Christian Faith Stereotypes Essay

Christian Faith, Psychology, and Stereotypes God created all humans in His image, yet people look differently, speak differently, dress differently, and the list goes on. While many see these as positive, beautiful things, some do not. Unfortunately, there are people in this world that use these differences to make assumptions about other people. Sometimes these snap-judgements can be positive, often times they are negative; consequently, stereotypes have a negative connotation. Studying Psychology is one way we can learn about the potential harms of stereotypes. Stereotypes are ultimately “educated guess” about people, but according to the definition, it is “the process by which people draw inferences about others based on their knowledge of the categories to which others belong.” In theory, stereotypes can be helpful. We recognize that certain …show more content…
Paul Moes and Donald J. Tellinghuisen write in Exploring Psychology and Christian Faith about some of the themes of human nature. The first theme that Moes and Tellinghuisen focus on is that humans are relational persons. This begins with the fact that who God is relational; He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is also related to humans, especially since we are made in God’s image. According to Moes and Tellinghuisen, because of this, humans were made for three kinds of relationships: God to humans, human to human, and humans to creation. Humans have a relationship with God since humans are dependent on God and not equal. While humans have relationships with others, God has relationships with individual people and communities. Humans also have a relationship with creation since we are stewards to creation and God calls for us to care for creation. However, Psychology emphasized the relationship to oneself and does not study how God relates to people. Psychology also tends to emphasize individuality over