If you read the gospels, it is crystal clear that the Pharisees hated Jesus and hated His message. They liked their synagogues, they liked their worship, they were comfortable with their laws and way of life. They did not want to change anything. They had done it this way for centuries.
Even though the Jewish people had known Messiah was coming, the man who claimed to be Him was clearly not what they had in mind. Even though He fulfilled every prophecy and matched all the clues God had given them so they would know He was Messiah, He just didn't fit what they had in mind.
Even though He claimed to be God, backing his claims with signs and wonders, they couldn't see it. They refused to step out of their time honored, centuries old beliefs and practices and take a long look.
They refused to believe. They condemned His message, affirmed theirs and then they....killed Him.
If you read Acts, it's a different man but the same people, hell bent on defending their position...which was right. Of course it was right. They thought it was right, their daddy thought it was right. His daddy thought it was right. They'd held that position for generations.
But they were wrong.
I was raised in the segregated South. A black man could graduate from MIT with a bachelors and masters in mechanical engineering, become director of a flight school teaching combat pilots to fly, but he could not sit beside a white man and eat lunch or drink at the same water fountain or compete for the same job. Because his skin was a different color.
I was given tracts explaining why God condoned this behavior. Church people guarded the church doors to defend their stand and protect the racial purity of the church. Everybody played the role that had been handed down to them for generations. Growing up, I was taught "separate but equal." There was nothing equal about it.
Looking back, I never questioned any of this. Never crossed my mind to question. That's just the way it was.
Whites rioted in the North when housing was earmarked for blacks. They refused to work alongside them. All over America, it was the same. The South was just more outspoken.
Eleanor Roosevelt was their champion...she saw the inequity...the wrongness. But church people turned up their noses at Eleanor because she was "different" and ..... wrong.
During World War II, there was a group trying to rescue European Jewish children from certain death in Hitler's concentration camps and bring them to America. America would not take them because they were....Jewish. They'd take British children in danger of bombing, but not Jewish children.
These are called blind spots. In 2013, we are appalled that this happened and have passed laws to ensure these inequities do not happen again.
But the question remains...do I grow to just accept things rote? Do I question anymore? Do we have blind spots today? When things go on for so long, do I become numb to the inequity, injustice, horror? Are my ears open, my eyes open...today?
Abortion on demand was legalized in 1973. Regardless of your position, the fact remains that there have been more than 50 million abortions performed since 1973.
Being generous and just for the sake of argument and to make it more palatable, let's say, 90% were for medical reasons ... a "just suppose." That leaves 5 million babies who were just unwanted.... like Jewish children trying to come to the U.S. during WW11.
Six million Jews were exterminated in Europe from roughly 1939 to 1945. The world is aghast that it could have been allowed to happen. The 5 million in our just suppose case, have been exterminated for no reason other than it was inconvenient, just not a good time, wrong dad, wrong sex, my parents would kill me, I have all I want..... In reality, over 50 million have died.
But it's gone undercover....no one writes about it any more... kind of like the war in Afghanistan. Recently a Philadelphia doctor was convicted and the horror was printed for a few days and then it retreated into oblivion.
Blacks came to the back door because that's the way it was, the way it had always been. They used separate water fountains because that's the way it was. They couldn't have any jobs other than janitors or wait staff in the armed forces because that's just the way it was...the way it had always been....no matter their education or talent.
The law was changed to right the wrong and give protection and rights.
Abortion kills children.
The law desperately needs to be changed to right the wrong and give protection and rights to unborn children.
It is no longer your blind spot.
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