A Message to "Friends" Who've Chosen to Be Different and Now Feel Uncomfortable

I write this post in response to some of my "friends," who feel the need to preach to everyone around them that they are bigots and need to think twice about how they treat them and others like them.  Their perceived bigotry could be racial, gender, sexual orientation, religion or even economic based.  That doesn't matter.  What does matter is the unforgiving spirit that is present within their hearts against the people who are around them. 

It amuses me to consider the irony of the situation, where you both feel walled-off and segregated from the main group and then accuse and attack others, which further segregates you from that main group.  

There is a story in the New Testament, where Peter was frustrated by a brother who had sinned against him.  He asked Jesus how many times he needed to forgive his brother.  The Hebrew custom was to forgive your brother 7 times, where after that 7th time, if your brother sinned against you again, you no longer needed to forgive him.  Jesus told Peter to forgive his brother 70 times 7, which was considered an unreachable number.  Another way of looking at this is that if our absolution from sin is as far as the east is from the west, that it is as if the sin never happened.  I say this to you as well as to myself:  Forgiveness is something with which we ALL struggle.  It's tough, but let it go.

When I look at you, I see a child of GOD's creation, with the same needs as I have.  We have the same flaws.  And in a perfect we are polite and serve each other.  

I would hope that you'd want me to remember you for who you are (or as the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, the content of your character) rather than your skin color, your economic status, your choices in sexual partners, etc..  But apparently, because you bring it up so often, you've been so badly hurt by others that forgiveness isn't possible.  You must remember each offense and keep bringing it up.  Retribution is apparently far more important than reconciliation.  Your actions say that the external is judged to be of more value than the internal.  Your retrograde feelings of pay back and hatred are more important than the sublime love of our fellow man.  Sympathy Is looked upon as derision and hatred is all that can be reflected. 

Or to put it mildly, I can't see the real you, because all you want to show me is your race, gender, national origin, sexual preference/orientation, religion, or paycheck/house/car.  Your constant reminders to me (and everyone else around us) of with which group you've decided identify, just tell me of how separated from the rest of us you would like to keep yourselves, despite your desperate protests to me.  The caste system is alive and well in America and you're helping to keep it going.