Tag Archives: prejudice

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

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I know Pride and Prejudice is the title of Jane Austen’s 1813 romance novel, but that’s not what I’m thinking about as I write this post. What I have in mind is some people’s attitude about where they live in relation to where others live.

It first happened to me when I accepted the call to a small church in the Philadelphia area in 1975. A man I looked up to threw a wet blanket on my excitement when he asked me, “Why would you go there?” Then he added, “You could have gotten a good church here in Ohio, Kentucky, or Indiana.” I loved growing up in and going to school in the Cincinnati area, but Jan and I also loved our 10 years in Philadelphia.

Our next move was in 1984 to small but growing community in Southern California and I took some hits from a few Midwesterners about going to the land of hippies and marijuana. That was bad enough, but once we settled in and started the church we moved to plant I often heard snide remarks about Moreno Valley from people who lived in Orange County and other more attractive places in the area. Jan and I thoroughly enjoyed and loved our 32 years in Moreno Valley.

Late last year we relocated to Amarillo, Texas, to be near our grandsons and I was surprised by the negative comments we received from a few in Southern California about the place to which we were moving. You might think I would be used to it, but I was shocked last week when we were in Dallas for a conference to have three different people respond negatively when they learned we were from Amarillo. For the record, Jan and I are overjoyed to be living in Amarillo, being a part of the community, fellowshipping with our new church, and being fully engaged with our grandsons.

I understand and applaud an appropriate pride in terms of where a person lives. I’ve had that in every place I have lived during my 66 years. What I don’t understand is the prejudice some have about the places where others live. It seems to me we can be positive about and pleased with our community without looking down on the communities of others.

I think the prophet Jeremiah’s advice to the Israelites who were taken captive to Babylon is good advice for Christians today regardless of where they live: 4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).

Have pride in where you live and don’t be prejudiced against other places. And be sure to make the most of where you live.

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DON’T ACCEPT IT—DON’T DO IT!

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My first job in the church was as a youth minister intern in the summer of 1970 when I was 19 years old. At the end of that summer I went back to college and became the part time youth minister at a church in Cincinnati.

During those years as a youth minister I often quoted the Apostle Paul’s words to Timothy, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young” I Timothy 4:12 (NIV). Because I was so young myself, I not only shared the instruction with our youth, I took it to heart as well.

I am now 66 and took a new church job this summer as Pastor to Senior Adults. This past Saturday evening at our ENCORE senior adult ministry kick off banquet I again quoted I Timothy 4:12. But I flipped the reason Paul gave to Timothy from “because you are young” to “because you are older.”

I don’t think it was a word when Paul wrote Timothy, but what he was talking about is what is known today as ageism. The pure definition of ageism is “prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a person’s age.” And while today it usually is associated with those who are older, depending upon who is doing the looking down upon, it can be any age group—including young people (as it was with Timothy).

I’ve thought a lot about Paul’s instruction “don’t let anyone look down on you because of your age” (younger or older). And the reality is that we cannot stop it, can we? I’m thinking a better rendering might be “don’t accept anyone looking down on you because of your age.” (I’m not saying don’t accept them, but rather don’t accept their looking down on you.) We can’t stop them, but we don’t have to accept it.

I really like some of the other translations of Paul’s words about ageism: don’t accept it when others “think less of you because you are young/old” (NLT), “treat you as if you are unimportant because you are young/old” NCV), “make fun of you, just because you are young/old” (CEV), “put you down because you are young/old” (The Message), “disregard you because you are young/old” (JB), and “slight you because you are young/old” (JB).

Readers who are familiar with I Timothy 4:12 probably remember the second part of Paul’s instruction, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” My take on what Paul was calling Timothy to do was not to go down to the level of those who thought less of him because of his age, but to set and be an example for them.

In my new ministry I’m doing the same thing I did in my first ministries, except with  a different age group. Then I was challenging young people not to accept people looking down on them because they were young, but to be an example to them. Now I am challenging senior adults not to accept people looking down on them because they are older, but to be an example to them.

Here’s my challenge to those who read this post: don’t look down on anyone because of their age, and don’t accept it when it happens to you or someone else!

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