Article October 13, 1986 Issue

All are God's children—a look at prejudice

Prejudice can have deep roots, but the love of God goes deeper. A Christian Scientist talks about his odyssey from prejudice to love.

Donald Hale Wallingford

Recently I picked up a copy of the hefty Sunday edition of our local newspaper, and in the first section alone there were four news items having to do with prejudice and its effects. The byproducts of prejudice and prejudicial thinking are harmful to everyone, and every sincere thinker, every humble servant of the one God who is all good, can help in removing this burden from individuals and society.

One dictionary defines prejudice in part as "preconceived judgment or opinion ... an opinion or leaning adverse to anything without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge." This kind of prejudicial thinking not only limits our outlook and access to new and helpful ideas and experiences, but it can also lead to inhumane treatment of our fellowman. Ethnic, racial, religious, and class prejudice often result in discrimination in one form or another and can end in brutality, murder, and even genocide. In some countries of the world today, this kind of discrimination is illegal, in others it is not; but in any case, it is hardly the way of life Christ Jesus showed us. Because it is wrong, an error of thinking, it can be healed through scientific right reasoning and the power of Truth and Love.

Prejudice and prejudicial thinking are clearly products of the carnal mind, and the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans warned them, and indeed warns all Christians today, of the danger of being carnally-minded. He said, "To be carnally minded is death .... Because the carnal mind is enmity against God."^{Rom. 8:6, 7.} In Christian Science, this carnal mind is often referred to as mortal mind; it is that material mind which would claim to be in each one of us as the motivating source of all wrong thought and action, and it is the antipode of immortal Mind, which is God.