Who Is Undesirable?

What cataracts do I look through to see my fellow man? Is it a careful construct of bias, wealth, health, and elite? Do I choose my friends based on their sameness? Do I avoid a path down a street based on the human I'll have to pass, in all their brokenness, all their outwardly undesirable state?

It is easy to know what is good or bad in this culture--even if each is an imposter of the actual Truth.

Money = Good
Power = Good
Success = Good
Luxury = Good
Indulgence=Good
Blemish = Bad
Weight = Bad
Poor = Bad
Sorrow = Bad
Displacement=Bad

Yet, a man walked the earth centuries ago, and turned these history-old equivalencies UPSIDE DOWN ...

How devastating that we haven't learned--I haven't learned. I hear excuses of, "Well, I worked hard, I deserve...", or "It's just not right, why should my kids deal with that kid..." or "they don't belong here," or  I say to myself, "This is where God put me, and I shouldn't worry about...not my problem, not affecting me."

I think it's history-old because we've had the ugly in our human existence from the very beginning. I look through history-- B.C. to A.D.--and I see it. And the past is NO BETTER than the now, and the now is NO BETTER than the nostalgic days of old. And I saw it in my childhood, in my teen years, in my college years...in my now years. I see it as my children grow and in their friends and in their classmates. And then I see the kids who stay on the fringe, trying to just survive the next minutes, hours until they have a reprieve from the "good" ones...the accepted ones, the desirable ones.

How is it that, after the most influential man declared those fringe wanderers as His FRIENDS...two thousand years later they are still on the fringe?

Bullying is a huge buzzword these days. I don't know how often I mention it when talking about school, kids, culture. And often I hear people say, "It wasn't like that in my day," but I remember different.

I remember bullies. I remember hurt. I remember angst. I remember walking the fringe. 

But, if I am completely truthful, I want to be part  of the "good" ones. Sure, I am a bleeding heart and often weep for those downtrodden on the news, in the books, in the articles...yet, I too avoid those downtrodden in person, in the grocery store, in the crowd of strangers when I just want to fit in.

What would it look like if I walked into church one day, and instead of the sameness as me, I was faced with the poor, the displaced, the unclean, the healthless, the wealthless, the forgotten? Would I stay, or would I say to myself, "This is not safe, this is not good, this is not my people"?

Would I walk away like the young rich ruler who just couldn't see past the cataracts of his life, because who would want to give all the worldly "good" up, for a man who loves the undesirables?

Who is really undesirable now that we are living upside down?