When Did Prejudice Begin?

Prejudice is an ugly thing. As we've seen in recent days it can lead to abrupt actions that make no sense whatsoever. It harms. It insults. It ostracizes. No one likes or deserves to be on the disliked side of it.

So the question is why can't we stop it?

I think prejudice can't be stopped because it's been around for so long that it's ingrained in us. You may think it started during the years of the slave trade. Or shortly after the Civil War when the slaves were free, but I'm here to speak to a different time.

Open your Bible and you'll find that the Philistines, or Sea People, were a hated group of people. All nations disliked them, not just the Israelites. On the other hand the Jews were disliked by all the nations around them because they fought and won wars in quite a variety of ways, when they were in right standing with God.

But then the Jews had their own prejudices. None of them liked the Samaritans, descendants of Abraham who refused to acknowledge Jerusalem as the Holy Place. The Jews didn't speak to them and they didn't speak to the Jews. Knowing that makes the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) even more significant. Sadly, it doesn't end there. Galileans were also despised by non-Galilean Jews. Why? Because they tried to keep the peace with the Romans and tried to speak Latin and Greek. Today we could compare it to a backwater-hillbilly trying to speak Chinese or Arabic to appease the modern language demands of a foreign captor.

Did it stop there? Of course not.

Through the centuries European countries fought over boundaries which lead to likes and dislikes of neighbors or fellow Europeans. Having lived there I know this. Some of these prejudices are held for fellow countrymen and some are for other nationalities. And because the countries are old the dislikes are often based on actions taken by a country or region many centuries ago. I could list who doesn't like who but that might not serve any real purpose other than to divide.

And, let's not forget what's happening in the Arabic countries today. Those factions that are fighting are all rooted in the same faith. Ouch. They're fighting each other. They're so dead set on having everyone follow their "faction" that they're willing to destroy cities and people to do it. They are so blinded by prejudice that they'll bring harm to anyone not with them.

Sadly, it's not too different from what we've seen in this country. People fighting for a supposed victim and in their rage they destroy the property and lives of their neighbors to make a point. Blinded action making no sense at all when you step back and ask the question, "Why did they do that? What purpose did that serve?"

The truth is, if you stop and think about it every culture, every nation can find someone who dislikes them. And they can find someone they dislike. No one is free of a prejudice. It's sad but it's true. If only we could see that we are all different, with various ways of taking on life.

Our enemy is not in the people who are different from us. Our enemy is the one who wants us to think we need to destroy others because they are different or because they don't like us. Our enemy is the prejudice instigator whom we cannot see. And as long as we give into it, prejudice will continue to exists.

How do we individually make a difference? We need to ask God to help us tolerate and work with those we have a hard time understanding or living around. We need to ask God to let us see others the way He sees them. Attitudes will change.