We like to think of Jesus as a perfect human but those don’t exist.  Jesus was a human and had the same natural blinders other humans have. We are born into cultures and because we are all born into cultures, we all have cultural biases, even Jesus. If I said the names Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero would you recognize them as being the last two ICE murders that were publicly known? What about the names Renee Good and Alex Pretti.  Why do we remember their names?  What if I told you that it is human nature to care about who looks like you, worships like you and could be you.  Cultural bias is as normal as having thumbs, but we have to work to not use our cultural biases, and we have to do that a lot of the time. We have to be extra careful to be kind to and an advocate for people who are different than we are.  We can’t kid ourselves that we are somehow so WOKE that we don’t need to put in a special effort.

What if I told Jesus found this out about himself.  He had spent a few weeks in the Jerusalem area and kept getting into arguments with the Pharisees and other Rabbis.   I am sure that his mind was on the Jewish population and how lost they seemed.  He had focused just on them when he decided to travel to a whole different country, and a lady there asked him to help her daughter.  His response was surprising to most people if you don’t realize we all have blinders on.  But he told her that since she was a Canaanite he couldn’t help her, that he came to help the Jews.  You see her daughter was sick.  But she pushed back, and she advocated for herself and her daughter.  And she made Jesus realize he was being prejudice.  He healed her daughter and complimented the woman’s faith.  He left that place and after that all  of the crowds came to him of many different cultures, including Romans and Samaritans.

We are all prejudiced to some extent and have to work on it constantly not to act with our biases.  We all have blinders.  Because I have a Southern accent there are things it is assumed that I don’t know how to do.  It doesn’t bother me too much because we all see through the eyes of our own cultures.  I have to see through mine as well.  When I got here I was surprised at how parents never touched their kids, but how well behaved they were.  I had grown up in a place where laying hands on your child was expected and to not do it, “make your child behave,” you were hurting other people’s peace and endangering your child. It was just a cultural difference. 

Biases are natural but not the best thing.  We have to try and overcome our prejudices by working on being inclusive every chance we get. Jesus learned and we can too.  We don’t like to think that we might have hidden biases, hidden even to us.  Jesus didn’t see himself as prejudice until this woman help open his eyes. And he grew.  And we can grow too.