No individual is better.

Certainly you experience many events in your life that heighten your awareness of differences—differences culturally, differences behaviorally, differences psychologically, emotionally. Those differences that assault your daily life have no ultimate truth. There is no meaning to those differences. The only truth, the only meaning that merits your attention is that you share in God’s creation. You are all the same. No individual is better than another. Likewise, no individual is below another.



In recent events that have unfolded, you are only too aware of the injustice that one can inflict on another. But the individual who creates the suffering and is responsible for the loss is in no way in a lower station of life than you. You are a part, an unconscious part but nevertheless a part, of the life of one who may be a stranger to you yet whose actions have a profound impact on your life.



You have often heard that it is important to pray for your enemies. Praying for the enemy, however that is defined, does not mean looking down upon the enemy from some high position and with benevolence offering a prayer on behalf of another. Praying for the enemy ultimately means seeing yourself and recognizing that you and another have so much more in common than the differences that are made evident by the actions of that other person. When you pray for another in that you see yourself in another, you are not condoning the actions but you are affirming the spirit.