Today’s Scripture Reading (July 27,
2015): Exodus 22
Olga Kuzkova
has had her beauty pageant (Miss Charming) victory removed. The beauty pageant
was sponsored by the Russian Football Premier League. The reason the crown was
taken from her was because of accusations that she was involved in neo-Nazism
and racism. The charges were made after pictures surfaced on Social Media
showing Kuzkova beside neo-Nazi symbols and in support of neo-Nazi causes. One
picture, posted by Kuzkova herself, shows her in a skimpy outfit wearing a swastika
armband in front of a pair of flaming ovens.
The charges
against Kuzlova follow hot on the heels of a revealing video in Britain of
Queen Elizabeth as a child being taught by her uncle, the soon to be King
Edward VIII, to perform the Nazi salute. While the video has caused a stir in
Britain, the reality is that the video reveals the tough situation that Europe
experienced as they tried to deal with Nazi Germany in the years prior to the World
War II. The two instances are almost bookends to the Nazi experience. Queen
Elizabeth, who at the time had no expectation of ever becoming Queen, performing
an innocent German action at the behest of her Uncle at a point in history before
we knew what Nazism would cost us as global society, and Kuzkova bearing Nazi
symbols revealing how deep the Nazi poison has infected us – and still infects
us.
But the
poison of Nazism continues to rear its head in contemporary socieity. The
obvious outbreaks, like that of a winner of a Russian Beauty Pageant, are easy
to handle. We can confront and make sure that everyone realizes that this is
not acceptable behavior. The harder ones, or the more insidious ones, are some
of our personal reactions towards those who are different from us in everyday
life. Even within the Christian Church, we have to be extremely careful. Some
of the rhetoric that has proceeded out of the Christian right against the
sitting President of the United States, Barak Obama, have been equally
unsettling. Nazi poison would seem to continue in infect even us, and poison
our society.
At the heart
of all of this is the simple question of how we treat the stranger in our
midst, or how we treat the ones not like us. Our Societies are made up of
people who may have a different skin color, or possess different spiritual
beliefs. And the question that we are struggling to answer is simply this – how
do we have relationship with them? How do we honor them in the daily life of
our culture?
The biblical
standard is plain – we are not to mistreat or oppress (or say unkind things
about) people who are not like us. The evidence of God’s work in our lives is
found in how we treat people unlike ourselves. And the question is not an
arbitrary one. Some Spiritual leaders strongly believe that the destruction of
Jerusalem and the extensive loss of life at that point in Israel’s history can
be directly traced back to their failure to fulfill this one law. They refused
to welcome the foreigner and suffered an end similar to that of the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah who failed to honor the stranger and were destroyed. The stakes
are extremely high. And the reality with regard to the continuing health of our
culture is found in learning to honor the ones who are not like us. Only then
can we truly be said to be reflecting the image of our God into our world.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Exodus
23
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