I had a great talk with one of my students today. To be honest, all of our conversations are really good. Have you ever know someone who just makes you want to be a better person? I have. I’ve met many such people. This time that person is one of my students. He is also my Mexican little brother. I call him my baby brother and he calls me his big sister. For the sake of privacy and the purposes of this blog, I will only call him baby brother or little brother. Of course, anyone that knows him will know exactly who I’m talking about, but still.
I’ll give you a little bit of background on my little brother first. He is 16 years old and in the tenth grade. He loves soccer. He is one of the sportiest people I know. For those of you who know me well, you know that is the antithesis of who I am. We get along really well though. I’m really proud of who he is. Most teenagers I know aren’t that level headed, and he handles certain situations better than I would. All in all, I am very happy that he is my student, and even happier that he is my little brother. I hope I manage to teach him half as much as he has been teaching me.
Now that you have some background on who my baby brother is, I will go ahead and tell you what I’ve learned from our most recent conversation. I learned that I am failing at doing something that God has called us to do. That something is loving the unlovable. It should be pretty obvious at this point that the unlovable person is not my baby brother. Loving the unlovable was just something that was a theme in our conversation.
I have not been doing well at loving those people. During our conversation, I realized that I still hold some resentment and prejudice because of situations when I was in high school. I took those situations and unconsciously used them as my map for how to direct a conversation. I was so stuck in what I thought was true for me when I was young, that I was ignorant of what was really going on. Starting today, I am going to be working on overcoming those prejudices, even if I never realized I had them.
I have never done a very good job of including people I don’t like. I like to think that I am inclusive and kind to everybody, but that is not always the case. There are some people that are just difficult for me to deal with. I don’t know if that’s because they are different than me or because they’ve hurt me or because I have prejudices that I don’t know about. What I do know is that I need to be better about handling situations.
During this conversation with my little brother, I realized that I have a tendency to villainize people who are sportier. When I look at a situation that involves someone who is sporty and someone who is not, I tend to think that the sportier person is in the wrong. This is such a bad view to have. Looking back on it, I know where this bias comes from. I was picked on by the sporty kids in my high school.
That bad experience has led me to an unconscious bias now. That unconscious bias helped me to put blame for something at my little brothers door when he didn’t deserve that. I hurt him, because I hadn’t taken the time to check myself and my view of certain matters.
Now I am going to explain to you why he is a better person than I am. If something like this had happened to me where I felt someone was judging me for no reason, I would be rip roaring mad. Actually, I would be hurt, and channel that into anger to protect myself. I would probably lash out and attack the person I was talking to and try to hurt them like they hurt me, but my little brother, my wonderful baby brother, did none of those things. He calmly explained the situation, and why things happened like they did.
Hearing his explanation really brought into perspective how my past experiences are shaping my view of my new ones. Having your biases brought to the surface like that is shocking and upsetting. I hated the thought that I was judging someone in a way that they didn’t deserve.
The lesson I’ve learned from this is an important one. The lesson has to do with loving the unlovable. Despite the differences between me and someone else, I should be able to love them. We are all created in God’s image. Even though we have nothing in common, I should still be able to see the face of God in part of whom they are. Now with some people it is very easy to love them even if we are very different. My little brother would be a wonderful example of this. We don’t have much in common. He’s sporty, and I’m not. I love reading, and he doesn’t really. We do share a love for chocolate, but our differences probably outnumber our similarities.
Despite those differences, my baby brother is probably one of the easiest people in the world for me to love. Our differences make our relationship more unique. He’s teaching me how to play soccer, and I’m teaching him about literature. Our differences are what cause us to grow.
Now I just need to use this as an example of how I want to view my other relationships. I need to learn to appreciate the differences in those people who are not so easy for me to love. I need to check my biases and see how they are affecting my view of people. I need to use those things and love people better. Most of all, I need God to help lead me through this process. After all, He died for us while we were still sinners.