Prejudice

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink." For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) (John 4:7-9)

So, here is the scene. It is high noon and Jesus is possibly collapsed by the well looking fatigued, weak, thirsty, hot and even vulnerable. In this condition He certainly does not appear very threatening to anyone which allows this very apprehensive woman to feel safe enough to approach the well even though this strange man is hanging around there. She is likely hoping that she can just discreetly come up and take care of her business quickly and leave as soon as possible without having to have any interaction with this guy. After all, men have been the greatest source of problems in her life and she is in no mood to have to have any interactions with another one if she can avoid it – especially a Jew.

For us to understand this a little better we have to apply our own experience with racism to this scene. These people were on opposite sides of the tracks so to speak. The Samaritans were viewed something like black people were viewed in the South back in the 1950's or 60's. And the Samaritans likewise had very little use for the Jews whom they considered bigots, aloof, hypocritical and even dangerous. There was no love lost between these two groups of people and this woman had no clue that anything should be any different with this Jew. Just because He looked tired and thirsty did not give her any logical reason to feel like responding to His obvious needs herself. He was a big boy and should be able to take care of Himself.

I have no problem believing that this may have been what this woman was thinking when approaching the well at this time of day. After all, the reason she was coming at noon instead of in the morning or evening when most people would come to get water was to avoid social interaction, so why should she be interested in striking up a conversation with someone who belonged to a group of people that was well-known for hating and despising people like her. And on top of being part of a despised race she also lived in a time when women were treated nearly like cattle by most all men. They were considered property for men, not fellow humans in need of respect and love. So on top of being ignored through racial bigotry she fully expected Jesus to disdain her because she was a woman.

But something else comes up in my imagination that I can't help wondering about. Was there something else about this woman that maybe had been part of what caused her to get so entangled with a number of men emotionally that was actually a gift from God into her heart? Did she have a sense of love or compassion early on that was so irrepressible that she couldn't help herself from being nice to men even though she knew it might lead to them taking advantage of her? And had life been so cruel to her as a result of this characteristic in her personality that she had come to the place where she felt she had to repress this urge to avoid enduring any more emotional pain from those she tried to connect with?

I think I have known people like that. They have such an open personality and a desire to connect deeply with other people. But each time they spend time talking with people and opening themselves up they find that it always backfires and sooner or later they are misjudged, accused of immoral or false motives and are labeled as dangerous by those around them. Over and over they find themselves putting themselves out in attempts to find love and acceptance with someone who appears safe but over and over it always comes out wrong after awhile until finally they decide it is just not meant to be for them. Meaningful relationships may be something that others are able to form, but for them it seems to be their destiny to have to live in grief, loneliness of heart and frustrated desires. Their reputation is ruined, their social status has bottomed out and they feel that there is no option left for them but to succumb to the stigma that society has imposed on them and live life out as the kind of person that others have accused them of being.

There may be no way of knowing if this was the condition of this woman when she met Jesus, but somehow it seems to fit very well, at least in my thinking. I believe that Jesus was led by the Spirit to know that this woman had something special that had been abused and repressed and scorned by everyone around her but that He wanted to bring back to life and infuse it with the real purpose for which it had been placed in her heart to begin with. God had gifted her with a special kind of caring heart and a desire to connect with others and bless them that was reflective of something in His own heart. He wanted to reignite that fire that had been mostly snuffed out by the uncaring people who had derided and taken advantage of her for so many years.

Clearly, Jesus was at this place at this specific time to meet this specific woman alone in order to fulfill God's desire to connect her with His own heart and bring hope and life and joy back into a heart that He had designed in her in the first place. She had given up hope of feeling fulfilled in a relationship ever again, but God had not forgotten her. He had special plans for her that were far beyond her wildest dreams. Consequently a most unusual encounter with a most vulnerable-looking man at the most unexpected place would suddenly offer her the chance of a lifetime. Everything she had given up on could suddenly come back into focus and she could discover a sense of deep and rich fulfillment and joy in ways she had not dared to think about for many years.

In the beginning of this conversation Jesus initiates connection with her by asking for the obvious – a drink of water for a very thirsty person on a hot day. If I look at this in its simplest way it seems to be easy to accept – logically speaking there should be no problem at all with asking for a drink from anyone while sitting by a well of water without equipment to get anything out of it. Someone else comes along with more ability and resources than I have that can meet my needs and the answer is simple and obvious. What is wrong with asking for someone to meet my needs in such an innocent way?

One thing that I find striking about Jesus is the plain simplicity with which He approaches situations. We often dwell on how profound His words were in given situations and that is completely true. But at the same time, some of that profoundness is a result of the fact that He completely bypassed our built-in prejudices, social assumptions and preconceived ideas/lies about reality and about God and viewed each situation or relationship from a completely different perspective. To say that Jesus was outside the box is an understatement. And yet even today we seem busy trying to offer explanations and formulas to somehow put God back into a box of our own formulation for whatever reasons may motivate us.

In this story I see Jesus starting off a conversation that from heaven's viewpoint should be very simple and straightforward. Here is an exhausted and very thirsty man resting by a source of water from which He cannot get His needs met through His own resources. Another person comes along who can meet His needs and has the resources to do so. From a straightforward view of these circumstances it is clear that human compassion should compel anyone to do the obvious and get some water as quickly as possible even if no request was verbalized. And I believe that in this woman's heart that very urge welled up initially because of the very nature of how God had designed her. She likely wanted to offer hospitality to Jesus because is was just like her to do that. But years of living around people who had abused her heart, derided her compassion, scorned her motives and enforced their prejudices on her had taken precedence over her inborn desires to bless others. The fear of what others would think of her along with the fears of what others might do to her that might cause more pain became dominant in her thinking over her natural desires to spontaneously bless someone in need.

As a result of these fears overpowering her urge to help, she interpreted the simple request of Jesus as a possible threat instead of an innocent offer of social interaction. She had come to the place where she was following the same prejudices and suspicions that had been used to hurt her own heart for so many years. She was now a victim that had come to the place of acting like an abuser herself. For this is the pattern of all abuse. Victims are the most likely people to eventually become abusers themselves and the cycle is extended to yet another set of victims. Instead of listening to her heart's initial desires to assist a thirsty man in obvious need, she chose the pattern of trying to ignore Him and to view Him through the suspicions and prejudices that marked the lives of all the people around her.

This is the artificial reality that we create as prejudiced humans. Instead of living from the heart God has given us, we instead indulge in the suspicions, fears and assumptions about others that tends to victimize them and separate us from helping them in their needs. We give more preference to our fears than to our compassions and in doing so we harden our hearts against others and sink deeper into selfishness and isolation. To some degree or another all of us are caught up in this cycle of abuse. All of us are victims and all of us are abusers. That is the very nature of sin in our hearts. It perverts and suppresses our God-implanted desires to bless others and highlights the potential dangers and pain that might come to us if we put ourselves out of our comfort zones.

Prejudice is an interesting word if you take it apart. Simply put it means to pre-judge someone. That means that when we indulge in prejudice, we are setting ourselves up as their judge and then passing judgment on them ahead of the proper time. We are in fact setting ourselves up in the place of God who is the only right judge and thinking that our opinions about some group of people is in fact the ultimate truth about them. Prejudice then, is really the spirit of anti-Christ, for Jesus Christ is the one who has been appointed as the only judge of all men. If we engage in any prejudice then we are preempting the job of Christ and are attempting to displace God's authority over other people's lives.

But how does one become free from this diabolical spell of prejudice? How does God free us from this pernicious spirit that permeates so much of our thinking about others around us? Does He judge us and condemn us and attack us to make us stop doing it? Is this the way to cure us of prejudice?

I think this story can tell me a lot about God deals with prejudice. This Samaritan woman clearly was involved in prejudice against Jesus as a Jew. She knew almost nothing about Him except that it was clear to her that He was a Jew and she was considered one of the political and social enemies of His kind of people. Based on that pre-judgment of Him she had predetermined that she should ignore Him and His problems and suppress the natural desires of her heart to meet His needs.

But Jesus did not come to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17) When He came face to face with prejudice, the way that He responded is full of relevance for everyone of us today as well as back then. The scene is set up, the actors are all in place and the lines are starting to be spoken. As I move deeper into this story I do so with anticipation of what rich insights await me as to how God interacts with prejudiced, hurting people who have suffered abuse and are now unwittingly abusing those around them.