called "The Algorithms of Oppression," about the ways search engines mirror the racism and sexism of our society at large. I'm not sure how I found it but I know why I checked it out.

In my neighborhood there is an awesome sausage company, Ray's Sausage. Google that and you will see on the right side of your screen a picture of a house with crime scene tape in front of it. There was indeed a crime there; eleven crimes in fact. The house, which was torn down in late 2012, was next door to the sausage company.  Yet 5 years later, the picture remains the main picture for the sausage company, which had nothing to do with the crimes. Their business suffered as a result. Do you think that image would still be there if Ray's was owned by a white person or if it was located in a white neighborhood?

I wrote to google a while back, explained the situation, and requested they fix it, but never got a response. Yet, it's clear that their algorithms have inherent bias. They mirror the biases of the people (mostly white men) who wrote them. Unfortunately, they are seen by many people as an unbiased source of factual information. I read that many people think that the results on the first page of a search - any search engine - are more trustworthy than those on later pages. Do not be fooled. This is not true as you can see from our googling. Unfortunately and predictably, it's Black people and other people of color who suffer the most.

What do google algorithms have to do with first century Palestinian wedding clothes? Why would the king expect people off the street to have wedding robes appropriate for a royal wedding? Unconscious (or conscious) bias toward the people in power - in our case, rich, white men - to the detriment of all others. This is not a desirable trait in a ruler or in God. Or even pastors. Some pastors use "appropriate clothing" to minimize those with no power, usually women. God does no such thing. He invites us where we are, as we are - no matter how our hair looks or what we are wearing.

Come as you are. The table is ready.