Prejudices …
Whites and blacks traveled together in one bus. During the journey, they started arguing, cursing each other until it resulted in a fight. The driver stopped and ordered everyone to get out. When they were all outside, he began to convince them that they were neither white nor black, but all green. He ordered them all to repeat: “We are green.” After a long moment, when everyone had internalized this statement, he told them that they could now get back on the bus, adding, “Dark green back, light green forward!” How often our behavior is controlled by prejudice! We see a young man in tattered jeans and say: That’s a vagabond! The child has never tasted bryndza, and he says: I don’t like it, I don’t want it! How many times have we heard: He can’t do anything, don’t go after him, leave him alone, she’s conceited, he’s unreliable?! We took up and internalized these claims and perhaps over time found out that we were wrong. The statesman and social reformer Lord Shaftesbury said that prejudice is like a fog that obscures the brightest and best of all the wonderful things that meet us in life on our way through the world.
That’s how it was with Jesus’ natives. They admired his wisdom, admired his mighty deeds, and yet he did no miracle there and left, because their hearts were full of prejudice: “Isn’t he the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joseph, Judas and Simon?” Instead of asking and thinking about what and why he is telling them, they ask: Who is telling us this? They formulated their attitude under the influence of prejudice: from a poor and simple family! How much the harsh words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who lived five hundred years before Christ, apply to them: “Dogs bark at everyone they don’t know.” They do so because they regard every stranger as an enemy, a thief, a vandal. A dog’s prejudices and a dog’s error, as Voltaire says: “Prejudices are the cause of our errors.” From the history of philosophy, we remember the sixteenth-century philosopher Bacon, who divided prejudices into four groups: public opinion, gender prejudices, social prejudices, and personal prejudices.
When we act under the influence of prejudices, we harm ourselves in the first place, because we strive for correct knowledge, for the truth and the pleasure that a person has from the truth. With prejudices, we harm the thing itself or another person who, no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries, he has no chance. The Nazarenes could not be convinced by Jesus’ words and deeds. The first-year student took pills, which never happened again after that, he passed the exams excellently, but the mistrust of his relatives still persists. Shouldn’t the Christian be more like that tailor who, if he’s a good tailor, always takes a tape measure and measures us again, how many times we come to him? If we act under the influence of prejudice, it does not point to the blackness of others, but to our own blindness. So how should we approach things and people? We should have our hearts, our insides emptied of preconceived, preconceived opinions and judgments, because otherwise whatever is done or said, we will measure with the wrong yardstick like one who has jaundice and everything seems yellow to him.
What happened to the Nazarenes was that, due to prejudice, they expelled the word of God from their midst, they expelled Jesus. Isn’t that sometimes the case with us too? Who is telling us? After all, she is a younger colleague, a neighbor from the block, a subordinate! And it was perhaps God’s voice, but we did not understand the time, we did not take advantage of a rare and unrepeatable opportunity, a moment reaching into eternity. It is never too late to give up prejudices and try to look at everything through the eyes of Jesus and to have the attitude of Jesus towards everything and everyone. To act under the influence of faith that the other with whom I meet, to whom I talk and to whom I listen, is Jesus in my brother and in my sister: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” and St. Paul exhorts us to think honestly, honestly and righteously.
We are encouraged to do this not only by our faith, but also by the love of Jesus, which is the basic and essential quality of all Christians, which purifies everything that is hard in our minds. Love is not fog, but light. Faith and love together lead to hope. And hope is a new chance, a new possibility that we give to the other and at the same time to ourselves. Faith, hope and love lead us to the full knowledge of truth, goodness and beauty. Truth will set us free, goodness will sanctify, and beauty will ennoble. In this way, a deeply religious person will be freed from any prejudices and thus also from mistakes. He will be able to know things truthfully and accept everyone as a brother and sister. Faith experienced in this way opens the gate of paradise for us, God will enter the heart through faith.
Hello. And Bye.