Concretized Christianity has a blog entry about privilege in the Churches of God.
Anyone who has been around the churches of God for any length of time knows about privilege. First, we see it in action in every one of the church of God organizations. There is a pecking order – a hierarchy – and privilege is layered throughout that until you get to the people who just fill the chairs every week and fawn over and idolize those with privilege, while in the organizational sense, they have no privilege and aren’t even, legally, members of that church of God organization (only the organizational privileged are).
However, those people know they have privilege compared to others (the world) because they are told that over and over. They’re special. They’re the elite. One day, they will be resurrected first and they will rule with Jesus Christ as kings and priests for 1000 years.
While the substance of this is true, the implication of it is false. The first resurrection will include those whom God and Jesus Christ have both called and chosen, but they are being resurrected to serve, to help, to repair, to restore, to coach, to guide, to agape – just as God and Jesus Christ do with us. None of that is ever discussed because these things don’t sound power-filled.
Power is an idol in society and an idol in the churches of God. The lust for power is often the sole motivation for what these man-made organizations do and say.
Privilege and power often go hand in hand. Whether the power is real or imagined, organizations and people who believe they have power manifest the corruption of the idea of privilege.
People who have not suffered and who also cannot see, relate to, nor empathize with the suffering of others is a symptom of privilege. James discusses this in the second chapter of his letter. Privilege creates a bubble of illusions that is solely focused on self: what I want, what I need, who I am, and what I think or believe.
The bubble of privilege is opaque, so that anything that is outside that bubble is invisible. Jesus discussed this bubble of privilege in Matthew 25 in His parable of the goats and the sheep.
The sheep had no bubble of privilege. They were looking for needs among the people around them and meeting those needs, no matter where they found them. They weren’t doing it because someone was “important,” or because other people would see them and applaud them, or because it made them feel good or superior.
The sheep were doing it because it was the right thing to do. They were following God’s word (read Deuteronomy sometime if you want to see what loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength – about the first third of the book – and loving your neighbor as yourself – approximately the last two-thirds of the book – looks like in action and ask yourself if this looks like you) and they were following the example of Jesus Christ.
The goats had the bubble of privilege. Inherent in their response was, “well, Jesus, if You personally had come to us and asked us, of course, we would have done these things for You.” In other words, if the Son of God had made the first move, knocked on the door of their bubble of privilege, and said, “I need…,” they would have done it. Otherwise, they didn’t see, know, or care to seek out the needs they could meet right outside their bubble.
