Life at Water Street often involves living with paradox. Please take the time to read both of the posts below... Aaron Eggers, from our Men's Ministry challenges us to think about the "Us & Them" paradox.
My concern today is about us & them. As a “Gospel” rescue mission one would assume that we, beyond most, would be appalled at any sort of us & them kind of thinking. Whether we are speaking of client/staff us & them or racial us & them or economic us & them or educational level us & them or almost any other kind of us & them, our position of record would most likely be, “We are against it.”
Us & them thinking sneaks in everywhere, even among us whose mission it is to help erase the lines between us & them. You can find us & them thinking here as we align ourselves by gender, department, by our place in the hierarchy of leadership or income level.
Though we say we don’t like the distance that separates us & them, and many of us will even claim that we are really no different than them, still, I think we wouldn’t necessarily want to be one of them. I think that’s the real problem; being one of us makes us feel somehow better than one of them.
We (us) have been talking a lot lately about poverty (them). I wonder what will change because of that. Will any of us make any choice today that will make any difference to any of them?
Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be one of us. I don’t think Jesus was one of us. I think He actually prefers to be counted among them. We prefer us. Something is wrong with that. I wonder what life would be like if we preferred them to us.
Today I asked myself, ‘What have I personally, concretely, recently done to erase the line between us & them?’ I was saddened by the answer.
We have been offered a solution however:
“…with humility of mind regard [them] as more important than [us]” Paul, the Apostle (parentheses mine)
Dare we take the solution?
Imagine.
- Aaron Eggers, Men’s Ministries
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