Those People
You know “those people”? The ones you don’t want to be like. Maybe the ones you grew up being told are an example of bad decisions, irresponsibility, laziness, whatever. Perhaps it wasn’t that explicit. Perhaps "those people" were never pointed out and criticized. Maybe they were just avoided, or you picked up on defensive body language when the people training you up were around them.Either way—via explicit or implicit socialization—is the slow, cumulative shaping influence of our opinions, stereotypes, and prejudices of others.Maybe it was people of another ethnicity.Or people from a different neighborhood, town, city.Or from a different religion.Or different class.Or Democrats.Or Republicans.Or hippies.Or the homeless.Or extended family members.Whoever it was, and for whatever reasons, we all have “those people”.There’s an old story*—a parable about a Samaritan and a Jew—about “those people”, and in it Jesus suggests three actions that dismantle the “those people” prejudice, turning enemies into friends.
- Charitable engagement. You cannot despise those you give to. Not over time anyways. When we give of ourselves charitably, a charitable space in our hearts opens to the other. Charity begets charity—even for enemies.
- Sustained presence. Don’t leave! The longer we are in someone’s presence, the more we learn the complexity of who they are, which ruptures our former one-dimensional perspective.
- Commitment to return. Coming back to be with “those people” again and again is how we build trust, the lack of which fuels fear and hatred toward the other. Trust and prejudice do not co-exist well.
*See Luke 10:30-37