Outcastes

I home school my children, and we have been studying the country of India in Old World History. We learned about the Aryans and the Dravidians, the people who occupied ancient India. The Aryans looked down on the Dravidian people, and did not care to associate with them. They felt that they were better than them.
This is when they developed the "caste system". This was a system meant to keep people apart from each other. There were four main castes. The highest cast was for the Brahmin, or priests. The second caste was for princes and warriors. The third caste was for merchants and landowners. The last and lowest caste was for farmers, laborers, and servants.
The way this system worked, was that once you were born into a caste, you could never move up to another caste. For instance, if you were the son of a farmer, you could never become a merchant or landowner, you had to be a farmer for your whole life, and your sons and grandsons had to be farmers as well. (This is one of the reasons that Hinduism was so widely accepted. Hindus believe in reincarnation. If you lived your life well, in your next life you could be born into a higher caste.)
If you dishonored your caste in some way you were excluded from your caste forever...An outcaste. No one could associate with the outcastes or "untouchables". They were looked down upon, even by the lowest caste members. These outcastes were the most eager of the Indian people to receive the Gospel. It brought hope to the hopeless!
In reading about these outcastes, I was reminded of how we are much like these ancient Indian people. We often see ourselves as better than those who have not received Christ. We see ourselves as children of the King, and anyone who hasn't received the gift of salvation is just an outcaste. They are not worth associating with.
This is not being Christ minded. As children of God, we need to remember, that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us", and that He "did not come to call the righteous, but sinners". We need to pray for those who have not found Christ. For it is His desire that none should perish, but that everyone would come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)
Here is a sobering thought for the mother. Until our children come to know Christ as their personal Savior, they are the same as the "outcastes" we so often look down upon. The difference is, that we spend most of our daily lives pouring ourselves into "training them in the way they should go". We are called by God to do this. Yes, but we are also called by God to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel"!
God, give us a love for those who are lost!