Christianity Uncensored: Love Uncensored Series

This past week we celebrated and mourned the life of Rosa Parks. In 1955 when she sat down on that seat in that bus and refused to give it up to a white man she really catapulted the civil rights movement in a significant way. She said later that she didn’t know what she was doing. She was just flat emotionally worn out. She was tired of the discrimination. She was tired of impartiality and not being treated in a partial way. Here is what she said: “When I sat down on the bus that day I had no idea history was being made. I was only thinking of getting home. But I had made up my mind after so many years of being a victim that I did not feel any fear sitting there. I felt that the Lord would give me the strength to endure whatever I had to face. It was time for someone to stand up or in my case sit down. I refused to move.” Friends, as I read the Bible I have to tell you that as controversial as that may have been in 1955, I think in that moment Rosa Parks was very much like God. She had enough. I think sometimes God has just had enough of us treating each other unfairly. I’m so grateful for the racial strides that we have made in the last fifty years but if we think racism no longer exists or that it’s no longer a problem we are kidding ourselves. It happens at a couple levels. It happens at the conscience level where we can make decisions about people and work against treating people unfairly. It also happens at a subconscious level. I think that is where some of the problem is. We can make decisions about race, gender, and class at a level we are not even conscience of. It just happens.

Malcolm Gladwell has written a book called Blink. In this book he talks about how we as people do something called “thin slicing.” Thin slicing is the decisions we make at a subconscious level in a second. It’s our first gut reaction. When a person walks up to us we actually thin slice them. Not consciously but we do. We put them in a category or we have immediate thoughts that come to our mind about that individual. For instance he sites research that documents the fact that in America most Americans tend to believe that men who are taller are better leaders then men who are shorter, irrespective of their leadership track records. Are you ready for this? The average male in America is five foot, nine inches tall. The average CEO in America is six-foot. That’s three inches taller than all their counter parts. In fact, about fourteen and a half percent of guys are six foot or taller in America and yet CEO’s of fortune five-hundred companies, fifty eight percent are six foot or taller. You go from fourteen & a half percent in our culture to almost sixty percent of CEO’s of fortune five-hundred companies. Then he says this: 3.9% of Americans are over six foot, two inches tall, but one-third of all CEO’s are over six foot two. Some studies have shown that if you take a guy who is five feet, five inches and for all other reasons has the same training as a guy who is six foot tall - the guy who is six-foot tall will make on average $5,525 more a year than the guy who is five feet, five inches. I didn’t mean to ruin your morning or anything. I’m just telling you what the data shows. Some of you are thinking, “That’s not cool.” I don’t think that people make these decisions consciously, right? I don’t think they sit around and say, “I don’t know – he’s five feet, five inches.” I don’t think we do that but it happens at a subconscious level. Not all the time but that’s where our leaning is. I think the questions for us - (if we are really going to take James’ command seriously and not show favoritism) then we have to look at the conscience level and the subconscious level.