Dealing with my prejudices

Today was the second part in Mosaics peacemakers series. Phil gave a very challenging talk on dealing with prejudices in our life. He told the story of Jesus with the women at the well. In this story Jesus steps in and brings redemption to a samaritan women despised by society for being a loose women. By talking to the Samaritan women, Jesus broken every cultural and religious more about interactions with the outcast.

Phil challenged us with the thought that those who don't conciously realise that they can be preducial (in any form) are unconciously not dealing with the fact that they are being such.

I know that I am prejudicial, I know when I see someone who walks down the street who doesn't fit the mold of what people should look like, sound like, I can totally dismiss them. I do not want to take the first step to relate to them, they have to "earn" the right for me to relate to them. I conciously have to work against these horrible, selfish thoughts, to challenge them

If you have ever been in Newtown, you may have seen a tall lanky guy, who wears a mettalica t-shirt and has a fetish with coke. He drinks coke constantly. His name is Nathan, or is affectionately called Nate-dog by those who know him. When I first came to newtown, I thought he was pretty exentric and never really expected to even start to get to know him, and unconciously I didin't want him in my space.

But I have been recently bumping into him and slowly getting to know him, I hope that one day he knows me by name (a priviledge which takes a while as hes very forgetful.) I was having lunch over the road from my house on Rintoul St in Newtown, and Nathan came over to say hi and he was sharing his coke with people in the room. He wanted the scones I had on my plate that I had made for lunch. I said sure, and handed him a couple.

The challenge is to think about this at the first instance, it has taken me ages to get to this point in my mind with Nathan, why? Why? What is my right to define the worth of anyone? God says that we are all his children, we are all his workmanship, created in his image, to do good works for his joy. Why do we look and define people in our own eyes?

I need to work on this one, I have a lot to learn about what it means to deal with the predjudices I have in my life.