There’s a time when banding together for survival is a necessity. I’m thinking about the ghetto communities in many immigrant cultures where community and language are existentially familiar. Banding together among the groups, families and individuals one easily identifies with offers a more stable environment in which to prosper and assimilate within the greater culture.
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Breaking from the Ghetto
A problem can occur when one seeks to break out of the status quo ghetto culture, some of those who’ve set their ambitions amidst the familiar may feel threatened when others see the light and begin to break out of the same conditions that have served as a magnet for most of the community. The ghetto mentality becomes an effect that resists change.
We can all find ourselves in some kind of ghetto, it doesn’t need to be defined by an immigrant culture. This mentality can be defined or entrenched in any form where one group is threatened by the success of those who find for themselves a way out of the perceived safe boundaries.
People typically don’t like their belief systems challenged. Often in spite of evidence to the contrary, people tend to stay in their ghetto reality. After all, it’s a matter of survival relying on the truth, or what you believe is true.
Negativity from a friend has an effect
Having grown up as an ethnic minority in the United States I had some grip on the friction that ghetto mentality causes. A friend, of the same ethnic background, shared an axiom-like statement that “You can never be any better than your father.”
Fortunately for me, my father was quite a guy, but my friend meant his meaning to be broadly applied, exemplifying the power of the ghetto rather than encouraging freedom from it. His declaration suggested the limitations of the father are inescapable.
When I was young I didn’t really learn how to engage in a philosophical argument. Yet inside, I was hurt and offended by the statement. Unable to argue, to some degree I internalized it. Such can be the adverse effects of a friend’s view of society combined with a weak sense of self.
The offense of Spiritual Liberation
This example has clear correspondence to the spiritual liberations of those who surrender to Christ. The transformations and clarity that begin to occur through God’s Holy Spirit, go beyond the base human nature’s ability to achieve. The changes a Christian experiences, can also cause others to view Christ followers as one of those people (i.e. someone worthy of pity, sympathy or contempt) because my friend’s rule is operational in resisting the Truth and liberation.
People take a certain unconscious ease in submitting to bondage.
Whether the change is overcoming a vice (e.g. drug, alcohol, habitual game playing, both video and relational), the rejection of pornography and sexually immoral behavior, the giving up of an attitude of hate, a desire to help without recompense, a loss of greed, taking up a man’s responsibility in a culture of chronic boyhood, regularly attending church, studying Scripture, an unshakable hope of the future, or to be a witness of the eternal Creator, none other Jesus Christ, all of these new interests can be threatening to friends, family and other who used to think “you can never change”. All of these things can be a threat to the ghettos mindset.
Most people feel safe in the mental and spiritual ghettos produced by a worldly life.
Consider the passage that looks at the spiritual bondage exhibited by religious leaders, from the Gospel of John, Chapter 9:
A Man Born Blind Receives Sight
Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. 4 I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 7 And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.
8 Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, “Is not this he who sat and begged?”
9 Some said, “This is he.” Others said, [c]“He is like him.”
He said, “I am he.”
10 Therefore they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”
11 He answered and said, “A Man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to ]the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight.”
12 Then they said to him, “Where is He?”
He said, “I do not know.”
The Pharisees Excommunicate the Healed Man
13 They brought him who formerly was blind to the Pharisees. 14 Now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also asked him again how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”
16 Therefore some of the Pharisees said, “This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.”
Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them.
17 They said to the blind man again, “What do you say about Him because He opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
18 But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind and received his sight, until they called the parents of him who had received his sight. 19 And they asked them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
20 His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but by what means he now sees we do not know, or who opened his eyes we do not know. He is of age; ask him. He will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had agreed already that if anyone confessed that He was Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24 So they again called the man who was blind, and said to him, “Give God the glory! We know that this Man is a sinner.”
25 He answered and said, “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”
26 Then they said to him again, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?”
27 He answered them, “I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become His disciples?”
28 Then they reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. 29 We know that God spoke to Moses; as for this fellow, we do not know where He is from.”
30 The man answered and said to them, “Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He is from; yet He has opened my eyes! 31 Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him. 32 Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. 33 If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.”
34 They answered and said to him, “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they cast him out.
True Vision and True Blindness
35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him, He said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”
36 He answered and said, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”
37 And Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.”
38 Then he said, “Lord, I believe!” And he worshiped Him.
39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”
40 Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, “Are we blind also?”
41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.
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Some thoughts in closing…
From the passage you can see how a man who was blind his whole life was given complete sight supernaturally, a complete restoration in spirit, mind and physical sight that only could come from God.
The Pharisees refused to acknowledge the divine source of the miracle, they would rather continue their fanatical effort to lure Jesus into a trap of breaking one their misguided laws, their distortion of Mosaic Law. Furthermore, they believed the blind man was blind because of some kind of punishment for a past sin. Who could possibly forgive the man of sin other than God? This simple man from Nazareth could not possibly be the Messiah, so they thought. They refused to believe Jesus was God, hence they were unable to give God and His Son the glory.
Tragically, this form of mentality leads to dire consequences. Their inability to submit to God and to receive eternal life leads to the contrary, their persecution of God’s Son and eternal damnation.
They could not find joy in the liberation of this former blind man, it only made the coals burn hotter in their self-righteous souls, with the smoke from such flames compounding their spiritual blindness. These religious leaders suffered from their own ghetto mentality.
As Jesus declared after teaching a parable, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” – Mark 4:9
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
CKY