Imagine if Jesus compared you to a dog. I think I'd be pretty offended. I certainly wouldn't care to hear anything he had to say after that. When the Gentile woman in Tyre asked him to cast out the demon in his daughter, that's exactly what he said to her. "'First I should feed the children- my own family, the Jews. It isn't right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs'" (Mark 7:27) Ouch!
The woman doesn't react as I would have. Instead she replies, "That's true, Lord, but even the dogs under the table are allowed to eat the scraps from the children's plates."
It seems so harsh, to compare her to the dogs. Right? I forget who Mark was written for, who the original audience was. I wonder if that would have something to do with this degrading comment made to the woman. Or maybe I'm just taking this too personally…
It's two fold, Jesus made both a sexist remark against women and a racist remark against all those who are not Jewish.
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