Dearest Family,

On Sunday I spoke to the title, ‘The Culture of Contempt”, and tried to draw your attention to how embedded this is and how insidious and destructive it is to the image of God and the human spirit. “Contempt is becoming a cultural phenomenon. It’s seeping into every banal aspect of our lives. Not just anger, though there’s plenty of that, too. No, I mean pure, unabashed, undignified contempt for fellow humanity. This is so toxic.” Even secular cultural commentators are beginning to realize the horror of it.

There are three main constituent elements of contempt:

Condemnation and consequent judgment: someone or something has failed to meet your privatized standards for behavior or whatever are your self-preferred, self-chosen social, cultural, racial, emotional, intellectual or even spiritual norms. The more we elevate our unquestioned individualism and sense of personal rights, the more we idolize our preferences and particularities, then the more we have to condemn and hold in contempt.
Superiority and consequent separation (segregation) and distance because you’re better than someone. It’s all about hubris, vanity, pretension, conceit, disdain, condescension, insolence, pretentiousness, presumption, pomposity, aggression, narcissism, brazenness, incivility, shamelessness, and any of self-love’s progeny like self-admiration, self-exaltation, self-confidence, self-assurance, self-reliance, self-righteousness – the pharasaism that dominates the media and its commentating pundits.
Hostility and consequently the desire for someone to be removed, whether from sight, the public square, the relationship, or the job. There are plenty of ways for the hostility of contempt to remove someone, including just ignoring them. But murder? That’s taking it too far. I’d never do that you say. That’s a bit extreme! Not according to Jesus when he redefined our understanding of murder in Mt. 5: 21-26. Jesus describes the separation and distance of contempt as equivalent with murder that separates someone’s life irremediably from all relationship and guarantees reconciliation will be irrecoverable. Listen to Jesus: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with their brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother ‘Raca!’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” What do you make of that? ‘Raca’ was an Aramaic term of malicious contempt, imposing inferiority on the one so named. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus’ teaching on reconciliation with a brother or someone to whom you are indebted (unreconciled accounts) follows this warning about contempt – the great cause of irreconciliation and the great barrier therefore to reconciliation. This is evil name calling, as all name-calling is evil. Why? Because it removes the significance of the real name, of personhood and personality, of creational uniqueness. To call someone Raca or Fool was to strip them of their identity and impose on them a false identity. Contempt is identity theft. It makes someone what they are not, and usually reduces them to less than human. Gen. 9:6 tells us why murder is so heinous: “for God made man in His image.” So, if contempt is equivalent to murder then you now know why God takes it so personally and judges it so severely: it is October 18, 2017 primarily against Him, His image, before it is against that person or that race. These elements alone give an analysis of the present state of the civic soul.

And nowhere does this contempt more masquerade than in the relational divisions and racial irreconciliations of our nation. Whether violator or victim, we have our own infected and infested systemic corruptions of viral contempt for God, for others and for self, deeply embedded in a history past, despicably maintained in a history present, and doomed to continue in a history future. ‘Prejudice’ is just not strong enough a word. We need to come to terms with the darkness of our acidic, deforming contempt – deforming of self, and others, of the image of God. There cannot be transformation without the excising of the deformation of contempt. The words of Jesus Himself should be our warning and our motivation to get reconciled. The contempt that wants someone to be removed, to disappear, to become persona non grata, to become invisible in the system, to vaporize in color-blindness, is the sin of murder.

I compacted over 100 scriptures to present something of the nature of contempt, but you’ll have to download for scriptures. It is the nature of the devil and all that is diabolic (‘diabolos’ means hurler of slander); of evil; of pride in particular; of the root of so many sins (I mentioned several); of all falsehood, heresy, division and schism; of the last days.

This may seem like a lot of bad news. However, if we have been cut down by any kind of despising, personal or corporate, familial, parental, or racial – God happens to specialize in choosing despised things (1 Cor.1:28) and forgiving and changing despising people. God specializes in removing reproach, removing the roots that cause us to despise others; removing the garments of reproach with which others may have clothed our characters and spirits. From Genesis 30:23 onwards God says, “I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt.” How has God done this? How has he absorbed all despising that we may be absolved of it? The answer is the core of the gospel: in His own body on a tree. He became the toxic waste dump of the world’s despising. He was “despised and rejected of men … He was despised and we did not esteem him” (Isa.53:3). No one was ever more drained of esteem than Jesus, or held in more contempt. One of the most often quoted psalms in the gospels, with reference to the cross, not surprisingly has this emphasis: “I am a worm…a reproach of men and despised by the people…All those who see me ridicule me…They shoot out the lip…He trusted in the Lord…Let him rescue him…” (Ps.22: 6-8) And after this concentrated horror of despising comes an unbelievable delivering truth: “God has not despised the suffering of the afflicted.” When anyone is moved to repent of the ways they have despised Him and not esteemed Him, God takes the repentant response as personally as He took the sin of despising: “a broken and a contrite heart I will not despise.” There is forgiveness for our despising, there is deliverance from its bondages and healing from its defacements of identity and spirit. Hallelujah!

Pastorally yours,

Stuart