Sometimes, it is easy for us to read the Bible through our modern lens and forget that it was written in a very different time than we live in now. The passage found in Mark 7:24-30 is one of those passages that, if we read it without considering the context, we end up thinking that Jesus is a racist jerk. For a long time, I had struggled with this passage and had not read it for awhile until recently. Upon reading it this time, I have come to realize that Jesus is not a jerk at all (not that I had actually ever seriously entertained that thought). Rather, he is a man on a mission of compassion who loves using parables that we sometimes, in all our Western wisdom, fail to understand.