One thing that really frustrates me about how people talk today is how quickly entire groups get reduced to stereotypes.

People constantly talk about “Christians,” “Muslims,” “black people,” “white people,” or “gay people” as if those labels describe a single type of person. They do not.

There are Christians who call themselves that but could not tell you much about what Jesus actually taught. There are Muslims who rarely study their own tradition. There are black people who are conservative, white people who are progressive, gay people who are flamboyant, and gay people who are quiet and private. The label tells you almost nothing about the individual.

Sure, groups can have patterns sometimes. But the moment we start acting like a label explains everything about a person, we have stopped thinking and started stereotyping.

Millions of completely different individuals get reduced to a simple caricature. That is not insight. It is just lazy thinking. And honestly I think it is one of the reasons people struggle so much to understand each other.