But I've noticed in myself that I suffer from a slight amount of Classism. This inclination to look down on, or at least be less comfortable around people from lower class backgrounds than myself is not something I chose (in fact I positively try to remove it from my character when able), it is just something which I think I picked up from parents and other sources as I grew up.
The main issue I have with this particular 'ism' of mine is that it appears to be the main barrier in my life to both effective community within my church and also evangelizing to those outside the church. I also wonder whether I'm not the only one.
For my generation (and increasingly so for younger ones) I think that racism isn't much of an issue due to the world becoming increasingly smaller thanks to technology. It is currently normal to live alongside people with origins from across the globe. So classism may overtake racism as the main barrier to building authentic communities.
When comparing the two, I also wonder whether the solutions to these two 'isms' are the same or different. The solution to racism began as education but was also largely helped by real-life contact, the opportunity for sheltered citizens to see that when you go to work or the shops, this person from another country has pretty much the same habits as I do. But class isn't part of your DNA in the same way your race is... unless by race we mean which country you are from instead of the pigmentation of your skin, in which case neither race nor class are part of your DNA, we are just talking about the culture (or sub-culture) that you grew up in.
Saying that the solution to classism is education seems ridiculous. Real-life contact can help you along, but when God asked his church in the Bible to work together as a single-minded community He knew that the main thing it would take is a decision to love each other. Classism is just one more issue I've spotted occasionally tugging my choices in bad directions and it turns out that it doesn't require a different answer than most temptations.
