When we are young, and beginning to explore the world, we learn about what something is through its opposite. As quickly as you can, go through the following list and name its opposite. The first one is done for you.
hot… cold
young…
clean…
big…
dumb…
skinny…
friend…
east…
night…
One of the primary ways we interpret the world is through polarities. As a child, when your vocabulary was growing exponentially each day, you learned what something was by what it was not. For example, one of the first words you probably learned was hot. Your mother or father said, “Don’t touch that, it is hot.” Your little mind was thinking, ‘Hot? What is hot?”
You were puzzled until you went to wash your hands, and mom said, “Not that one, dear, it’s hot. Use this one it is cold.” What is hot? Not cold. What is cold? Not hot. While you were learning about hot and cold, you were also learning about two other opposites, safe and dangerous.
We don’t classify people by their opposites, unless of course we put them into groups. Once we have a group, opposing labels are easy. Consider these groups.
Republicans…
Christians…
Saints…
Northerners…
Us…
As individuals, it is hard to declare an opposite, I and you, are not opposites, but combine us into a group and it’s easy, the this and not this way of thinking just falls right in. As soon as you have us you have them.
Here is another quiz. If you are born in these countries what is your nationality, what are you called. If you are born in Canada, what are you called?
Mexico.
Brazil.
The United States?
USians? That makes everyone else Themsians.
In Jesus’ day, the religious so themselves as righteous and others and sinners, we might say believers and nonbelievers or unbelievers, forcing others into our labeling because we often think only in terms of synonyms and antonyms, Jesus thought in hyponyms.
Hyponyms are important because there are a lot of words that cannot be defined in the same way we learned that hot is not cold. Many words don’t have antonyms. For example, Tulip… What’s the opposite of tulip? What’s the opposite of any flower? There isn’t an antonym for tulip. Snake… Like tulip, there is no opposite for snake. Lots of synonyms: viper, serpent, lawyer… Tuesday… There is no opposite of Tuesday. Thursday pairs nicely, but they are both just part of a greater category. Yellow… There is no opposite of Yellow. There are lots of other colors, but none are opposite. They are all part of a greater category.
A hyponym is a subcategory of a greater category, a broader classification. For example, chair, table, couch, and love seat are all hyponyms of the broader category furniture. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are all hyponyms for days of the week. Red, yellow, and blue are all hyponyms of primary colors. The mind loves polar opposites, especially for things we are unsure about, like people. But people aren’t opposites for other people any more than your left hand is the opposite of your right. Left and right hands are just hyponyms for hands.
For Jesus, with individuals or groups, there are no opposites, no antonyms, only hyponyms. For Jesus, us and them are just hyponyms for a greater category, a larger, universal US. Jesus would have no more defined the Pharisees and tax collectors as opposites than he would have considered his left hand the opposite of his right. Left and right hands are just hyponyms of the greater category of hands. Jesus would have agreed with Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird when she said, “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” For Jesus there was just folks.
The leap from us and them to just us, or US, has the power to not only transform lives and communities, but the world.
Jesus was an Usian. Even dying on the cross, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” Us and them was still us. He still included them.
Afghanis…
Haitians…
Rich…
Poor…
Wounded…
KKK…
Addicts…
