I have always had the impression embedded in my mind that prejudice and discrimination are limited to religion and race. In my own personal dealings with these mistreatment, I think my naive behavior toward it has aided in my reaction with it. It seems as if we are raised through grade school with a curriculum of learning this. In elementary school we are taught about the civil war and the injustice shown to the slaves by the white Englishmen. This prejudice rooted in somewhat of a religious background. The African Americans were told even God himself did not see them as equals. In middle school we are constantly learning about the terrors of the holocaust and the terrible treatment of Jews from the Nazis. This prejudice rooted in various backgrounds. The hate of an authoritarian’s heart named Hitler, the soreness of a country growing towards poverty and the need for a new change and a new leader. Then in high school were are taught about clashing world cultures from the time of Columbus and the mistreatment of the South American people, to the present time battles between the United States and Iran and Iraq. When I started taking this class, Psychology of Adjustment, I read the portion of the book on prejudice and discrimination and it has really opened my eyes to the broadness of those categories.
In dealing with prejudice and the discrimination that usually follows, we have to identify what they really mean. Prejudice, in our book, is described as being “an unjustified negative attitude toward an individual based on the individual’s membership in a group” (Santrock, 2006, p.189). Discrimination is described as being “An unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group simply because the person belongs to that group” (Santrock, 2006, p.189). Once I started to see the openness to these definitions I was soon faced with person instances. I went to a very small high school, roughly fifteen kids combined in the high school class. My graduating class was three seniors. It was me, my friend Cody who I have known my whole life, he is basically like my brother, and "John" (I will call him) one of my lifelong school mates. I have gone to school with John since kindergarten. He was one of those awesome people in your life that you just cannot forget. He was the class clown, but not in the usual bad way. He was extremely funny and made everyone’s life better, but with manners. He was raised very good, not to mention his mother worked at the school so if he got out of line she would have spanked him right in class probably. I considered John a spiritual friend of mine as well. He was part of The Church of God of Prophecy, and was throughout his school life training to become a lay minister. He was extremely knowledgeable in the word and I somewhat looked up to that quality about him. He basically read nothing else besides the Bible. We would often joke about him and say, “Where’s John at? Oh, he’s probably somewhere in the corner reading his Bible.” I think his homelike was less than favorable for him. His grandfather and father were ministers in that denomination and sometime in there life decided to give that role up to leave their wives for another woman to live with. John’s father had done this, and his mother was heart broken. His grandfather soon came back to the Lord and lived with John and his mother. He helped John perfect his craft of ministry. Sheldon began preaching everywhere; he even became one of the most well known speakers for his age in his denomination. Then this summer after graduation he called me one night. He said, “I have something to tell you. I am gay.” I was devastated by this blow because he seemed to me to be the farthest from homosexuality I could think of. I told him that I loved him and accepted him as a person and I would never turn my back on him. He went on to say how he told his family, and that they were disappointed. His mother completely quit speaking to him. His family had experienced this before when his cousin came out of the closet. They had tried to force him out of it due to the extremely strong religious background of the family. He just ended up moving out and having little contact with all of them. John told me he thought that they all seemed easier on him, and that he assumed that was the reason. Now his family does not invite him to “get-togethers”, and they have banished him from their church. They allow him to live in there home, but he rarely stays there. This even for me was an extreme shock, also because I have never had a homosexual friend before, and especially not one of my close friends. As I thought on this situation and read some on psychology text, I began to realize that John was going through a type of prejudice and discrimination from his family. I can understand to an extent the spirituality hesitance to the situation, because God is very clear about the sin. This would be a very hard situation to sort out. What I do not understand is the "extravagances" of this certain sin. I mean, why do we act so much differently towards the sin of homosexuality than towards lying? It is both sin. We do not condemn liars from our family. We do not discriminate against liars in our family. We might not even think twice about lying ourselves. Could it be the actual source of prejudice maybe? The text defines sources I think are very meaningful in this instance. The “individual personality” of the dominant people in his family might be a factor, or the chance that they might have an “authoritarian personality”, or someone who believes in strict adherence to traditional beliefs and aggression towards people who violate conventional norms, rigid thinking, and exaggerated submission to authority (Santrock, 2006, p.190). This could be a source of prejudice his family expresses towards him. I think they also practice what the text also describes as called “cultural learning”, or what you have grown up around or been taught you entire life. (Santrock, 2006, p.191).
How do we solve this problem? How do we propose to improve this situation? I propose that Christians in general, for once, stop being so close-minded. I am not in any way promoting homosexuality; I realize the word says it is wrong. I just believe that Christians try to put God in a box. How can God work through the lives of homosexual’s lives if all we ever do is shut them out? This is a form of what the text describes as “intimate contact”, or spending time with someone and understanding where they are coming from. Lets practice the love that Jesus showed. When he came, he did not hang around the churches, he spent time with the people no one wanted to minister to. I think God is calling us to a radical love. I want to learn to practice it.
Bibliography
Santrock, John W. Human Adjustment. New York City: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2005.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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Kaylee, you bring up some very heavy and important points. You are correct when you point out that we seem to unjustly label homosexuality as being more unacceptable than other sins. While the Bible clearly calls homosexuality an abomination (Lev 18:22) It also calls lying by the same name (Proverbs 12:22). Furthermore, Proverbs 6:16-19 lists seven sins which are abominable to God, and Deuteronomy 25:16 informs us that the sins outlined in the previous 15 verses make a person abominable to God. The message is clear, all sin is abominable to God. We tend to be so self-righteous and not nearly broken enough. This brokenness is, in my opinion, an essential part of the radical love of which you speak. Luke 7:36-50 tells the story of the sinful woman who anointed Jesus with perfume and washed his feet with her tears and hair. Jesus explains what is going on by telling a parable in which two slaves owe their master differing sums of money, one substantially more than the other. The master forgives them both, and Jesus asks Simon, a pharisee, which servant will love the master more. Simon replies, "I suppose the one whom he forgave more." Jesus affirms this answer, then explains that those who have been forgiven much love much, and the reason the woman loved Jesus more than Simon was because she realized how much she had been forgiven. We will love Christ more and have more compassion on others when we are broken by a realization of our spiritual bankruptcy before God apart from Christ, our great neediness, and just how much we have been forgiven. I commend you for bringing up such a touchy subject. The church at large seems to be doing a miserable job of loving homosexuals. Good post.
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