This piece is a short reflection on the Gospel reading of the day and an attempt to make it speak to us today.
Let us first try to answer the question posed in the title. Many, especially those educated in the Aristotelian philosophical tradition, would imagine the divine being as incapable of changing. They view change as a sign of imperfection, and if God is the most perfect being, then change is an impossibility.
But other philosophical schools would attribute change to the Deity. Hegelian philosophy, for instance, would have the Spirit evolve in history. Process philosophy would have God experience what creatures also experience.
If we observe human behaviour, to be unchangeable is actually a double-edged sword: it can either be a positive or negative trait. It is positive when we observe that someone who rose from rags to riches would display the same simplicity. We say about this man, “his exalted position in society has not changed him.” Or we say that a husband’s love for his wife has remained constant over the years.
Yet, unchangeability can also be negative. To illustrate, what if one who lives a life of affluence, then is exposed to dehumanizing suffering in the lives of the poor, and remains totally unaffected? We say that this person is lacking in elementary empathy. What if a mother dies and the adult son remains as emotionless as he was before her death? Incidentally, such emotionless detachment is depicted in Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger. Upon receiving a telegram that his mother died, the main character Meursault unfeelingly and in a matter-of-fact manner said, “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don’t know.” We do not look at such an unaffected character positively.
My conviction is that God is unchangeable only in the positive sense. God is unchangeable because the love of God never ceases. But it is contradictory to divine goodness, not to mention that it is clearly unbiblical if God does not change in the presence of human suffering.
This brings me to the Gospel reading today. Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman who, out of sheer desperation, shouts out to beg him to have pity on her daughter who is tormented by a demon. At first, Jesus refuses to help, saying that his ministry is for the Israelites. As if the refusal is not enough, Jesus is most unkind when he calls the non-Jew a dog who does not deserve the bread meant for the Israelites. But the woman is unflinching in her persistence, saying that even dogs deserve the crumbs. Jesus eventually relents, praises her faith, and does what she begs him to do.
Because many are most uncomfortable with a Jesus from whose mouth comes insulting remarks against a poor woman, we say that Jesus intended to perform the miracle all the while but he was just testing her faith. Besides, as explained above, many are programmed to think that God does not change opinions.
In my view, Jesus changed his mind when confronted with the concrete face of a distressed mother. Being a real human being, Jesus had his own biases. Like the typical Jews during his time, he may not have been predisposed to look at non-Jews positively.
For Jesus to share the common biases during his time should not be problematic. Since the Son of God “became like us in everything but sin,” then sin should be the only exception. This means that He may have shared the prejudices of many people during his time. This is the reason why he believed that his ministry was solely for the lost sheep of Israel.
But Jesus developed a paradigm shift when he saw the distress of a mother. His concrete experience overcame his preconceived notions.
To develop that sensitivity that would allow students to feel together with the poor is actually the reason there are immersion programs in many schools. There is something wrong in a student who sees the daily struggle of the poor and is unaffected by it.
For some of us, our biases have been so strongly inculcated that even indubitable facts cannot overcome them. Let us resolve to allow contrary facts or data to challenge even our most strongly held convictions. Come to think of it, this should also be true of our idolization of some personalities.
