This teaches us a valuable lesson about being prejudiced against one person who could unexpectedly be trying to get close to God and they could be begging forgiveness for their sins. We learn from the Bible that we should help the lost or sinners.
In the end Zaccheus paid back all the extra money that he had taken from people and much more, he was forgiven for his sins.
So never make a judgement on someone until you actually know them, because that would be prejudice.
In Jesus’ day people, especially Jews were prejudiced against Samaritans because they were not purely Jew but of mixed race, only partly Jewish. They were descended from Jews who had intermarried with foreigners when the Assyrians invaded Israel in the eighth century BC.
Jesus once told a parable when an expert in law stood up to test him, saying “Teacher what must I do to get eternal life?” Jesus said, “What is written n the law, what do you read there?” The man answered, “Love your Lord God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind.” Also, “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.” Jesus said to him, “Your answer is right. Do this and you will live.” So Jesus told the parable of “The Good Samaritan.” A man was making a journey between Jerusalem and Jericho. The distance between them is 15 miles, a day’s walk. The lonely stretch of road between the two towns, nicknamed “The Bloody Way,” was notorious for muggings and robberies. In this parable a man was beaten, robbed and left half dead. Both a priest and a Levite passed by without helping the man, they were both religious figures who kept closely to the Jewish law. They probably didn’t touch the man because they thought that he was dead and didn’t want to be declared ritually unclean and unable to carry ut their jobs in the temple, their jobs were in my mind more important to them than helping someone in need.
Then a Samaritan came by, took pity on the man. The man was clearly a rich man because of all the gold he was wearing and he too would have been a target for robbers, yet he put himself out and acted like a neighbour.
I think that this Samaritan was extremely brave for helping the man, it shows that even though the Samaritans were considered unclean they could be nicer people than pure Jews, as they would like to be called. It just shows that people in those early days shouldn’t have been prejudiced against Samaritans because after all they could be the more respectable person and seen as equals through the eyes of God.
An example of overcoming prejudice today is the story of Martin Luther King. Martin was a black man who fought in America for the Blacks and brought forward the civil rights movement. As a child he lived in the city of Atlanta where his two best friends were white.
One day Martin and his father went into a shoe shop to get Martin some new shoes and the white man in the shoe shop asked them to move to seats at the back of the shop from seats at the front of the shop and he’d be happy to serve them so Martin’s father said to the man, “We’ll either buy the shoes sitting here or we won’t buy the shoes at all.” The assistant proceeded to ask them to move to the back of the shop and so Martin and his father got up and left the shop. I think that this was the right approach from his father and the way that the shop assistant treated them was very unacceptable.
At this time in Atlanta blacks were not allowed even to sit at the front of buses and therefore they had to sit at the back of buses and if a white person got on the bus and there was no more seats free, a black person had to get up and give them their seat. This led to the bus boycott, which was where the black people didn’t use the buses because of the bus company’s prejudice this left buses empty and so black people were not using the bus service, so after a lot of dispute the bus companies decided to let black people sit wherever they wanted on buses. I think that Martin had a lot of courage to do this and go against the whites who had priority over the blacks at this time, this led to the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther fought for the blacks until he eventually lost his life over this movement. He got the civil rights between blacks and whites but was murdered, the F.B.I. had warned Martin that the Ku-Klux-Klan, a secret society of whites who were anti blacks were trying to hire a hit man to kill Martin for $2000, but his Christian faith, Martin had great Christian faith and was brought up as a Christian and was a good living man this allowed him to fight on. These people are a good example of racial prejudice against black people and they still exist today. I consider members of this organisation narrow minded and anti social because people should not be prejudiced to God’s people because we are all made as equals and this organisation shows prejudice in the extreme.
In my opinion for Martin Luther to carry on knowing that people were trying to kill him was very brave and courageous and it shows us how much it meant and how important it was to him. In August 1965 the right for black people to vote was passed, so by this stage the black people were winning the right to be treated fairly. At six o’clock on the evening of 4th April1968, Martin went out onto the balcony of his hotel room and a shot was fired which killed him.
This is a fine example of a brave man who experienced prejudice all his life and had won freedom for the black people at the price of his life, but one thing probably the most important thing was that he still hasn’t been forgotten and should be remembered as he did the most courageous thing in America for his people.
On his grave stone were written these words, “FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I’M FREE AT LAST.”
Another example of prejudice today is Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, they are prejudiced against each others religions. There are now many catholic and protestant groups who are against each other for example the, UFF, UVF, UDA, IRA and there are some more. A lot of people in this country have been brought up to hate people of the opposite religion from themselves, I think that this is wrong and that people should not worry about something which would not affect them in any way. These people show no compassion or love for each other, they should learn to respect and treat people equally for who and what they are.
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