Its amazing how we see the world in lines. We divide people according to dotted lines... race, religion, preferences. We divide people according to definitions of 'same' and 'different'. We divide ourselves into poles..just to struggle the rest of our existences with one another, just to argue and fight and war.

I am guilty of the same, everyday. I must learn to embrace difference, to appreciate that i have been given opportunity to expand. This is what it means to love our neighbours - the Samaritan empathizing with someone outside his sphere, someone who, in society's view, would have no claim with him.

This is how Jesus empathized with the women, the widows, the prostitutes, the lepers, the beggars, the Greek, the Roman, the Samaritan. Seeing God's Heart in all hearts.

The challenge of self-righteousness is great. The fear that we cannot hold on to something that would differentiate us from others, from the tax collectors, the corrupt, the liars and the thieves, the proud and arrogant, the dirty and the desperate. The fear that we are actually the same.

This is why religion sometimes becomes a rock that hardens our hearts. It gives us the sense of a heightened ground from which to make our judgements. It can easily be warped to be the thing that justifies our divisions.

**