Following from my comments the other day on Jesus and his teachings on social status, I want to turn my attention to the place Indigenous Australians in Australian society.
Indigenous Australians have a unique and rich cultural heritage that predates European colonization by tens of thousands of years.
However, their historical and ongoing experiences since colonisation have been marked by marginalization, discrimination, and dispossession. Their land was stolen, their wages were stolen, hell, even their children have been stolen. They were not even counted as human for an awfully long period of time and they did not gain the right to vote in Federal elections until 1962. Even today many decisions are made on their behalf without consultation with them. Can you get lower than that status wise?
So when Jesus said, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first”, I can’t help but pondering the plight of indigenous Australians in contemporary Australian society. And I am left pondering his parable of the sheep and the goats, where he said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Curious Christian 