Mankind is interested, significantly, in status. Status can be used to advantage or disadvantage as persons and society choose. The Untouchables of India have had a much harder row to hoe than the ordinary citizen, and an impossible one related to the Brahman class. As the president of a college I hired as a professor a scientist with a documented doctoral degree, a man originally from India. When he earned his graduation, he had to sit separately from the general audience, was called and received his degree, and returned to his seat outside the main body, and walked home barefoot in the mud. He had overcome to become a highly respected member of our faculty, and after our move to the local university. One day he came in distressed. His sister had volunteered, during her visit in America, in a church camp situation, was reported as working in America without a card, and was immediately ordered to return to India and that in disgrace because of deportation. She was not concerned about returning, but disgrace for deportation would follow her for her life. I immediately contacted a Christian leader in Washington, D.C., offered to sponsor her by our college in whatever way might be required, and left it to him to gain reversal of the Federal order. He immediately dropped everything he was doing, made a significant contact taking half a day of his time, and the order was reversed before she had to board a plane in San Francisco. That was decades ago. I recently heard from my former colleague at the college, of honors that he has received that he felt I had a contribution from our college/university – and that all is well for his family. They not only have achieved as a family, but made significant contribution to denied citizens of their original homeland.
Society sometimes does that to us, creates additional barriers to meaningful life – sometimes cementing persons to social oppression or benefit for life. Here are the untouchables, the ignorant, the slave, the white trash, and the various terms used to point to their status – and the list grows long. There are the leaders, the refined, the rich, the authorities, and the various terms used to point to their status – and the list grows long. Society and persons need some terms to identify where persons stand within the society and with each other. Sometimes that goes beyond either morality or the logic of nature’s order. Even the persons in same sex unions usually make of one member the husband and the other the wife. That is not possible in fact, but becomes important to them as status factors. For them the status terms presumably draw them closer to the meaning of marriage, but separate them from those following nature’s meaning.
For the Christian the two main identifiers are related to earth and heaven. For earth the status is to be understood as that of servant. Servanthood to God and other persons than our selves summarizes our status as God’s preference for us. So it is that to be a leader is to serve: to be a follower is to serve, and God equalizes the term in the light of the individual’s faithfulness. To be a farmer is to serve if the product serves, and to purchase and consume the product is to serve when the product serves in healthy context. God equalizes the term in the light of the individual’s faithfulness. This becomes dramatic when persons are highly regarded serving in their assignments by society, and others are low in regard of their assignments. We might continue with a lengthy series of comparisons/contrasts. Explanation of the whole matter is seen through the eyes of God in Romans 9:15-33. The main illustration, Roman, is between the status of Jew and Gentile. For some (like the Nazis) the status of Jew indicated death, for others (like biblical believers) it indicated the communication of God to life. If we knew enough the terrorism current at the time of this writing is partly related to the unwillingness of some groups to accept the controversy between the secular and the spiritual out of which we determine divine status – indicating acceptance of the meaning of human equality born of God or secularism. Heavenly status relates one term, Saint, a term of equality to all who are the Servants of God on earth. Service as servant to all or any others than self only is taken by God to earn the status reserved for all members of the Kingdom of God. It indicates the matter of morality, obedience to life assignments, and equality that could to degree, be effective meaningfully on earth if mankind were wise enough to think beyond the limits of self and nature only. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020