It has been an active morning here at good old PSBC. My kind of morning as individuals looking for some conversation and fellowship stopped by to see us. One of our visitors came by my office and as we made small talk the conversation soon turned to remembrances of good dawgs that we had the privilege of having as our best friends. One Oliver pooch that eventually comes up in any canine conversation is my late black and tan, Cocker Spaniel, Bassett mix, Rayfield. He was quite a dawg!
On this particular day I shared one of Rayfield’s shortcomings. He was biased and quite prejudiced toward a certain segment of our society. I will go ahead and say it… Rayfield Oliver hated mail carriers. I am not proud of the pooch and what measures we had to take to protect postal service workers from the wrath of this kind and loving to everyone but the mail carrier dawg. We had to put Rayfield in lockdown in the basement for a couple of hours everyday during the morning to enable the mail carrier to perform his or her responsibilities. Upon being released from his incarceration after the mail duties were completed Rayfield would put his nose to the ground and do his “Bloodhound Trailing An Escaped Convict” imitation stopping at every door and mailbox where the object of his hatred had been.
I don’t know how we discovered the why of Rayfield’s prejudice, but one day our dedicated, long suffering, and faithful public servant Bobby said he had to spray some irritant in Ray’s eyes one time when the low riding spaniel had a bad day and he never forgave our friend, and he decided that all mail carriers were bad humans.
Imagine that…determining the value of a person by using a random sample of one . It’s what we are doing today in our society. We have an unpleasant experience at a church and decide that because a person hurt our feelings, made a wrong choice, said the wrong thing, or was caught in a lie, he or she is a hypocrite and all Christians are like that. Maybe we’ve had an unpleasant experience with a person of another color or religion or gender and we decide all in these categories are the same way. Maybe you think all preachers are the same, and used car sales people, and insurance executives are just as questionable as they are. We just want your money and could care less about you and your situation. The list could go on and on but I won’t. I will simply say, be careful that you don’t group people together and determine their worth and qualification for respect based on the actions of a few.
We all have our labels, political affiliations, denominations, vocations, cultural status, and social standing and sometimes we use these criteria to determine human worth. Jesus treated each person as an individual worthy of love, grace, and forgiveness. Our world would be a better place if we went and did likewise.
Pray for our country and the world!
Andy O.