Take off those lenses!

I am not one of those people who gets impatient in queues or whilst waiting anywhere because it means I can indulge in one of my favourite pastimes – watching people.  My daughter and I sometimes played a game imagining who people were and what their lives were like.  I know the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but the truth is I am sometimes tempted to. 

I grew up in a home where everyone was welcome and so I thought I didn’t judge people but the first time I did street evangelism, I became aware of some internal filters about who I felt comfortable approaching and my surprise about who did and didn’t respond.  I had some stereotypical mindsets about people that I was unaware of.  

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when my Facebook account was suddenly flooded with friend requests.  This is unusual.  What was more unusual is that many of them were from other nations, people I didn’t know.  Instantly I was aware of thoughts like, “I bet they just want money,” or “I bet that isn’t his real picture,” or “How long before he starts asking for personal info?”  Challenged by my thoughts, I accepted some of the requests.  I discovered that I do have filters so that some of them I accepted without a qualm based on how they look, their gender, their geography, and their age among other things.  Others I was reluctant to accept.    

Aware of how God is challenging me in this area of people and connection at the moment, I looked around my church this week.  It still feels new and many people I don’t know.  I was aware that in this context where it is supposed to be family, I still have my filters firmly in place.  There are places I feel totally comfortable sitting and places that challenge me to face my fears.  There are those who are too intimidating to have a conversation with, and shockingly those I am not really interested in having a conversation with.  It makes me uncomfortable when I allow God to probe some of the motives behind all this.  It’s OK for God to make me uncomfortable I think, I clearly need him to realign some of my thinking.

I tell you all this, not so you can be shocked at my prejudiced views, but to say that I think we are all a lot more biased than we think we are.  It is just hidden most of the time because we naturally gravitate to those who are like us, surrounding ourselves with people we are comfortable with.  In the ministry context, I think we can unconsciously adopt attitudes that show we think we are better than those we are ministering to.  We can forget that we are all people, and we are functioning in a broken world and none of us has it all together.

What I find toxic in myself, and I have observed it in others, even in church, is the habit of creating a kind of hierarchy where I place myself on a scale.  I look up to some and look down on others.  I think this is human nature.  I certainly observed it in school – every child could have told you where they came in the “pecking order” in class.  They knew who was “top dog,” and who was the one scrambling for crumbs at the bottom. 

James 2:8 asks the question, which we need to answer in this context:

…have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

We don’t look at each other through neutral eyes.  We unconsciously filter each other through lots of different lenses each day, some according to upbringing and some based on our life experiences – how we dress, talk, look, our age, gender, race, job, and so on.  Those filters can affect our interactions.  But the bible says that as Christians, we need to have an ability to see each other through lenses that are unfiltered:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

Back to the Facebook drama, unfortunately, some of my judgments and preconceptions have been true.  Some people have been swiftly unfriended again and others have just made me more aware of the sea of need that is in the earth.  However, it has opened my eyes to the condition of my heart.  Some of the prejudices are just that – ugly, learned or cultural attitudes.  Some are as a result of past experiences that have coloured my perceptions and made me wary and others are just due to ignorance.  Not everyone has the same culture as me and so I need to learn to understand people who think differently.  It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing except that many of the Facebook requests were from brothers or sisters in Christ.  We will be sharing eternity together! 

The bottom line is that I need to be free to go wherever, and to whoever God tells me, without a qualm, without barriers in my heart towards them, seemingly justified or not.  Otherwise, I will be like Jonah who had all sorts of attitudes in his heart towards the people of Nineveh.  I don’t want God to have to put me in the belly of a “great fish” until I sort out my attitudes.  I would rather invite him into the process now! 

I don’t want to be like the priest or the Levite in the story of the good Samaritan, who passed by on the other side of the road.  But first it seems, I need God to help me open my eyes to see people again.

God asked me to walk into town recently and really look at people, to notice those I would pass without even seeing.  I used to see them more but somehow, I had stopped.  I used to buy coffees and food for homeless people, for example, and talk to them, but I stopped. 

One of the ways I am trying to be more conscious of people as I go about my day-to-day life is to deliberately choose to look them in the eyes.  So that I notice the person at the supermarket checkout.  I notice the person I pass in the busy street, the stall holder, the postman, the homeless person.  It sounds like a small thing, but it is helping me to really see each person. 

In Galatians 5:14, Paul says very clearly:

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’

I want God to not only open my eyes to see them, but I need to see them as he sees them, not through my filters, not through my stereotypes.  I need to be asking, “Who do you see, God?”  I need to be asking, “What do you want to do?  What do you want to say?”  And then be willing, be bold enough to respond to what I hear.  God loves them and he might just want to show his love to them through me.

So, from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. (2 Corinthians 5:16)

It may be just me, in which case you can pray for me.  Or you can join me in this prayer:  Heavenly Father, help me to be aware of and to take off my worldly, prejudiced lenses and help me to dismantle ungodly barriers in my heart.  Help me to see each person as one of your children who you love, who you died for.