Purpose is the most pure aspect of any human being. Prejudice may be the most impure aspect in human relationships. How do we reconcile the two?
Purpose is your spiritual DNA. Within it, there is no evil, only good. Purpose, however, is easily and readily corrupted by the complexities and complications of circumstance, upbringing, and other learned behaviors, i.e., prejudice is learned.
Purpose triumphs over prejudice should we choose to allow it. Purpose is innately whole and sacred. One may attempt to snuff out their purpose and carry on with heartlessness and harmful acts of bigotry. Nevertheless, purpose remains that small, still voice within crying out and informing the conscience of the soul asking to guide us to our better self. The inner battle is real.
It is often said, “You can’t legislate behavior.” However, this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King’s address at Western Michigan University on December 18, 1963, presents a compelling reason why legislation remains a worthwhile endeavor.
“Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there’s half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also. So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.”
Purpose is the point of integration in the heart where man meets God and fellow man. When we look upon another person’s heart we have every right to assess their good and bad actions, but we have no standing to judge a person only by their external appearance — that’s bigotry.
Unfortunately, the ignorance of racism, for example, persists because hearts are hardened by whites about blacks, and blacks about whites. Those who use the color of one’s skin to describe, decide, and then deride another person is the antithesis of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963.
How do we discover “the content of their character”? Start by being assured that each person has a purpose. Purpose defines us 10x, 100x, 1,000x more than race, gender, social status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, country of origin, favorite designer brand or sports team, or whatever other identifier one chooses to wrongly employ in the practice of bias.
Purpose prevails over prejudice. First impressions form quick opinions, but they need not be lasting ones. Develop the habit of seeing others first as a person with a purpose, and second as a presented package of external identifiers. The more you discipline your bias, the more likely you are to accurately assess what makes their heart beat, even if it is to Thoreau’s different drummer and doesn’t register within you. Better yet, you may form an unlikely friendship.
Be On-Purpose!
Kevin
