Dinah

Now Dinah, Leah's daughter whom she bore for Jacob, went out to look at the daughters of the land. When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her and raped her.-Genesis 34:1-2

Some of the stories in the bible need to have an R rating and this is certainly one of them. Crime, violence, vengeance, sex, deception,  greed.... it's all there. And most of it is done by God's chosen people. And really, it may have not even been a rape by our definition. Many scholars believe that it was consensual, but according to the moral law of Jacob's family, sex without marriage meant a defiled woman, or "raped."

Neither the son (Shechem) or his father (Hamor) spoke with any remorse or sense that any wrong had been done when they came to ask for permission for Shechem and Dinah to marry, leading the reader to believe that they didn't realize that something wrong had been done. But Dinah's brothers were completely overtaken with anger and deceived the father and son into believing they were going to all be one big happy family and all would share in Jacob's wealth... if only they would all prove their good intentions by circumcising themselves along with the whole city. Then while they were all still in pain, Dinah's two oldest brothers slaughtered every man in the city. Quite a repayment for a bit of premarital fun with the woman you love!  

All this violence because two different groups of people failed to learn the morals, laws and beliefs of the other. Perhaps if they had gotten to know each other they could have looked at their differences and learned to respect them. Maybe. Sometimes even when we know the moral beliefs of another group, we find them too different and we lash out at them for no real reason, except that they are different.

It's not always easy to love and respect people who have had very different life experiences than ours. We think that our view of the world must be everyone's. If you have never been poor it is difficult to understand the experiences of a poor person. If you have never experienced discrimination based on your skin color, you will never understand what it feels like to those who experience it daily. Before we lash out at people say and do things that don't make sense to us, we should consider their perspectives. If we don't, we run the risk of thinking that it's okay to fly nazi flags and kill people who don't think the way we think.

God of Love,

Help us. Help us to not repeat history by sitting idly by while atrocities are being committed. Show us what we can do right here and right now before things get worse. Amen.