The RelationSLIPS of Pride and Prejudice

Mike  Hosey, An Elder

You will not find a human nation, community, organization, or even individual human life that is not riddled with at least some level of prejudice.  Prejudice is age old.  As long as there have been people, there has likely been prejudice. 

But just what is prejudice?  Well, the term comes to us from the Latin word, Praejudicium. Prae means “in advance of,” and judicium means, you guessed it, “judgement.”  So prejudice means to prejudge.  It means to make a judgement before one has sufficient facts to effectively support a rational judgement. 

Usually, we think of prejudice in terms of negativity, and almost always in terms of race.  But prejudice is a mental state (and sometimes a spiritual one) that spans far more than just race.  Sometimes, it even provides us with a bit of good.  For instance, if a man is walking through the forest and brushes up against some poison ivy, and then later develops his first poison ivy rash, he is likely to be prejudiced against all kinds of three leafed plants. He will avoid them every time he walks through the forest.  His prejudice will protect him.  However, it will also severely limit what he can do on his forest hikes.   Until he gets the facts correct, and realizes that it’s only the three leafed plants that secrete a particular kind of oil, he will be protected, but chained and not free to roam.

Prejudice rears its ugly head with way more than just race.  In your last spousal kerfuffle, did you judge your spouse’s intent without knowing all the facts before you made your judgement against him or her?  Then you were prejudiced.   Did you think that person without an education didn’t have your level of sophistication before you had experienced a sophisticated discussion with them?  Then you were prejudiced.  Did you think that person with an education  higher than yours, and who writes well, speaks well, and dresses well wouldn’t give you the time of day, or be an outstanding friend, or be interested in the same things you are, or that he or she might be boring, or look down on your lack of education?  Then you were prejudiced.

Prejudice almost always comes from an unhealthy level of pride. We tend to judge others beforehand when we haven’t clearly examined our own lives.  Consider the prejudice in Matthew 7:1-5.  It’s there that Jesus commands us to judge others, but only after we have taken the time to judge ourselves.  It is only after we have taken the time to look at the beam in our own eye that we can see clearly enough to judge our neighbor effectively enough to remove the speck from his.