Good horse – Bad horse

A friend of mine brought one of his buddies and some horses over this weekend and the three of us went riding for several hours on my property. I have ridden horses many times, primarily when hunting, and up to that point I had never seen a horse that I liked, and never seen a horse that liked me. I received my safety briefing from my friend. It reminded me of the hundreds of thousands of airline safety briefings that I have received during my life, (except my friend did not look nearly as good as the stewardesses and I noted that there were no seatbelts, or safety ramps to slide down during an emergency on horses).

My horse was a Tennessee Walker, not too large, and black as the ace of spades. Initially I was intensely wary of him and I was on guard, but he seemed to be mellow. I looked him in the eye and he looked back at me and we sized each other up. He did not seem to give me the evil eye, nor did he seem to dislike me and vice versa which was good. As it turned out he behaved nicely and seemed to enjoy the ride too. The only problem encountered was when my horse suddenly bolted forward and rammed the horse in front of me in the rump with his head . I thought, “Here we go again”, until I noticed a large horse fly flying away. The fly had lit right between his eyes and the horse wanted that fly off his head. I cannot say that I blame him.

Aside from that brief moment of excitement, the trip was uneventful and we had a relaxing ride; it was a cool day and we enjoyed some of God’s finest handiwork with beautiful scenery as we worked our way around the seventy four acre deep blue Honey Lake which is surrounded by huge majestic live oaks complete with long gray strands of Spanish moss lightly blowing in the breeze, and then on down through waist high wild grasses in the upland pine areas laced with cypress ponds. I fared well and aside from a sore rump today, I suffered no maladies. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I have decided to purchase a couple of horses of my own, provided I can find some nags that like me.

My horse bias is derived from past experiences, such as one time when the horse I was riding got spooked by something and began wildly galloping away with me on top trying to hang on for dear life; I was unsuccessful, fell off, and had to walk about a mile to get back to camp. I was sore for a week from the various cuts and bruises that I had on my side. I have had horses try to rub me against trees and fences trying to scrape me off, horses stopping to eat when I wanted to go, baring their teeth at me, and rearing up and just being jerks. Based upon these experiences, I had come to believe that “all” horses have nasty and foul dispositions and I wanted no part of them. Lucky for me that I decided to give horses one more chance.

I have noticed that some people are similar in bias towards people and admittedly I have struggled with it at times. In fact most racism is derived from some type of bias that comes from from our experience such as an isolated bad encounter or series of encounters, or even stories of such encounters are passed down from generation to generation whereby each generation is taught to dislike or even hate. People of a certain race are just all lumped together and written off. Hitler was an extreme example of it, but the Ku Klux Klan, Black Panthers members, radical Shiites, and Sunnis are not much different.

People are individuals and we should reserve our opinion of them until we have something for which to render an opinion. I met a guy not long ago who had a horrible reputation of being a cutthroat businessman that would cheat his own mama out of a dollar if he had the opportunity. I found this guy to be honest and forthright and all of my dealings with him have been just the opposite of what I had heard from more than one source. Could it be that he is just an excellent businessman and came out on top and some folks are mad about it, or perhaps they are just jealous of the success that this excellent businessman has enjoyed. I’m just glad that I did not listen to the bias and judged him strictly upon my own dealings with him, because he seems to be a great friend already in the short time that I have known him.

Jesus Christ is adamant that He wants His followers to treat everyone as they would like to be treated. This is the cornerstone of the Christian doctrine. If you struggle with accepting those with a different skin color, accent, culture, etc. or even a person that you have heard about, stop and think about it. Don’t miss out on a potentially great relationship that you might enjoy for the rest of your life because of bias; instead make that judgment after you meet them and not before. Who knows, you might even meet a likable horse too

Eph.4:31
Let all bitterness, wrath, anger,
clamor, and evil speaking be
put away from you, with all malice.
And be kind to one another,
tender-hearted, forgiving one
another, even as God in Christ forgave
you.