As I suggested in the last issue, besides looking at how Jesus prayed in order to acquire His mind, we must look at how He lived as found in the Gospels. I highlighted, in the last Bulletin, how He refused to be prejudiced or bigoted even though His society was. He set no real obstacles – preconceived notions or thoughts – to encountering others. He trusted everyone, even though some didn’t, perhaps, deserve His trust. In particular, He refused to become engaged with disabled persons who were seen by most in His society as being “unclean” and, in some way, “punished” by God. Good Jewish people did not touch or interact with the disabled lest they be contaminated and then have to be purified. Of course there was not real understanding about disabilities during His life. Nevertheless, He did not allow any of the notions of His society from reaching out and helping or supporting those in need.

This tells us something more about the mind of Christ. He treated each person with respect and love. He created no barriers between Him and others. He rejected all stereotypes and only saw others as a real opportunity to love and help.

So, one of the first things that we must do in attempting to acquire the Mind of Christ is to assess our own perceptions of others. Do we have prejudices? Are we bigoted? Do we embrace certain stereotypes of others? If we do, then metanoia – the change of our hearts and minds – must be something that we embrace. All humans belong to the same human family. We must be open to accepting them regardless of any of the things that make them different from us.

We also see that Jesus didn’t base His reactions to others on how they treated Him. He lived by an internal rule which guided His behavior, namely to treat all others the way that He wanted to be treated. And He did not change His way of behaving even when others hated Him, betrayed Him, hurt Him or misjudged Him. His only response was: Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.

Unfortunately I hear so many people say, It’s to hard to live like Jesus lived. I truly believe people say this because they just don’t want to change. Instead of trying to be more like Jesus, they just want to wallow in their own prejudices and ways of thinking and behaving!