Prejudices...

What is you first impression of the lady in the picture? Is she very motherly? That’s prejudice.

Prejudice is a pre-conceived opinion of someone or something or to judge before hearing.

Last Saturday at the Grace Youth Leaders Outreach (GYLO) meeting Pastor John shared about prejudices. He asked us to think of what kind of people that we would keep our distance from. A few of us gave different examples such as people who are arrogant, perverted and some that just gets to your nerves with every action.

Basically we cannot run away from the truth that there are indeed all kinds of people we deal with on an everyday basis. There are good people and bad. We tend to only mix with those who possess the same attitude as us and shrug off the others.

But as leaders should we choose the people whom we are to associate with?

The answers are wide but we must be careful of making prejudice on someone we do not really know well yet. Unless we know the person is of “one kind” and you have tried many ways to engage him but failed, then you must not make prejudice and stay away from him.

Pastor John pointed out that instead of pushing someone aside for their differences we should try to learn and appreciate it. This is because different people possess different personalities and each different personality has different uses and functions. So we should learn to appreciate others for their differences and not isolate ourselves from associating with them.

Jesus sits and eats with sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes but he wasn’t any of them.

Should we then keep our distance from people who we think are different and useless?

*Picture of mother and child taken at Phuket’s Patong Beach.