Chapter 8, The Kingdom and Prestige,talks about the main value of society as social status. The society was so structured that everyone had a place on the social ladder. Nothing was every done to change any of it. Basically, whatever was in history, that was the way that things were done. Status and prestige were based upon ancestry, wealth, authority, education and virtue. Status was a much part of religion as it was of social life. People with the higher status were able to say what religion was to be value. (eg. Ponitus Pilot) Jesus came around and contradicted everything that the society valued. He basically said that the kingdom has such distinctions as social status would hold no meaning. A little child would serve as an image of the kingdom because people who have the lowest places in society are the people whom Jesus often called the little one or the least. They essentially make up the kingdom of God. Jesus' love for the poor and the oppressed was not an exclusive love; it was an indication of the fact that what he valued was humanity not status and prestige.
------Chelsea
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I feel that even in our society today many people are looked at and judged depending on how they rank in society. Although it isnt nearly as bad as it was back then I think that it is still somewhat of a problem today.
ReplyDeleteRanking in society will always be present. While I do not agree that it is a good idea how would you go about fixing it or at least toning it down?
ReplyDeleteI believe that people are judged by how well off they are in society. I think that theses judgments will always be present. I feel that we have come a long way but i do think that people will find something good or bad about a person. From being athletic to being a different ethnicity, or to being smart, i think that there are people in this world who will put you down or leave you out of a situation. In the long run i think that these judgments will get better but i don't think that we are able to truly eliminate them.
ReplyDeleteI think this is something really difficult for people today to accept. Our society today is so based on rank and status, that some people are born into a situation that seems impossible to get out of, it is difficult to imagine these people having the status of everybody else. People need to realize things through God's eyes and not our cultures sometimes, because the two views are radically different alot of the time.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 is about the prestige and rank of people in Jesus' time. This mirrors what we talked about in chapter 4, where the sick and the poor were placed at the very bottom of the social food chain. Jesus represents a new way of life for everyone ranked at the bottom. However, we still struggle with this issue today. The poor are still looked down upon and shunned, and the more prosperous individuals are given more oppurtunities than those lower than them. Maybe if we as a society started to model our actions to more like Jesus' we could move forward in society.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Jesus’ teachings, values and actions destabilized the society that was in place during his lifetime, but not because he challenged the social hierarchy at the time, but because his ideas were thought- provoking and new and in many ways made people feel uncomfortable. For me the ideas of those of wealth, power, and strength being evil and those of poor and oppressed being innocent are just examples meant to convey understanding at the time. Jesus knew at that time that there were wealthy who were good souls, giving of themselves to aide others, just as there were poor or those with no social standing who were evil. I think it is important that we do not lose sight of his message in the examples. For me that message is, as Chelsea stated, to value our humanity.
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ReplyDeleteI find it quite astonishing that thousands of years later, we as Christians are still enduring this issue of social status. If Jesus was here today, I wonder what type of advice He would say to us. This continues to be a problem that seems almost never ending. However, the poor are not as oppressed as they were back in Jesus' time. This says a lot about our society on a whole. I wonder what exactly Jesus would want us to do to go about changing this.
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