In speaking of being called to holiness, we look at the first letter of St Peter in which he tells us: Rather, become holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, after the likeness of the holy One who called you; remember, Scripture says, Be holy, for I am holy.
The holy One we know to be Jesus, the Christ. He was holy because He lived an other-centered life and unconditionally loved, forgave and respected all other humans that came into His life. There were absolutely no exceptions.
We are called to imitate His holiness. Our response must be to try with all power within us to imitate Him by unconditionally loving, accepting and forgiving as He did all people who come into our life.
How do we truly develop the power to do this? I think the first step is to make sure that our attitudes about all others are non-judgmental. It starts with the way we think. If we are in the habit of judging others, we can never learn how to unconditionally love all others. Anytime I make even one exception, I weaken my ability to live like Jesus lived.
One might ask: How can I learn to live this way? If you begin to realize and believe that all human beings share in the same life that you do and are a part of the same human family, you will begin to develop more tolerance for others and the ability to not judge them if they think or act differently than you do. Any time I judge someone else, I lessen my own self-worth since I don’t act like a child of God. Prejudice and bigotry hurt the person expressing prejudice and bigotry more than the person at whom prejudice and bigotry is directed. Why? Because it reduces the person expressing prejudice and bigotry to less than he/she is in God’s Kingdom. God accepts all others. When I don’t, I attempt to make myself greater than God.
The greatest problem I see in our world today is that so many people believe, when they hate and judge others, that they are acting as true believers in God and only expressing His judgment. What fools! As Jesus said, there is only one Judge, God Himself. We cannot presume to judge in His behalf unless we want to be judged. And God’s judgment on us, when we express prejudice and bigotry, is that we are not living as His children. The greatest fault of many modern people is that they judge others as sinners, thus becoming sinners themselves. How sad! Meshiha qam! (Syriac)