Guilty As Charged

It is amazing to me that God continues to break don my prejudices. I am in San Antonio right now, participating in a missions trip with the Grace Church youth group. We are working with inner-city youth from the ages of 4 to 18, leading Vacation Bible Schools and doing work projects around the Young Vision Church.

The prejudice that I am overcoming is not against the poor, or against African-American’s or Hispanics. I am prejudice against “Christian” kids. Or at least I was. Please do not take this the wrong way. I am not against kids who love the L-rd. The people that I am talking about are the youth who have grown up so sheltered by their church that they have no concept of what the “real world” is like. I tend to view these people as conceited and naive. I see these kids as wanting to make their friends into evangelistic projects, or as looking down on people who listen to any music that isn’t contemporary Christian or classical.

For a long time, I have lumped the youth of Grace Church into that category. I know many of them, and I do not dislike them as individuals, nor do I believe that they have false hearts. My prejudice comes from the fact that I have lumped the majority of them into the category of “Christian kids” without spending much time around them.

This weekend, I have been working in close proximity with these teenagers, and I have been amazed by what I have found. These are regular people. They may be a bit strange at times, which I guess is something that we have in common, but they love each other, and they love the L-rd, and as far as I can tell, they are not the ones sitting around judging others. Apparently, judging others has been my job.

Why is it that people, like myself, who try to oppose prejudice, are so often the ones who are the most guilty of it.