{"id":470,"date":"2021-01-29T08:17:23","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T13:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=470"},"modified":"2021-01-29T08:17:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T13:17:23","slug":"ostracism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/29\/ostracism\/","title":{"rendered":"Ostracism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have the power to vote someone out of your community?

Once, long ago, there was a city where that happened on a regular basis. 

About four centuries before Christ, the citizens of Athens annually scheduled four open-air Assembly meetings where they could debate, discuss, and vote on matters of interest to the city.  Every year, at one of these meetings, the citizens voted on whether to have an ostracism<\/em>.

If the majority said yes, everyone present took an ostracon (a broken piece of pottery, which was the ancient world equivalent of a scrap of paper) and wrote down the name of the person that they thought the city could most do without.

The name written on the most potsherds was declared to be \u201costracized\u201d (almost literally, \u201cYou\u2019ve been crack-potted\u201d).  It was a bit like being voted off the island in the reality show Survivor <\/em>\u2013 except in this case it was really <\/em>reality.  The winner (that is, loser) was banished from Athens for ten years, after which he could return to his property.

Archeologists have found thousands of ostraca that were used in one vote or another, including those in the picture above.  It definitely appears that a fellow named Kallias had rubbed a few people the wrong way.  

Historian Thomas Cahill writes, \u201cIn this way, would-be tyrants \u2013 and not a few other nuisances \u2013 were eliminated.  If at first the primitiveness of this procedure shocks you, consider for a moment what benefits it could bring to your <\/em>city.\u201d

Ostracism as a civic practice is long gone.  But ostracism as a social dysfunction is alive and well.

Human beings seem to have a never-ending need to declare who\u2019s \u201cin\u201d and who\u2019s \u201cout.\u201d  Through a variety of tactics \u2013 shunning, ignoring, walking away, refusing to make eye contact, and the withholding of simple acts of kindness \u2013 we ostracize people whom we deem outsiders. 

No vote is actually taken.  But our behavior shouts, \u201cI wish you were anywhere but here for the next 10 years.\u201d

Ostracism was part of the Athenian vision for a healthy community.  But God\u2019s vision for healthy relationships is fundamentally different.

The apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:16, \u201cLive in harmony with each other.  Don\u2019t be proud, but be willing to associate with people \u2018on the lower rung.\u2019 Don\u2019t be conceited.\u201d  Then he adds in verse 21, \u201cDon\u2019t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.\u201d

In other words, don\u2019t be a passive observer of ostracism that is happening right in front of you. 

Be proactive:  With your words and your behavior, choose to vote an \u2018outsider\u2019 back in.<\/em>

It\u2019s time to acknowledge that, by God\u2019s grace, there\u2019s room for everybody on the island.
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have the power to vote someone out of your community? Once, long ago, there was a city where that happened on a regular basis.  About four centuries before Christ, the citizens of Athens annually scheduled four open-air Assembly meetings where they could debate, discuss, and vote on matters of interest… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":472,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}