Unpacking Prejudice

"You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?" (John 4:12)

Yet another link emerged for me just now. I have wondered where some of these pieces fit in relation to each other and I just saw how the ideas of gift and greatness fit side by side in this puzzle.

Jesus began by talking about a gift of God. He had just asked the woman for a gift from her, but instead of immediately offering it to Him she decided to explore why He was so bold and brash as to break all the rules of society to even talk with her. So He began talking about the nature of gifts and who has the biggest gift of all and began to let her in on the fact that He had a much better gift for her than He had requested of her.

Since He had brought up the issue of God, which was a very sore point of contention between her people and the Jews of which Jesus was obviously one, and since He had also brought up the issue of gifts and water in context of asking her for a gift of water, she turned it around and began to deepen the discussion by referring to what her village considered the most valuable gift to them by one of their own ancestors, Jacob.

It is interesting that she brought up the subject of Jacob to a Jew. The Jews of course, considered Jacob to be one of their important forefathers and so likely this woman was trying to make a point of saying that she belonged to a race of people who could also trace their own lineage back to a man that the Jews held in high esteem in their own ancestry. She was bringing up an issue that had caused some of the most prejudice and friction between the Jews and the Samaritans at the very beginning of this discussion to see what kind of reaction she might get from this most unusual-acting Jew.

In response to Jesus' mention of a gift, she was also letting Him know that this well and the water in it should be recognized as a valuable gift from Jacob. This well reminded these Samaritans every day of their connection to Jacob and they clung to its importance as a visible reminder of the ancestor who was considered by both Jews and Samaritans as being one of God's chosen men on earth. This well may have been one of the points of argument that Samaritans may have referred to in justifying their claim to be some of God's chosen people in the face of bitter and even vicious claims to the contrary from most every Jew.

This bigotry had flared up first when the deported Jews returned from the Babylonian exile to Jerusalem and began to rebuild the walls that had been destroyed 70 years previously. This was during the days of Nehemiah and Ezra. They were very sensitive to the fact that it was their own nation's sins that had caused God to allow them to be overcome as a nation and had delivered them into captivity as a consequence of their disloyalty to Him. With the vivid awareness in their consciousness that disobedience to God was the real issue that had caused them so much suffering for a whole generation in captivity, they determined to do everything possible from then on to prevent such a thing from ever recurring again.

As a result, the Jews swung to the other extreme and became very legalistic in their practice of religion. They became extremely particular about learning all the rules and laws of Moses and following them to the letter as much as they could figure out how. Part of this intense application of strict law-observance resulted in the fierce enforcement of marriage laws against all those who had taken wives from other nations during the time of captivity. Those who had been scattered through the surrounding countryside instead of taken to Babylon had been forcibly mixed with other people imported by the Babylonians from other places in the world. The returning Jews from Babylon felt tension with these who had been left behind and prejudices flared up as a result.

Ezra and some of the other leaders decided that there must be a strict separation of good Jews from any who could not completely prove their legitimate lineage as a pure-blooded Jew. Basically what happened as a result of these decisions was a forced imposition of ethnic cleansing as we would call it today. This can be read about in the last two chapters of the book of Ezra.

The people who were ethnically cleansed and experienced forced separation from the ethnically pure Jews came to be known as the Samaritans. They had Jewish blood in their lines but were not pure Jews. As thus, they were considered by Jews to be illegitimate and corrupt both ethnically and spiritually. After they were forced out of fellowship with the main group of Jews they set up a rival temple in their own territory that only tended to amplify the tensions between these two groups of people claiming to be followers of God. This tension never subsided for hundreds of years, so when Jesus showed up and began talking with one of these “illegitimate people” He was definitely going against the grain of what was socially and religiously acceptable.

All of this background and much more was very present in the minds of everyone involved in this story. The tension had become so great between these two peoples that they did not even normally consider talking with someone from the other group. They generally only harbored animosity and hatred for the others, which is why this woman found it so astonishing that a Jewish man would even consider talking with a Samaritan woman, much less ask a favor of her. This was simply unthinkable and amazing and worth finding out about in her opinion.

From this context she decided to see what Jesus' opinion was of the obvious issues that she supposed separated them since He was already ignoring all the prejudices that she expected Him to share with all Jews. Since He had brought up the issues of God and gifts and water, she continued this most curious conversation by asking Him to explain Himself in relation to the obvious differences between His people and hers.

How often have I made the mistake of focusing first on what makes me different than others than on what we share in common. It is so easy to look first for what makes me unique, what differentiates me from someone else instead of seeking to view them as a fellow child of God in need of knowing God better. While this woman was focusing on what was different about them Jesus was softening her heart by seeking to eliminate their differences and offering to bless her.

Jacob was one of the most important figures in the heritage and religion of the Samaritans, and particularly for this village. They were very dependent on this well as their primary source for much needed water and felt that it was a gift from Jacob to them personally, as far as they were concerned. In their minds Jacob represented their link of legitimacy to God, and if one was to talk about gifts of God, then obviously they needed to know that this gift from Jacob was the Samaritan's proofs that they were not as far from God as all the Jews claimed that they were.

Now, if some Jew comes along and begins talking about a gift of God connected with water that is better than the obvious value of this well of water from their great ancestor Jacob, then she may begin to question the relative value of the person making such a brazen claim that challenged all the social and religious beliefs that the Samaritans had held to for so long.

What I am starting to see here is that the underlying issues that the woman was referring to was about value and identity. The Samaritans had been marginalized, shamed, hated and despised for generations by Jews who claimed with vehemence that even God Himself had no use for Samaritans because of their ethnicity. They were considered less worthy than dogs of being treated with respect.

This is certainly not something unfamiliar to us today. There are many similar issues of prejudice all over the world today and repeated instances of ethnic cleansing that spawn horrific scenes of senseless violence in the spirit of vicious prejudices. On a lesser scale, we can also see the more subtle forms of prejudice between people of different denominations that view each other with varying degrees of suspicion and even hatred. These prejudices are sometimes encouraged and inflamed by the more extreme elements within these various groups believing that they are doing the will of God and are helping Him to purify “His chosen people”.

Prejudice is a terrible thing, and given the long history of violence, hatred and evil that has come from it one would think that mankind would learn to see it for what it really is. And yet it continues to thrive and flourish and cause even more violence and pain and senseless evil in the world. It is much easier to see it in others of course rather than in ourselves. But some people have even come to the point of being very proud of their prejudices and believing that prejudice is an honorable thing that should be cherished and encouraged in society. I have observed that in many places patriotism is only thinly veiled prejudice dressed up to look and feel like something more acceptable.

All of this distorted thinking stems directly from our twisted views of what we believe God is like. Even though the book of Ezra has many good things in it, I don't necessarily believe that everything that Ezra did in the name of God was God-inspired in spite of the view of many theologians and Christians to the contrary. The Bible reports what people did whether it was right or wrong, but that does not mean that everything they did in the name of God was necessarily God's desire for them. The effects of the strong direction toward legalism that was introduced into the Jewish psyche in the days of Ezra actually matured years later in the time of Jesus. Its fruit could be seen in the blinding hypocrisy and bigotry that enveloped the hearts of the priests, scribes and Pharisee's who ended up rejecting their own Messiah and having Him tortured and killed on a cross – all in the name of religion and national purity.

Their own high priest declared in the spirit of prejudice and corruption that had matured to completion, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish." (John 11:49-50)

But in this encounter with the woman in Samaria, Jesus was able to effectively meet and disarm some of her strongest prejudices because of the openness of this woman's heart and her willingness to let Jesus introduce her to a completely new and startling picture of the true God of heaven. And because of her willingness to lay aside her prejudices and embrace the good news of the gospel, she quickly became one of the most effective missionaries for Jesus that had ever been seen up to that point in time.