Jordan - Judges 20

With all my might I want to call the people in these chapters animals.  However, the title of this book makes me think of another verse:  Matthew 7:1:

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

How much can our world really claim to be different?  When I was a senior in high school, I went with a friend to see Jessie Jackson speak to a union rally that my friend's mom was a part of.  The rally was at a church in a predominantly African American part of Philly.  The speakers were awesome and had me just as excited as the workers around me and it went late into the night.

My friend and I left and walked back to my car.  We past by a group of guys and they started to follow us.  One of them was carrying a stick or a bat, but I didn't make eye contact and we walked fast.  They started asking us what two "white boys" were doin here.  We didn't answer, just walked faster.  The car seemed so far away!  We got to the car and hopped in and I tried to start it and get out of there.  Two guys walked to the back of the car and as I was pulling out "WHACK!!"  One of them smacked the back window with whatever they had in their hands and I thought a gun had gone off.  I sped out of thhere and blew through a few stop signs before I realized that we were fine and the window had not even broken.  Praise God!

My friend and I were so angry on the way home.  Not just because those guys took a swing at my car, but because we had gone from such a powerful feeling of community and euphoria to a feeling of prejudice and displacement.  Those guys didn't care who we were or why we were there, they just wanted us to know that we didn't belong.

Are we really that different from the Benjamites and the Israelites?