Beyond Biases: Embracing Authenticity in Others.

I love church concerts, especially if it is classical music concerts. I rarely miss them. No matter how engaged I am, I will find to attend, perhaps, I might get to meet them standing to sing the "Hallelujah Chorus". But I attended a concert that changed the way I see things and life.

My friend invited me to their church concert, I went quite late because of some engagements I had. By the time I arrived, the choir was singing "Zadok the Priest: Coronation Anthem". I sat down and enjoyed the beautiful rendition.
When the choir was done singing, it was time for me to witness the greatest shock of my life. I come from a traditional orthodox Christian background with catholic roots and within me, I already know what is and what is not acceptable to God.

I remember the day I attended a Pentecostal church for the first time, a lady who sat beside me kept on blowing the whistle, I didn't figure out how blowing the whistle inside the church contributed to worshipping and giving thanks to God. But that was a long time.

When the choir was done, I was soon to be introduced to the greatest shocks of my life. This was Anglican Church and from what I read about the church, it is an orthodox church and I expected some semblance of doctrine.
But when the gentleman who moderated the concert came out to the lectern to usher us into the next item on the program of the event, I was already disappointed, and disoriented and I lost interest. I almost stood up and left. He was in dreadlocks. Holy Lord! What kind of human being wears a dreadlocks to church?
My perceived expectations of the church clashed with my experienced reality. I didn't hear him, I didn't hear what he said, I didn't understand what he said that made the congregation clap that loud, neither did I know what was funny about the jokes he cracked that everybody laughed.

My biases against him were profound and immense. I couldn't imagine this in my church neither could this happen in the Catholic church where I took my religious roots.

But I sat down and pondered; this was not my church, I was not forced to be here, I came because I wanted to come. What if I look beyond my expectations of this gentleman? Asking these questions, I began to accept reality. My deep-seated religious expectations and biases were slowly eroded, I began to laugh at his next jokes, I clapped at the end of every speech he gave, and I noticed when I paid attention that he spoke with a British accent, not phony or fake, but beautiful and compelling.

I asked myself, what if we cut down our expectations of people? What if we see people for what they are and not what we expect of them? What if we don't paint our reality in other people's life? Just what if we look beyond our biases and truly accept people's authentic selves? We may never truly appreciate what people are, what they have, or who they are until we see beyond our biases and our expectations of them. There's goodness in every man. But we waste time looking for what people aren't and when reality stares us in the face, we are faced with displeasure, discomfort, and disappointment.