“Jesus was not above using ethnic humor to make His point either…My understanding of this encounter is that Jesus was pulling his disciples’ chain…Put in terms that we might be more familiar with, Jesus was white, and the disciples were white, and this black woman comes up seeking healing for her daughter. She gets ignored. The disciples ask Jesus to send her off. She comes up and beseeches Christ for healing. It’s not right, He says, to give perfectly good white folk food to ‘n****rs.’ Disciples mentally cheer. But she sees the look in His eye, and the inverted commas around the epithet, and answers in kind. He relents, which was His intent all along, and heals the woman’s daughter. If this understanding is right, then Jesus was using a racial insult to make a point. If it is not correct, then He was simply using a racial insult.”1 — Doug Wilson (note: asterisks added; the original quote does not redact the N-word)
Want More Context?
Here are some links to other blogs and podcasts dealing with this and other issues in more depth:
https://www.dennyburk.com/the-serrated-edge-of-doug-wilson/
https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/did-the-canaanite-woman-teach-jesus-not-to-be-racist/
https://faithroot.com/2021/04/23/douglas-wilson-on-slavery-and-racism/
Footnotes
Footnotes
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Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking, Canon Press, 2003, loc. 344-55, Kindle Edition. ↩