Biased

      Are you prejudiced?  If you're like the average person nowadays, that question really annoys you, and your immediate inclination is to say, "Of course not!"  One of the values many today espouse (particularly in the first world) is tolerance, and to be accused of prejudice is a big insult to most of us!  But really think about it.  Prejudice isn't limited to racism.  It doesn't always involve hatred.  If handled correctly, it doesn't even have to give birth to bad treatment of others.   I am going to break it down.  We're going to look at what prejudice is, some examples of prejudice today, some historical and biblical examples, and finally, what God would have us as believers to with our biases.  

     Oxford Languages defines prejudice as: preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.  There is nothing in that definition about race, although one can be prejudiced toward someone of a certain race.  Prejudice, in its simplest terms, is pre-judging.  

     Prejudices can be nurtured by our faulty perception when we haven't had a true experience with the person or group of people we are prejudging.  Sometimes, prejudices are fostered by family members or popular opinion, when we really don't have any reason to draw those conclusions ourselves.  This is, of course, wrong.  However, one of the trickier ways prejudice can sneak up on a person is that they might have had a legitimately bad experience with someone, so they then become prejudiced toward anyone from the same group.  These instances are more difficult to pinpoint, because they are based on some level of experience, but then, the person uses that one (or two or three, etc.) experience(s) to paint with too broad a brush.   For example, if I had a bad experience with someone from New Jersey (I haven't, but I'm just using this as an example), and I then decided that all people from New Jersey were like that, that would be a form or prejudice.  It would be very unfair to the other residents of the Garden State for me to judge them all based on an experience (and even if I had a bad experience with that one person, their bad treatment of me would have nothing to do with them being from New Jersey).  Painting with too broad a brush is harmful, both to whole groups of people, and to ourselves, because it cheats all of us out of good relationships in the Lord.  

I just used New Jersey as an example.  I actually love New Jersey!

     Racism is the biggest form of prejudice we hear about, and it is wrong.  All humanity came from Adam and Eve, and later, Noah, so, in reality, there is only one race, and that's the human race.  In the book Prince Caspain, by C.S. Lewis, young Caspian is about to become King of Narnia, and he feels inadequate.  Aslan the Lion (representing Christ) tells Caspian, You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve, and that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.  Be content. 

     We have different amounts of pigment in our skin, and different hair colors and textures.  We have difference facial features.  But we are all human.  A blood sample can be analyzed, and science can determine if it is human or animal blood, but it cannot determine race.  The reason?  Biological race does not exist.  Ancestry can examined, and that has become quite popular, but actual race (what we call race) cannot be determined by DNA.  We are humans, and our common ancestor (most recently) is Noah.  

     McGill University published a study in which two penguins (who looked identical to each other) were tested and compared.  Then, two humans were tested and compared.  These two humans were a white female and a black male.  The result was that the two humans' DNA was closer to each other's than the two identical penguins were to each other.  This study also claimed that any two unrelated humans on earth would be 99.9% identical in their DNA sequence.  In the 0.1 percent where there was more variation, the two different people were almost always actually the same race, not different races.  The point?  Race isn't as important as we have made it!  I will give a link to the article from McGill University at the end of this post. 

     Even if one is prejudiced against a particular race, that doesn't necessarily mean they are a racist.  Prejudice is pre-judging.  Racism goes much further, to the point of discriminatory treatment.  I would venture to say most people don't go this far.  It is taking those prejudices and using them to destroy or hold back a race of people.  And it doesn't have to be against one particular group in order for it to be racism.  Hitler was racist in trying to destroy the Jewish people.  George Wallace (former Alabama governor and two-time presidential candidate) was racist in trying to maintain segregation and hold back African Americans.  These and other examples of racism are concentrated efforts to harm an entire group of people.  Simply having a bias and stopping it there is not out-and-out racism.  I'll get to this, but as Christians, we have the Holy Spirit to help us stop our prejudices before they become harmful.  God changes our hearts in the process as well.

     Stepping away from race-related prejudices, one can pre-judge just about anyone for anything.  You can pre-judge someone with a certain ability or disability.  Some people don't like the rich, or the poor.  Some have biases against those who live on the wrong side of town, or who attend the rival school.  I knew someone who hated the New England Patriots, and disliked anyone who was a Patriots fan.  As with my made-up example of being prejudiced against New Jersey, people can become prejudiced toward those from other states, or nations.  Sometimes, Christians can be prejudiced against those who attend certain churches, or are part of certain denominations.  Prejudice can also exist among generations.  Until recently, I didn't really hear people talk much about their generation, but all of a sudden, everything is all about, "Are you a Baby Boomer, and GenXer or a Millennial (or something else)?"  This can lead to actual prejudice against people of a certain generation.  I had to leave a Facebook group over generation-bashing that was just getting to me.

People are suddenly into what generation they are, and they latch onto it as a part of their identity, and let it bring division and start conflict.  Really ridiculous!  So I listened to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey as a teen, and you listened to Justin Bieber.  So what?  No one can control when they were born!

     Here's a hot topic that has a good example of prejudice.  Regardless of your opinion, bear with me.  With Elon Musk taking over Twitter, former President Trump was allowed back onto it (I am not on Twitter myself, and I am not attempting to make any statement for or against Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or any of it--that isn't my purpose here--but if you want to know my opinion about anything related to this, reach out to me personally and we can talk).  One person (among many) who claimed he would leave the social media platform gave as his reasoning that he refused to be on the same platform as a billionaire.  Is that a good reason?  If someone disagrees with what Trump has said or done, that might be a good reason not to be around his influence.  Even then, though, I could make the argument that being around various views is broadening, and leaving a social platform simply because someone you dislike is on it (when you can choose not to follow them anyway!) would be the same as not having Verizon service for your cell phone because some celebrity you dislike also has Verizon.  But to simply dislike him for being a billionaire is a blatantly wrong reason.  Donald Trump, like all of humanity, has faults, but being rich isn't one of them.  That isn't a sin.  Somehow, in our world, some forms of bias are deemed acceptable, and others are not.  Biases against rich people is fine, but bias against the poor is considered immoral.  What is wrong with this picture?  

     I have been to 47 out of 50 states in the US (I still need to visit Alaska, Wisconsin and South Carolina).  I have lived in 5 states.  In my travels, I have met people with very strong biases against certain states or regions of the country.  I knew someone who despised the South and anyone from the South.  Having lived in the South for a few years now, I love it here, and I'm saddened this person's biases cheat her out of all the beauty and fun this part of the country holds.  When my husband and I lived in Texas, we had some people treat us pretty badly for originally being from California.  Some of it was very hurtful.  I have to share this anecdote, because it's so funny.  A pastor we knew there was talking about how believers are eternally secure in Christ.  As an illustration, he said, "Even if my son went to California, I would never disown him, so that means God can't disown us!"  I thought, Huh? Why would you disown someone for going to California?  To my mind, he may as well have said, "Even if my son drinks milk, I won't disown him!"  What's wrong with milk?  And what's wrong with California?  It was as if that was the worst thing he could think of that his son could do, and yet even then, he still wouldn't disown him!  Crazy. Yet in that culture, it is acceptable to pre-judge all Californians.  I must ask: Is it honestly acceptable to lump us all together?   It is so inconsistent, because, using the Texas/California example, remove Californian from their unkind statements and insert Mexican, or Brazilian, or Filipino.  You know they would never do that.  Why?  Because prejudice against other nations isn't an "acceptable" form of prejudice, whereas prejudice against other states is.  But is it really?  Is any prejudice acceptable?  

     Lest I only pick on Texas, I need to point out that residents of my home state of California are usually the first to vehemently deny being prejudiced, and might brag about how unprejudiced they are.  And if you have to boast about how your'e not prejudiced, guess what you probably are?  In my life experiences in California, I have seen more people segregating themselves from those who are not like them than in any other state I've lived in or been to.  I haven't seen a lot of hate-filled prejudice between people, but I have observed that people just snootily stay to themselves and interact with people in their own social circle.  Yes, the state of California is technically diverse, but in my experience, a lot of the churches, neighborhoods, grocery stores, etc. are filled with pretty similar people.  Go to another area in the same town, and you'll see another type of similar people all going to the same churches, stores, etc.  People virtue signal about accepting everyone, but that just doesn't always happen.  These are just my observations, from having lived in California the first 34 years of my life, and then leaving and coming back to occasionally visit.  Someone else may have experienced it very differently than me, but that is my observation.  Texans aren't the only ones with biases.  

     I can't criticize others for their prejudices without coming clean about some of mine.  Yes, I have them, and I would argue we all do.  Not hateful prejudices.  Not a desire to destroy others.  But biases.  When a few Texans revealed prejudice against me for my home state, I developed the reverse prejudice as a defense mechanism, to shield myself from the pain.  I decided people from Texas were this or that.  Was that right of me?  No!  Just because some Texans had hurt me didn't mean everyone in their entire state was hurtful or judgmental against me!  I was being as unfair as those who made the remarks, particularly to some very good friends I made there.  

     An entirely different story, I grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of one-story houses, friendly neighbors, and a pretty contented life. Around that time, a lot of HOA neighborhoods were being built, and two-story was in.  A lot of the newer track house neighborhoods were these two-story houses.  They seemed like little mansions to me.  For a while, we attended a church in a neighborhood of these houses.  Even though these people were not wealthy, they probably would have been considered upper-middle class.  I had a very snooty youth leader who would say negative things against my neighborhood.  She was absolutely devastated when she found out my one-story house was actually higher square footage than her two-story house.  Talk about shallow!  I experienced several different hurts in that youth group, and I felt hurt and offended by her, so I started referring to these newer track homes as "snob houses."  I called them that for years.  Was that fair to label everyone who lived in these newer neighborhoods as snobs?  No!  I was the one being a snob by saying that.  To be honest, I still struggle with that when I see a community of newer two-story track homes (or even not as new now, but might have been new while I was growing up).  The association with being humiliated as a teenager is so strong, and I need God's help to remind myself that these people (whom I usually don't know) are not to blame for what happened back then.  It's something I have to keep giving back to God and letting Him help me. 

     These two prejudices I've shared are an example of what a lot of people struggle with.  We aren't born prejudiced.  We can be taught to see people that way through prejudiced parents or others who influence us.  Or, as in my stories, we can have deeply-rooted hurts, and those prejudices are a form of self-protection against the pain.  Instead, we need to deal with the hurt, rather than bringing a lot of innocent people into our judgments.

     Ecclesiastes 1:9 reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun.  Our biases are nothing new. People throughout history, including in biblical times, had biases.  The ancient Egyptians made the Hebrews their slaves and tried to destroy them by killing their baby boys (Exodus 1).  A little further along in the narrative, we see Moses' siblings Aaron and Miriam being prejudiced against his wife Zipporah (Numbers 12:1).  In the book of Esther, Haman tried to annihilate the Jews.  By the New Testament, Israel was under Roman rule, and there was a lot of prejudice between them.  Not only that, but there were different types of Jews.  There were Hellenists (Greek-speaking and Greek-cultured), as well as Samaritans (considered mixed raced).  In the book of Acts, the Apostles had to go on a journey with God to discover that God was calling Gentiles, as well as Jews, to salvation.  Peter led the first Gentile to the Lord (Acts 10), but he later struggled with this and distanced himself from Gentile believers (Galatians 2:11-13).  Even a great saint of God can struggle with biases, and need reminders, as Paul gave to Peter in the Galatians passage mentioned.  

     It should also be noted that Jesus went out of His way to mingle with those others avoided, such as the woman at the well (John 4).  

     Aside from national or racial prejudice, there was also prejudice against tax collectors (they were seen as traitors, in league with the Romans), and the opposite extreme, Zealots (who wanted to overthrow Rome).  I find it interesting that Jesus had a tax collector and a zealot among His disciples.   Jesus also had lowly fishermen (who were viewed as low class) as well as apparently upper-class people (Joseph of Arimathea, as well as Mary, Martha and Lazarus are believed to have had money) among His followers.

     While we all may have some sort of bias, it isn't right.  There is grace to help us work it out and do better, but no excuse to hold onto it.  Acts 10:34 says that God is no respecter of persons.  The English Standard Version renders it God shows no partiality.  Galatians 3:28 reminds us, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  Obviously, people are different.  We're not meant to be carbon copies of each other.  We still have our ancestries, our jobs, our sex.  But those things do not make us inferior or superior.  We're one in the Lord.  In James 2:1-9, we are strongly instructed not to be partial to anyone.  In this passage, an example is used of a wealthy man coming into the church, and being treated better than a poor man who also comes in.  Verse 9 concludes: But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.  

     The best way to overcome prejudice is to meet someone and really get to know them for who they are.  Broaden your world by getting to know people you normally wouldn't.  Listen to people who respectfully share views that differ from yours, and consider what they have to say.  Get curious and ask questions.  A quote I read years ago said that some people don't want to hear the truth; they just want to have their prejudices confirmed.  It was a great quote, and I've never been able to find it again, but it's the truth.  We shouldn't be that way.  Jesus is the truth (John 14:6).  His Spirit inside you as a Christian will lead you into all truth (John 16:13).  Ask God to reveal the truth to you, and He will.  Let Him speak to your heart about the ways you have been biased.  We live in a world where we all want to cry "Not it!" when we hear the word prejudice, because that's considered one of the worst things.  Yet all sin is sin.  Your biases need God's help to be overcome, but they do not make you worse than anyone else.  Acknowledge your sin, and ask for God's help.  That's a lot better than trying to explain why you're not really prejudiced.  

You can read McGill University's article about race here.