The following reflective prayer, taken from my early book Are You Listening? Honest Prayers about Life, reminds us that none of us are totally free of prejudice, however much we might like to believe otherwise. Without realising it, we can be shaped from childhood by the assumptions and perceptions of society, and it is only when we are open to that possibility that we can recognise where prejudice may still lurk within us. The more we change things there, the more we can change them everywhere.
Introduction
We live in an age when, quite rightly, vigorous attempts are made to overcome prejudice in society. Occasionally, we may feel this concern has been taken too far, political correctness bordering on the ridiculous, but this is a small price to pay for ensuring that people are not victimised or discriminated against because of their colour, age, sex, race, religion, social status or for any other reason. Yet a recognition of the inherent worth in everyone does not mean that we are all the same. On the contrary, no two people are ever identical. We each have something distinctive about ourselves, something to contribute to others and to receive from them in turn. It is in respecting and learning from the real differences between us and our fellow human beings, that we truly recognise the worth both in ourselves and in them.
Read
But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
James 2:2-4, 8-9
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’
John 1:43-46
Reflect
Me, prejudiced?
You must be joking!
I’m as open as the next person,
more if anything.
The sort who takes folk as I find them,
each to their own,
live and let live.
All right, so maybe I do make the occasional slip-up,
the inadvertent sexist comment;
and perhaps I do sometimes jump to conclusions,
swayed too much by appearances;
but I don’t mean it, you know that, Lord –
the last thing I’d ever do is judge by the label.
Yet we have to be sensible,
matter of fact about these things –
it’s one thing to accept,
another to get involved;
important to respect people,
something else to rub shoulders with them.
After all, we’re different, aren’t we? –
different backgrounds,
different values,
different customs,
different everything.
So come on, Lord,
you don’t really expect me to mix
with all and sundry,
irrespective of creed or colour, do you –
not seriously?
I’m not prejudiced –
I’m really not –
but they’ve got their lives and I’ve got mine,
and quite frankly I’d rather keep it that way.
My child,
I am serious, make no mistake,
for there is more heartache caused
by the barrier of prejudice
than anything else I know of.
And though you think you’re open,
and want to be too,
you are prejudiced,
more than you’d imagine possible,
for deep within you,
built into the very fabric of your being,
are a multitude of preconceptions
which shape your view of the world.
You don’t do it on purpose,
but every time you meet someone
you judge them –
by the way they dress,
the way they talk,
the way they think,
the way they live;
by the work they do,
and the people they mix with;
by the beliefs they hold,
and the goals they strive for.
In these and so much more your prejudice still lurks,
unrecognised,
unbeknown to you,
yet colouring your attitudes,
and fragmenting my world.
Of course people are different,
they’re meant to be;
I made you that way on purpose –
to help you learn,
to stretch your minds,
and to enlarge your spirits.
And I tell you this, my child,
when you close your lives to those around you,
you close them also to me.