Perceptions #200128

"The Wrong Crowd"

by Penney F. Nichols

Jesus ran with the wrong crowd. It was enough to make a self-respecting person ashamed. What person, who cared about anything, would choose to go to parties with the low life-extortionists, experts in bribery, gang members, prostitutes and other such folk. If he wasn't seeing them at parties, he talked to them in public places. If he had to communicate with them, you would think he would do it in private corners, not the front yard of the synagogue. Weren't there any respectable people who need his help? Why did he keep doing the very things, which attracted those? Couldn't he at least back off a little?

It wasn't just the people who came to him either. What about that group who hung around him all the time? Hardly an educated one among them - peasants really, sunburned, wind blown fisherman. But at least the fishermen were earning an honest living. What about the tax collector and the political rebel? And, here is the good one. What is an unmarried man doing repeatedly going to the home of unmarried sisters? It is enough to create a scandal. At least he could have chosen to be around rich people if he was going to participate in unsavory friendships. And the most degrading of all was the fact that he and a group of men had to be supported by a ragtag group of women!

He could have had such influential friends. There were those contacts he made at the temple when he was only twelve. Surely they would have remembered his precocious manner and the way he was self-assured. They would have created a great working network. He could have become a friend of the high priest or even, with political astuteness, made alliances with the local governor, Pilate.

Jesus had no concern for political correctness nor was he particularly interested in public relations. Jesus was concerned for people. Because of this, he made a significant choice. The "in crowd" neither wanted him nor needed him. They had it "together." So he worked with the lonely, the outcast and the sinners. They were the ones who needed the "Doctor."

The Great Physician still makes house calls to the homes of those who are willing to say, "I need a doctor!"

top of page    previous article    Perceptions Index