As a fan of the silver screen, I have seen thousands of actors over the years portraying many different roles. Yet there are some film stars who, when I see them, I typically know exactly who their character is and what is going to happen. If John Wayne shows up, there will either be a lot of jeeps or horses, and at some point someone is going to get punched. Christopher Walken’s character is going to be creepy and violent. Liam Neeson is going to use his “particular set of skills” to rescue somebody. Jennifer Aniston will have her heart broken, but it will all turn out well in the end. This is called typecasting, and it happens when an actor’s role or roles fit them so well or their performance becomes so iconic that the movie-viewer will always see them through that same character’s lens. Some actors embrace typecasting—think Lon Chaney or Steve Buscemi—while other fight against it. The latter response is what leads so many female child actors after their eighteenth birthday to go overboard in their attempts to convince the public that they aren’t that sweet little Disney actress anymore.

Typecasting isn’t just for movies. It’s easy for those preconceived notions of people to slip into our everyday life. This is particularly true when it comes to races and nationalities. Sometimes called profiling, there is a tendency for people to toss everyone from a particular country or ethnicity into one cultural and personality basket. I received a reminder of this a few weeks ago at the 2019 Iran Summit put on by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).

Among the scheduled activities for the conference was a discussion between Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer and UANI cofounder Dennis Ross. Suddenly a protester jumped up and began screaming at them. He was soon subdued and arrested. Then, immediately following the disruption, three Iranian citizens jumped up and began praising Israel. One of them even shouted, “Long live Israel.” Ambassador Dermer’s response was “If only all Iranians had freedom of speech.”

The Iranian government is filled with violent supporters of terrorism. Less than a month ago, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said of Israel, “This sinister regime must be wiped off the face off the map, and this is no longer . . . a dream (but) it is an achievable goal.”[1] However, we must not typecast all Iranians in light of this hateful rhetoric. There are millions of Iranians who have no animosity against Israel or the West. Instead, they are innocents trapped in a country run by an extremist theocratic government. These men and women do not deserve our anger but our compassion and our prayers. So as we pray that God brings down the Iranian leadership, let’s also ask the Lord for freedom, safety, and salvation for the everyday man and woman who is just trying to survive under this tyrannical regime.
-Joel

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[1] “Top Iran General Says Destroying Israel ‘Achievable Goal’.” France 24, 30 Sept. 2019, https://www.france24.com/en/20190930-top-iran-general-says-destroying-israel-achievable-goal.