Prejudice is when you make judgement on someone before you actually know them.

Authors Avatar

  Prejudice is when you make judgement on someone before you actually know them.

  Here in Northern Ireland our culture has had a great influence over our judgements.

  Foe example when we look at a drug addict we see only the “leaves” and not the “roots”, this means that you only see these people as outcasts but we don’t see what has caused people to resort to drugs, it could be broken families, a death or divorce of parents and some children can handle it better than others.

  Today we have prejudices against blacks, whites, Protestants and Catholics.

  In Jesus’ day the Jews were prejudiced against tax collectors and Samaritans because tax collectors were Jews who worked for the Romans and Samaritans were intermarried Jews who had married non-Jews.

  It takes a lot of care and love to overcome prejudice we sometimes call this kind of love agape.

  One example of prejudice in Jesus’ day was Zaccheus the tax collector.

  One day Jesus was visiting Jericho where a rich tax collector named Zaccheus lived, he was rich because the tax collectors worked for the Romans and so charged more than they should and keep the extra themselves.  Zaccheus lived in a house in Jericho near to where Jesus was coming to.  Zaccheus was trying to see Jesus over the crowds but couldn’t because he was too small so he climbed into a sycamore tree to see Jesus.  I think that Zaccheus wanted to meet Jesus so that he could perhaps be forgiven, but when the crowds saw that Jesus was going to Zaccheus’ house they were furious because of their anger and prejudice against him as a tax collector.  People saw Zaccheus as a sinner but Jesus saw Zaccheus as a descendant of Abraham which is a Jew one of Jesus’ people.

Join now!

  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 ...

This is a preview of the whole essay