Lack of Love leads to Seclusion

There are a lot of sensitive people in this world. There are even more hateful ones. The quote "Everyone's a critic," is thickly concentrated in the air of today. What made me think of this was the homily that was preached at mass today. My pastor spoke of leprosy. He picked out two little first-graders from the crowd and made them run around the church screaming "I'm a leper! I'm a leper!" That's what they had to do way back when there were lots of lepers around and no way to treat them. Lepers were truly outcasts and nobody would have anything to do with them.

As wrong as we feel that is - treating someone with utter disdain because of a skin disease that they can do nothing about - I'm sure each and every one of you reading this has treated someone, more or less, as a leper before. I know I have. Making fun of someone, critiquing a person's apparel, mocking one's weight . . . those are all forms of treating someone as if they had leprosy. In a way, it could be considered stereotyping or labeling someone. Maybe it's a stretch, but it can be incorporated. God knows it could be called gossiping.

For example, say you're taking a walk in your neighbourhood with your best friend. You see a person coming in the opposite direction who seems to have an obesity problem and is wearing a lot of dark clothes. Out of habit more than anything else, you lean over to whisper in your friend's ear "Oh God, look at that obese goth chick. I wonder who her parents are!" We all jump to conclusions like that. Sure, the girl could exercise a little more, but who are we to judge that? And maybe she wears a lot of dark clothing because black is the most slimming of colors. Who knows?

Mockery isn't always subtle either. It can be very unambiguous. That would be to make fun of someone to their face. There's a difference between telling one of your buddies they have a bat in the cave and going up to the girl in school who is notorious for having no friends and saying "So, do you have plans this weekend?"

I've seen people grow up, not trusting anyone in life, because of how they were treated through adolescence. They get teased about all of their insecurities and it absolutely ruins them. It could destroy their future because they may be too afraid to go out and get a job or interact with anyone. I ask you, who wants to be responsible for that?

It's crazy how serious this problem is, too. Most of the time people don't even notice it. They could say something as simple as "Look at that weird clerk. He's so gay." That could not only be hurtful to the clerk, but think about what you're saying. That's as bad as making fun of someone because their homosexual, and every bit as horrible.

I'm clearly not trying to defend myself of this accusation. I'm as bad about it as anybody, but I think we just all need to be a little bit more careful about this kind of thing and really think before we decide to make fun of someone else. Nobody is flawless, no matter how highly you may think of yourself. We're not God.