As a Christian, whenever the way we think about people is regulated to our own social and cultural norms, we have to stay amidst people who relate to us, and not branch out and make ourselves relevant to people.  In other words, we either make people conform to us, or we seek God to be relevant in a way that we “become all things to all people, that some can be saved” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

The context of this passage is the famous meeting between “Jesus and the woman at the well”.  Jesus shows His patience with the disciples, in His need to be alone with this woman.  Because being a woman and a Samaritan, the disciples “religion” would have “regulated” them from ministering to her, making her need for freedom irrelevant.  Their stronger allegiance to social/cultural norms instead of God, made them irrelevant to people who didn’t keep them…

The silence of the disciples in this passage, is the same silence we have when God reveals that what we shun, isn’t what He shuns, or what He’s against, we’re fine with (Acts 10:14-16).  The disciples were silent, because in Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman, reveals and condemns their sexism, which was cultivated by the cultural and social norms of their day…

If we are not seeking God through His Word, how do we know the things we condone or shun are even of God?  This keeps us from challenging cultural/social norms that otherwise we might accept, unless the Word showed us otherwise.  Like the disciples, without continuously having the Word reveal what needs to change, we tell God we condone what He doesn’t (John 8:31).  So we fail to worship Him in Spirit and Truth, and become as irrelevant as the disciples were to minister…

In His Love, Ld