Thursday, January 14, 2010

Let's Make Being Judgmental OUT Instead Of IN

Below, find three of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone that deal in one way or another with being too quick to pass judgment on others instead of taking the time to understand them.

The first episode involves judging people due to their outward appearance.  Our homeless youth have often run away from situations where they are bullied over everything from outward appearance to their beliefs.

Final note about this episode:  Actually, the people in the first episode were very compassionate toward their grotesquely-deformed patient.  But could they have gone a little farther and questioned why this person had to be separated from the rest of mainstream society just because she hadn't been blessed with good looks like they had?  How about us?  Do we try to change what needs to be changed or just take the easy route and allow things to remain status quo?









The next episode has to do with a mad scientist who has set up some kind of invention to weed out all of the "evil" people in the world.  He will end up being very surprised when his machine is put into action.







The final episode has to do with persecuting somebody who is different instead of taking the time to find out what they're all about.  A community learns (too late) a very important lesson when they take the former route instead of the latter.







Too often, our homeless youth get judged by people who haven't walked a mile in their shoes and don't know where they're coming from.  Will you take a different route than the one that gets taken too often?