While working in local high schools, I would hear the students greet each other, saying:
"Qué paso, guey [pronounced "way"]?
When I read an article in the LA Times about Spanish slang, I found out that "Guey" is a corruption of the word "buey", which is a castrated bullock -- a dumb ox. In English, "guey" could easily be translated as "idiot", "jerk", "dumb a--", (or more pejoratively, "a--hole") or more casually "fool," or "dude".
Most people who share this term of address are good friends. "'Guey' is like a soul handshake," one person shared when commenting on the word.
Of course, when I used the word for the first time in one class, all the students burst out in shocked surprise. One student tried to warn me "You cannot say that, sir!" He smiled. "You cannot say that!" When I explained that I did not know that it could be offensive, he smiled and started greeting me "Qué paso, guey?
Then again, many other students not only did not mind when I called them "guey", they actually thought it was funny! Yet I had to be careful, because students who did not know me would get offended. "Don't call me that!" One student snapped at me. ""That's an animal."
What can I say -- I learned that you have to earn the privilege of saying the term.
I was intrigued at "guey" sounds like "way. It made me think of the "The Way, the Truth, and the Life."
The more I thought about it, the more that I could imagine Jesus Christ as my "Guey".
He was sacrificed for our sins. He is typified in the Old Testament as the Red Heifer, or bullock. He was led to the slaughter, but said nothing, this in another sense rendering him a "dumb ox".
He became despised and rejected for all of us. He became the "Guey" of the world, that through Him we would have the "Way" to heaven.
God became a man so that we could be one with God. For the Jews in Jesus' day, they could never have imagined that God wanted to be their "Father", to be close and intimate with us, the Friend, the "Dude" who would lay down His life for us that we may have life in Him.
Perhaps this meditation is scandalous to some, but the Cross is a scandal and an offense to those who do not believe, just like certain students who thought that I was insulting them when I greet them warmly as "Guey." Jesus is received or rejected in as diametric and opposition as kids receive or reject someone who calls them "Guey".
How do you see God? It all depends on how you see Jesus. Is He your "guey", or is He an offense?
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