My brother--you need to rethink this wrong conception you have formed regarding the implications of our Lord's words! They refer to a state of mind and heart, not to racial or cultural differences.
Thank you for allowing me the time necessary to consider and find a
feel for my reply. I do occasionally rethink my conceptions regarding the gospels. I have been, over the last years and a half, been doing just that. Though I do feel reasonably confident in the conclusions I've reached thus far, I'm not adverse to back-tracking significantly in order to weigh new information or test a new framework.
Perhaps we might begin by recognizing that one's state of mind and heart in any particular circumstance may be rather deeply culturally influenced. That which enlightens one person may not the next, and may in fact appear bizarre, quaint or laughable to those whose culture has not prepared them to be receptive. Failing to be enlightened on demand does not render one less than human but surely marks that one
as human, wouldn't you agree?
"Dogs" and "swine" refer to heathen peoples, but would also include Jews who do not practice virtue as per the teachings of the Law. According to the Early Church Fathers, dogs are those so immersed in evil that they show no hope of change, while swine are those who habitually live immoral and impure lives in rebellion against God's commandments. The pearls are the inner mysteries of the Christian faith, including Christ's teachings--think "The Pearl of Great Price. These holy things are to be kept from the immoral and unrepentant, not to protect the holy things themselves, for obviously Christ needs no protection and His teachings are safe for all eternity in the heart of the Father and the hearts of believers. Rather, the exhortation is that we protect the faithless people themselves from the condemnation that would result from their holding God's Word in contempt.
Let me say that I find your explanation less distressing than some I have read. There is a seed of hope in it.
It has been suggested to me on numerous occasions that my distress at a presumed Christ drawing a line between the (fully human) possessors of pearls and those whom he calls dogs and swine, is that I have somehow misunderstood where he was drawing that line--that if I were to understand who actually falls below that line and how unlike the possessors of pearls they truly are, I would be able to accept the teaching.
It is a human proclivity to draw such lines and a human proclivity to shift them as circumstances dictate. Surely we do not need a Christ to teach us this. There is nothing profound, nothing transcendent, in the drawing of lines and the dehumanizing of those who fall below the expedient line of the moment--those whom we can deem as
other.
The proclivity itself, common to mankind yet culturally shaped, produces a particular two-edged injustice that keeps the possessor of pearls in his place as surely as it keeps the presumptive dogs and pigs in theirs. There is a severe cost in grokking this. Doing so will surely alienate one from one's own culture and all of the manufactured comforts of that culture, making of one a stranger in a strange land, a wanderer with no place to lay one's head. Yet, it does make all of the human race into one's family, even those chained raving to tombstones, those caught in the act of adultery, those ritually unclean and therefore ritually infectious.
Perhaps it is a fault in me that I have no time for mysteries that must be spoken rather than lived, that once grasped can somehow be held secret as if we would not involuntarily
shine with them.
"The nature of things is measured by the interior disposition of the soul; that is, the kind of person one is will determine what one thinks of others...One who has attained a genuine prayer and love no longer puts things in categories. He does not separate the righteous from the sinners, but loves all equally and does not judge them, just as God gives the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust." --by Nikitas Stethatos, from the Philokalia
*thank you for the quote teshi*
The same idea is put forth in the story of the Gentile woman of great faith--Matthew 15:21-28--in which story, having evoked this woman's love and persistent faith, Christ reveals her humility--the greatest of all virtues in God's eyes. Christ's hesitancy was not a lack of compassion, but a conscious means of revealing the virtues of this woman, both to the disciples and onlookers and for her own sake. Humility is lacked by both dogs and swine; by exhibiting it for all to see, our Lord showed her to be neither in God's eyes.
Interesting. When I read this story, I don't see her as humble so much as clever in driving home her point. My sense is that Jesus was "got" and didn't much mind it. It fact, I think it delighted him, which goes a way toward softening my opinion of him.
This idea can be seen in the Church itself from the beginning in that non-believers were not allowed access to the deeper teachings of the Church until they became cleansed through Baptism after which, as Paul observed, "Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all."(Colossians3:11)
Again, I am not enamored with the idea of initiations and secret teachings. If Christianity does not
work right down to one's fingertips, then it needs to be re-examined in the light of day.
