How can we look beyond social status?
Text: Proverbs 14:31
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2026 CrossTalk Global
Brian: One of the most beloved fairy tales worldwide is Cinderella, a story about a kind and beautiful young girl who was also socially disadvantaged. Her mother had passed away when she was very young, leaving her in the care of her selfish stepmother and her two cruel stepsisters. The stepmother treated Cinderella unfairly, forcing her to do all the housework and wear rags, while her own daughters wore fine clothes and enjoyed a luxurious life. One day, the kingdom received exciting news that the prince was hosting a grand ball at the palace, and every young woman in the land was invited. But not Cinderella. Her stepmother said she was not worthy to attend. On the night of the ball, Cinderella was crying at home when her fairy godmother suddenly appeared. After Cinderella explained her situation, her fairy godmother transformed a pumpkin into a beautiful carriage and mice into elegant horses, enabling Cinderella to go to the palace in style. As she arrived at the palace, she felt like a princess. The prince, captivated by her beauty, approached her and and they danced together as if in a dream. Cinderella was the happiest she had ever been. When it was nearly midnight, Cinderella quickly said goodbye to the prince and ran from the palace, leaving behind one of her glass slippers that had slipped off her foot. The next day, the prince was determined to find the owner of the glass slipper. He and his attendants traveled across the kingdom, visiting every home to see if the slipper would fit any young woman. When they arrived at Cinderella's cottage, her stepsisters tried unsuccessfully to fit their feet into the shoe, but Cinderella's foot slipped in perfectly. The prince, overlooking her poverty and low social status, chose her as his bride and they lived happily ever after. That's a wonderful story, but fairy tales rarely come true. It took a fairy godmother to help the prince see beyond Cinderella's low social status, and there aren't many of those around today. Is it possible for God's people to look past others social and economic backgrounds and see them as equal contributors to Christ's church without the help of fairy dust? Join Nathan Norman, Vicki Hitzges and Kent Edwards as they Explore Proverbs, chapter 14, verse 31 to understand why social status should not matter in the church today. Welcome to CrossTalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzges and Nathan Norman continue their discussion in the Book of Proverbs. If you have a Bible handy. Turn to Proverbs, chapter 14, verse 31, as we join their discussion.
Kent: The most well known version of that Cinderella story was written by Charles Perrault in 1697 in France. But variants of that story appeared centuries earlier in Egypt and China. Wow. Why do you think this story is so timeless, so universal?
Vicki: I don't know, but I love that story. When I was a kid, when Brian was reading it, I thought, man, this is a wicked story.
Kent: Wicked stepmother.
Vicki: Well, every little girl wants to be beautiful, teaches bad things. It's a stupid story. Everything goes back into mice and pumpkins and all that, but one shoe lasts after. I mean, it's a stupid story. There's dumbness all through it, but it's a great story, too.
Nathan: Yeah. I can remember watching the Disney version with my daughter, and it was the first time I saw it as an adult. And the scene where the stepsisters just start pulling her clothes and jewelry off, it was so violent. I'm watching this going, oh, wow, this is rough. But I think a lot of people can relate to others holding them down, holding them back, not seeing who they are on the inside and just judging them from the exterior.
Vicki: Pulling the clothes and shoes off at Cinderella so she can't go to the ball. Is that.
Kent: Yep.
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. And I think we can all relate to being overlooked because of what we look like on the outside and the desire to be seen for who we are on the inside or not. Because of social status.
Kent: Yeah. Yeah. Clearly it has touched many cultures for thousands of years. The idea that perhaps it's possible to break the bonds of our social status and become who we really are, it seems to be a universal need. And maybe that's why Solomon wrote this proverb. He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker. But whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Does America have a social stratification system issue with that at all? Is this just a fairy tale or does it relate to our situation here in the west today?
Vicki: Oh, there's absolutely a system here. I live in Dallas, and there's a beautiful neighborhood where all the millionaires and billionaires. I mean, really millionaires, Billionaires. Live Highland Park. And there's. It's exquisite. And then there's middle class, and then you can go to the projects and see lower class.
Nathan: Yeah. We certainly break it up on economics, don't we?
Kent: Yeah. If you have a certain income or you have received some generational wealth from ancestors, you walk in different circles, don't you?
Vicki: And as this story goes, you don't want to be an ugly woman. You just don't want. You don't want to be a fat woman. You don't want to be an ugly woman. And I was talking to a friend who went to a very prestigious property, private girls school, and I was asking her if she knew a girl that I used to take horseback riding lessons with when I was a child. And the girl I was asking her about was not a pretty girl. And she said that didn't matter in our school. She said what you didn't want to be was an unintelligent girl. So there's all kinds of ways of dividing people up. I think beauty by far in the United States matters more, but in that school you had to keep up.
Nathan: Yeah.
Kent: Certainly money is a factor that separates one class of people from another, but there's other factors. If you are able to get a. Even if you're poor and even if you're not good looking, if you get an opportunity to go to a prestigious university and get a fancy degree, your education can help you stand out. If you are a medical doctor or a professor or you have some other profession that other people look up to, that can set you apart, gender can set you apart, can it not?
Vicki: It can, unfortunately, it can. It's better today, but it can.
Kent: Yeah. I mean, there's some positions that people will not allow women to enter, but there's also just racism. The fact is that people are judged by their race often. There was a family that lived close to where my wife grew up that were Jewish. He graduated from one of the top law schools in the very top of his class and was not invited to come to join the law society.
Vicki: Not invited to join the law society? I thought you were going to say the country club.
Kent: Well, it was that too. It was also the most prestigious country club, but also the law society. He couldn't get hired by a law firm.
Vicki: Wow.
Kent: He started his own and did very well because he was just an excellent.
Vicki: Lawyer, because he was great at it. Yeah. Oh, isn't that greatest? Oh, that's amazing.
Kent: Yeah. Fact is that social separation exists everywhere. It operates in India, doesn't it?
Nathan: Yeah. There's quite the social stratification. In fact, it used to be part of the law. Even though it's not, it's still referenced to with this high level. What is there? I think there's five levels, right?
Kent: Yep.
Nathan: Yeah. So you have the highest level with the priests and academics and then below that the warriors and the kings. Below that the merchants and landowners. Below that the Commoners, peasants and servants. And then you get to the bottom level, which isn't even connected to the other ones. And those are the untouchables. They're the outcasts of society. They are the garbage people and the toilet cleaners. They are the street sweepers. They're out of the system.
Kent: Yeah, well, and the fact is that if you find yourself in that society as a certain group, it's hard to be viewed as anything else except with those characteristics. Right. You're locked in.
Nathan: Yeah, absolutely.
Kent: And we saw something similar in Vietnam while we were there with crosstalk, didn't we?
Nathan: Sure. Depending on where you lived depended on the level of status you had. Right. So if you were one of the mountain people and you lived up in the mountain kind of rural society, rural area, you were not given the positions of power in the official denomination and you weren't given the position of prestige and you weren't listened to. Right. But if you were from the city, ah. You know, and then you had an education of some sort, then you would just kind of climb up the ladder and you would have the opportunity. The irony, of course, is the people from the city tended to have very small churches and the people in the mountains had huge churches. So go figure.
Kent: That.
Vicki: That's funny. You see that in New Zealand, the wealthy people are the, quote unquote, rich farmers, because I have land and cattle and they look up to them.
Nathan: We humans do a good job of figuring out how to divide each other. Right. They're not always consistent divisions, but we'll figure out a way that we can.
Kent: Well, you're right with that observation, Nathan, but that's, I think, why God calls us to something else, calls us to move forward and out of that. And he speaks very clearly through Solomon in this proverb, when he says, whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker. That word oppresses I found interesting. It literally talks about the abuse of authority, the burdening, trampling or crushing of others. Ugh. That oppression. And when you do that, especially of the poor, let's talk about people of the lower social class. So, yeah, we've said every culture has strata of people. People have different levels of social status. But when those who are above oppress the people below them, God's saying, that's wrong, that's sin. It's interesting that this happened in the Bible. On some occasions they're aware of the difference between classes. Gideon cites the weakness of his clan when he questioned God's call to deliver Israel, didn't he?
Vicki: Well, he says in judges, pardon me, O Lord. Gideon replied, but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.
Kent: Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker. But whoever is kind to the needy honors God. That word oppresses is the abuse of authority. It's the crushing of others who are socially beneath us. That's why he says, those who oppress the poor. That word talks about a lower social class, people who are inferior, who don't have the status and influence we have. And Solomon is saying that is forbidden. We are not to oppress the poor. This happens when the elites who have the money and the power take control and ignore those who are lower on the social ladder. Yeah, we've seen that. This happens in government and business, but it also happens in the church, doesn't it, Vicki Nathan? Have you ever seen that?
Nathan: Unfortunately, it's inescapable. I mean, we're products of our culture. And where our culture will divide up people based on these social classes, they will do so in the church. Right. So you give preferential treatment to the people who have, quote, unquote, respectable jobs. Right. The doctors, the lawyers, and the people who have more blue collar workers who have jobs like construction worker or restaurant server. Right. They will not get the preferential treatment. The people who have these respectable jobs or high education tend to get positions within the church. And those who don't have those qualities tend to not be asked to be on those boards.
Kent: Yeah, I find it interesting not only on the board level, but also people who are put in charge of ministries. It is fascinating to see how often through the years as I have been involved in leading and attending churches, how those with the greatest prominence are given in the secular world are given the greatest prominence within the church. James speaks about this. Remember way back when we first began our podcasts in James Chapter two. In fact, I think it was episode nine where we dealt with this passage where James addresses this directly in the first century.
Vicki: Well, it says in James 2, my brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a good seat for you, but say to the poor man, you stand there or sit on the floor by my feet. Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Kent: Something's not true because it's in the Bible. It's in the Bible because it's true. So what is the harm of us Evaluating people in the church based on their social ranking.
Nathan: It shows a favoritism that is not based in anything other than fallen human understanding of people and fallen human evaluation. Right. God looks at the heart while man looks on the appearance on the outside. And so we are passing over people and we are ignoring people because of fallen humanities. Social, social understandings rather than seeing people as people made in the image of God.
Kent: Yeah. But also think of the lost opportunities. We read earlier about how Gideon, God came to Gideon and called him, and he didn't feel worthy. Right. Because he was not in the right clan that had the right status. Did God use Gideon in significant ways?
Vicki: Yeah. Yes, he did.
Kent: David, his own father, didn't think he could ever be king. In fact, he thought he was better off as a shepherd. He brought all the other boys to Samuel to see if they would be anointed to the next king. But God wanted David because there was something that the world didn't see that David had. And did David make a contribution to the kingdom?
Vicki: You know, these are helpful examples because as we were speaking, I thought, well, why wouldn't you want the leaders to lead in a church? Why wouldn't you? But then when you're saying, no, look at Gideon, look at David, I think, oh, that's a good point.
Kent: Yeah. Think of Moses. I mean, he was a convicted murderer. He was lost in the desert looking after goats, sheep. I mean, he was a nobody. And God met him at the burning bush. Did Moses happen to make a contribution to what God has done in the world?
Vicki: Yeah, he did.
Kent: Yeah. God delights in taking jars of clay, as Paul would say, ordinary, simple people and using them for his glory. Because when he does, the attention of people is not drawn to the clay pot. It's drawn to the grace and nature and power and beauty of the Lord. People see him, they don't see us. I am heartbroken. When I think back, how many times has the church failed to lift up gifted, godly people because they weren't in the right status? They didn't seem to fit in with the culture of the church. They let social status influence their choice of leaders, the ministries that they would enter into. But God loves to use the lowly to accomplish great things. And it's interesting to see in the text here that it's not just because of loss of opportunity. It's an evil thing. It is an evil thing to oppress the poor and show contempt. Because as Solomon said, whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for who?
Nathan: For their maker.
Kent: And whoever is kind to the needy, whoever lifts them up and gives them opportunity, they honor God because God created these people. God made them. God loves them. And if you denigrate a person that God loves, that's an insult to God himself. That's a sin. And God rewards those who honor him.
Vicki: Can I ask a question about this? If you come across somebody that's totally not in leadership position outside the church at all, how do you know they'd make a good leader? Just because they're in a lowly position doesn't mean they're going to shine as a leader in the church.
Kent: No, it does not mean that any more than anyone who has the right social status is going to make a good leader.
Vicki: That's true too.
Kent: But you don't know that unless you get to know them. So my application here would be, who is it that we don't know? Who is it that is in the shadows of our churches? Who is it that we are unfamiliar with? Why don't we get to know them? Why don't we give them some opportunities for ministry? Why don't we release them? Why don't we talk about what their vision is and how they feel? Our church could have even a greater impact for the kingdom. So you've got someone who is a bus driver, but maybe that ordinary city bus driver is aware of others like him who are longing to hear the gospel. Maybe God could use him to reach other bus drivers in a way that no physician, no professor, no pastor ever could. Let's see how we can not put them down or ignore them, but discover them and release them. That takes humility, but that also brings opportunity. And I think it's God honoring when we do that. Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker. But whoever is kind to the needy honors God. The fact is, while every nation in the world ranks its citizens by importance, God's people, we should stand apart. The church should be a community that considers each member of the congregation equally valuable and important as contributing members of God's eternal family. The church is meant to be the one place on earth where we all sit as equals. Because when time is no more, we will be all seated on the same level around the marriage supper of the lamb. And all of us will be looking up only at Jesus. So I think we should start getting used to that. Today. Solomon said, whoever opposes the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Can I suggest a contemporary expression of that proverb?
Vicki: Sure.
Kent: Do those in the church who intentionally or unintentionally marginalize those of lower status insult the God who created and saved them. But those who go out of their way to encourage and empower the overlooked to serve God, they honor our Lord.
Brian: Why is it ungodly for Christians to treat those in our churches of lower social standing as as lesser than those who have higher standing? Because treating some people lower than others is an offense to our God, who values all his children equally. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and serve as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers together. Let's bring God's Word to life, to our lives. This week, the crosstalk podcast is a production of crosstalk Global equipping Biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. crosstalk is training leaders in Bucharest, Moldova, Cuba, Kenya and Kansas over the next few weeks help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click Donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by rating it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're enjoying it. Be sure to listen next Friday as we continue to learn from God's wisdom in the Book of Proverbs. You won't want to miss it.
Nathan: Leaving behind one of her glass slippers that had slipped off her foot the the next day the prince was determined to find the owner of the glass slippers. He and his attendants traveled across the kingdom, visiting every home to see if the slipper would fit any young woman. When they arrived at Cinderella's cottage, her stepsisters tried unsuccessfully to fit their feet into the shoe after cutting off parts of their feet to try and fit inside. Oh wait, this is not the Hans Christian Andersen version. But Cinderella's foot slipped in perfectly. It's true in the not the Hans Christian Anderson. What was the other guy? Brothers Grimm? Yeah, in that version they try to cut off parts of their feet to fit in.
Kent: Nice.
Nathan: The prince over. That's the problem with kids today man. This Disney wimpy stories.
Kent: Surgery is always the answer. Amen. I live in Southern California.
Nathan: I love that prince overlooking her poverty. Is it possible for God's people to look past others social and economic backgrounds and see them as equal contributors to Christ's church without the help of fairy dust? That's also a reference to drugs. Maybe.
Kent: Now you're that's New York Surgery SoCal.
Nathan: Yeah yeah. Join Nathan Norman, Vicki Hitzges and Kent Edwards as they explore Proverbs 14:31 to understand why social status should not matter in the church today.