Jesus and Paul expose racism and sexism as illegitimate paradigms




   Jesus sought out a despised Samaritan woman, and sent her to preach. Jesus gave the "children's bread" (healing for the Jews) to a woman of Canaan.
  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul included women but not barbarians (largely unconquered or uncivilized peoples) in his list of equal persons (ex., the Germanic peoples were considered barbarians, along with some primitive tribes within the Roman Empire). 
   In his letter to the Colossians, he included barbarians but not women. But his message is clear and inclusive in both passages, that, in Christ, all humans are functionally equal, not simply equal in essence or value. During the days of slavery and Jim Crow, black people were considered functionally inferior.
  Today, truly God-fearing people understand how abhorrent such ideas are. Paul understood the concept of human equality as soon as he was converted, but he also understood that the idea would be foreign and likely offensive to the early Church. He well knew that voicing the concept would potentially cause dissension within the churches, and could cause many new converts to stumble and walk away from Christianity altogether. 
   He obviously did not feel the threat of disunity or reduction of church membership good enough reasons for compromising on what was right. Yet those are the very reasons cited by some egalitarian writers as reasons to bar women from certain leadership positions in churches. 
   For Paul to elevate barbarians, slaves, and women to equal status with Jews, citizens, and men, was radical. In Paul’s culture, barbarians had no standing. Their legal status was barely above that of slaves. They had no real rights, and were accorded little to no respect. Women in Athens Greece (the Greek culture of Rome) were compared to barbarians as good reasons for their inferior legal and social status. 
   Both Jesus revolutionary example and Paul’s radical teaching, exposed racism and sexism as illegitimate paradigms.

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