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The Danger of Spurning

             When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

What sort of men were the disciples? In Acts 4, the Pharisees and Sadducees considered the “ordinary.” By ordinary they probably meant poor, educated to the lowest level considered acceptable (what we’d call “high school.”) We know four were fishermen. One was a tax collector. The rest, we can only guess. The religious officials looked down on them as nobodies. And they were – that was the point.

But as we face life today, there are folks who think like the Pharisees and Sadducees. Anyone who isn’t “educated” is considered a nobody. Interestingly enough, this is the opinion stated by groups that used to be known for wanting inclusivity. The same folks who used to want to fight for the rights of the marginalized now reject the kind of people they claimed to be fighting for.

I can understand. Like many people, I’m at last a bit of a snob. There are groups of people and kinds of people with whom I’m more comfortable, or with whom I’m less comfortable. There are a lot in the “less comfortable” category. Spending time with folks who smell like a barn, a bucket of fish, a pile of clothes that have been worn for six months, or like they have smoked 10 packs of cigarettes in the last four hours isn’t necessarily my cup of tea.

But earning multiple degrees and working for people with political power convinced me that neither education nor power make you wise or intelligent. I have marveled before at the expertise of some of the folks with whom I work. Some have degrees. Some don’t. But it’s delightful, humbling, and honoring to work with them. I’d love to finds who could teach me how to do lots of very practical stuff – folks with or without degrees who could teach me how to do all those things that lower them in the eyes of some to “ordinary folk” or “deplorables” or “uneducated.”

The ”ordinary” folk have changed the world before. They might well have better ideas about how to fix things that the folks who got pieces of paper touting their progression through a series of courses do. 

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