(Originally posted by me on: dear world... postcards from life... )
I'm guessing that you may be wondering
what the word "hermeneutics" means... in theology, it is a
fancy word for how people approach the reading, study and understanding of the
Bible... are we unbelieving or suspicious of Biblical scripture even
before we read it ... or do we approach scripture with a mind-set of acceptance
and belief before reading it? You can think of these as ends of the
"hermeneutics spectrum" with a whole lot of ways to approach scripture
in-between...
Now you are wondering, "So
what?"...
I suspect we all have a hermeneutic
for how we approach other people - our family, our friends, our acquaintances,
the people we don't know... that this hermeneutic is different and shifting for
the various people we encounter and the times we encounter them... that there
are other complicating factors we are not even aware of that influence how we
approach others... factors that have been ingrained in us through family and/or
societal expectations from the time we were infants...
We rarely even think of any of this,
as we see another person and evaluate, judge and approach them...
Again, "So what?"
I think we need to be honest with
ourselves... to recognize and pay attention to the underlying factors that
guide how we approach others... our "hermeneutics for life", as
it were... and I believe that we need to push back against the ones that would
have us immediately be suspicious and perhaps fearful of the people we don't know,
the people who are dressed differently, or who talk differently, or who (
) differently (you can fill in the blank)... the people
who we think of as "those other people"...
Maybe Trayvon Martin might still be
alive if George Zimmerman had done just that...
Maybe
all the Trayvon's of the world might still be alive...
