We love to take sides. In a lot of things we do we are encouraged to do so. Just look at sports for example. Almost all sports will have you choosing one team (or person) over another. Some places get pretty fanatical about this, to the point where people will pledge some kind of allegiance to a team, even if that team has nothing to do with them.
We take sides in school too. I did some research and found a “modern day” list of high school peer groups. Here are a few of the groups that get called out:
Jocks: these are people who are affiliated with a sports team and as a result are usually pretty popular
Brains: these are people who excel at academics and take advanced classes
Fine-arts: these people are good in artistic classes such as theater, music, and drawing
Emo: these people usually wear dark clothing and are looked down upon by other groups
Did you have anything like this when you were in school?
Why do we do this? Why do we label people like this? What purpose does it serve?
You are probably familiar with the phrase “Birds of a feather flock together.” Isn’t this what we are talking about? We group ourselves and then form an allegiance to that group. People associate themselves with others that are like them. Humans learned this a long time ago, and this makes sense. People like you are more likely to keep you safe in an environment where you don’t know anything about strangers. We learn early on to classify people, and we do it for a lot of different reasons:
- race
- gender
- physical characteristics
- beliefs
- finances
- age
The list goes on.
Now, what happens to us once we form these groups? We naturally work to the benefit of our own group and the detriment of the other groups. This “us vs. them” mentality can lead to a lot of problems.
We want our favorite sports team to win, and we also want our team’s rival to lose. Why? Why can’t they both win (assuming they aren’t playing each other)? Why not work toward the betterment of all groups? That isn’t the way we think though.
But what if we did work toward the “them” group getting better? What would that look like?
Genesis 12:1-3
12 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Now here is something radically different. God tells Abram that his family will turn into a great nation. But he tells him more that that. He also gives this new group’s purpose. The Israelites, as they will later be named, will exist to bless other nations. All other nations on earth, in fact, are to be blessed through them. This flies in the face of our natural instincts. We like to have the “us” group improve and the “them” group fall. But here God is creating a nation to do something else entirely. The point made before the nation even gets started is that the “them” groups will be blessed by Abram’s lineage.
Again, this is a radical concept.
Israel isn’t doing a lot of blessing these days. I’m not here to condemn them. There is a whole lot of blame to go around. I would ask, rather, what it would be like if everyone looked out for the “thems” in life. After all, you are a “them” to someone. You don’t fit in with someone else’s race or gender or finances, etc. What if those other people worked toward the betterment of you? What if you did the same to them?
What a wonderful world that would be.
God Bless