People tend to generalize. (That’s a generalization, of course, so forgive me in advance.) The human mind cannot contain and process every nuance on the thousands of bits of information that come at us, and the brain’s natural wiring is to look for and create patterns. Over time, patterns of thought are reinforced, not eroded, by additional evidence.

On the good side, we are able to get through the day without becoming paralyzed by every stimulus and input. On the bad side, we stereotype, we form prejudices, we cling to bigotry (which can highly individualized or as broad as a social and community or cultural prejudice that resists re-examination at all costs!). And we generalize about things somewhat indiscriminately. We take a particular bit of evidence—a news report, a bad experience, a friend passing on hearsay, and we turn it into a generality. For example:

• One [1] Bernie Madoff allows a new generation to blame and despise Jewish people for their greedy and crooked ways.
• One [2] Willie Horton allows a generation of people to fear and despise African-Americans as criminal and violent (and the electorate to assume that Michael Dukakis wasn’t fit to be President).
• There are voices out there still saying, and influencing thousands of others to believe, that all homosexuals have AIDS. Even the [3] CDC has published generalizations which are particularly damaging.
• Sensational gossip about [4] NAMBLA—a fringe group—allows a broad swath of people to think that all homosexuals are child molesters.
• A few Republican lawmakers who are corrupt allows Democrats to say that all Republicans are evil. Depending on which party you belong to, if any, you may be highly susceptible to believing that.
• A few Democratic lawmakers who are corrupt allows Republicans to say that all Democrats are evil. Depending on which party you belong to, if any, you may be highly susceptible to believing that.
• A handful of high-profile Christian evangelists, or the Pope, doing something hypocritical leads a generation of people to reject the Christian faith because they generalize that ” Christians are hypocrites.”

It is really difficult to reverse this pattern because of another generality: that people are drawn toward bad news, selfish motivations, etc..

St. Paul certainly was given to generalities, and because of his enormous influence, his particular comments have had power over human thinking for centuries. For example, in his letter to the Romans, 3:23, he generalizes about the human race: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In Paul’s thinking, all human beings are deficient in God’s eyes. In other words, Paul’s God is given to generalities. What part of “all” don’t we understand?

Here’s what bothers me. I am most troubled that the faith I live by, and teach, is tainted, through the process of corporate generalization, with the stains that other Christian faith groups have left behind. Recently novelist [5] Anne Rice left the Catholic Church. “Today I quit being a Christian,” she said, for the sake of Jesus. Yes, Rice was generalizing from her particular experiences and her perceptions of the church’s dark side. But other Catholics I know —who see and hear the same problems and issues such as the present Pope’s medieval clericalism and sexist, homophobic views, or priestly sexual abuse, etc., see those problems as specific problems and not as evidence that God does not exist or that all Christians are hypocrites or the Church has nothing to offer.

Also recently, the documentary film “[6] 8: The Mormon Proposition” detailed the role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in covertly promoting and raising funds to ensure the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Along with other right-wing fundamentalist groups— and the Catholic Church— the Mormons generalized about what opening civil marriage to gay or lesbian couples might do to destroy marriage as an institution. “Save Marriage!” became the highly generalized battle cry. And on the side of tolerance, thousands more people who have seen the film will go away with another generalization fixed in their brains: Organized religion sucks!

We have joked in our local congregation that we’re okay because we’re not that organized. But the truth is, Christ’s message is damaged by Christians who are hypocritical, unethical, abusive, manipulative, and prejudiced. It is harder to put the positive message out there that we, and thousands of other local churches, are doing good things in the name of God, when those good things usually are that new or news-worthy, when a few things which grab the news headlines show that some bad things are also being done in the name of God.

This is where particularizing comes in. Most human beings can’t do much about bad generalizations (although Benedict XVI could go a long way by moving his own thinking into the 21^st century). But we can particularize the grace of God, one life at a time. We can clean up our own acts. We can show kindness and compassion to one other individual. And we can even save the institution of marriage by attending to the quality of our own marriage rather than blaming it on generalizations about society.

—Pastor Dan Hooper