MOJO, there was no dig intended. All I am saying is people fear the unknown. Given your scenario above, yes, I probably would stereotype you. At the very least I would be on a heightened awareness but again, that is human nature. Is it right? No.mojo84 wrote:Rpbrown, I caught your dig about stereotyping and people being scared of what they know nothing about.
If me and my buddies were all dressed in saggy pants down around our lower bottom cheeks with our boxers exposed, wearing a wifebeater shirt, sporting gang colored headbands and flashing gang signs at people driving by, what would your assumption be about us? Would you stereotype us? If it were night time and there were 20 or so of us and you were unarmed and we were eyeballing you, would you be concerned or scared?
I think most reasonable people would go on heightened alert even though we are just a bunch of like-minded middle-aged Christian men standing outside visiting and enjoying the nice cool autumn evening.
Give you an example of something that happened to me many years ago. I had been going to a church for a couple of years. Always came in a car with my family. Was always made to feel very welcome. One Sunday, I was to meet up with some friends from another church that also ride and we were going to a local prison for a ministry session after church. We almost always ride our bikes to the prisons as it helps break the ice so to speak. So I tell my wife and kids to take the car and I would ride my bike to our church and I would leave from there. I pull up on my bike, take off my helmet and vest (vest had christian patches all over it), put them in the saddle bags and started to go in the church. One of the ushers stopped me and said "we don't want any trouble here so I will have ask you to leave". I was flabbergasted and explained to him I had been coming there for a couple of years.By that time an associate pastor and a couple of other ushers had come up and "invited me to leave before the police were called". I texted my wife and told here what had happened and I left.
Move forward a week and just to prove a point to my wife, we went back to the same church in the car with the family and was met at the door by the same usher who then shook my hand and said welcome. Being the type of personality I am, before I let go of his hand I asked him why he was welcoming me this week and turned me away last week. He looked at me dumbfounded as I explained to him that I was the guy on the motorcycle that he turned away the week before and I also explained to him that he was judging a book by its cover and that was against what the Bible teaches us.
Do I still judge based on appearances? Unfortunately, yes. But I am trying to get better at not doing so. That doesn't mean I will let my awareness become lax, just try not to judge as harshly as I have in the past. Not all is as it seems.