By The Rev. Dr. Carl Grosse
I enjoy keeping up with former colleagues from my product analyst days at a data company in Minnesota. Some will text me now and then with updates, others I see posting on LinkedIn. One delightful colleague is now a CEO at an energy compliance company. Another has done well at Pepsi managing well-known products. Many are still in the insurance world, and a few have risen to executive roles. It’s nice of them to say hi once in awhile to this lowly preacher.
In the business world, as with many other social contexts, there’s a pecking order. No matter how much younger generations might claim to have created more egalitarian organizations, the normal distribution of companies and schools and governments and clubs is still quite stratified. People can rise through the ranks and move to higher layers, and that typically results in less interaction with the “lower” classes and more time with the upper echelons. Some of that shift is expected, as new things need to be learned from the people at the new level. Much of the change in social time and class is simply assimilating. Meanwhile, the “lower” classes tend to keep to themselves, with a range of attitudes about their own perceived superiority or the deficiencies of the “upper” classes.
A key feature of the Kingdom that Jesus talked about is that these social layers don’t work the same way. Oddly enough, the Bible never pretends these and other human differences aren’t real or don’t exist. When Paul says, “There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus”, he is presuming those differences. I don’t stop being an old white guy when I come to church. But inside or outside church, no matter where I am, because of Jesus I do not use these differences like the world does.
So how exactly do these differences work for people who want to live the Kingdom rules? Good question.