Monday, August 28, 2006

Mankind, humankind... either way, God created one race of humans

So, the pastor at the church we attend just finished an interesting series... The Untouchables. He touched on three difficult issues before believers that really shouldn't be that difficult. The first week he led us down the path of examining our views on race.
Having grown up in a military family, as a kid I lived on the east coast and the west coast, then in my church ministry years areas in between the coasts. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the race thing. Then, while telling a story to a group in Colorado before moving to the Nashville area I shocked myself when I realized I had referred to one of the characters in the story by indicating he was a (insert race here) man but neglected to indicate the race of the other man when referring to him (a Caucasian person). WHAM! It hit me... I discovered in that moment, though I thought I had made pretty good progress, I had indicated a prejudice when the attitude of my heart poured out of my mouth. It wasn't a racial slur or even anything derogatory toward a particular race. It was just the simple reality that for no reason other than the fact this character was not Caucasian I used his race to identify him in a story without identifying the race of the other character.
I had another one of those ah-ha moments during this series. Since the day in Colorado mentioned above I've been doing very well. As a matter of fact just days before the message at our church I had been telling someone standing on my front porch about a young man who lived across the street on the corner and was able to successfully describe who he was without saying the (insert race here) kid on the corner. Sounds simple, but try it yourself. Then the morning of the racism message it hit me... clearer than the day in Coloraod. As I was reading around passages the pastor was reading and referring to it hit me that when God created Adam and Eve He created one race. Period. Races were created by man. We truly are one very big family... all from the same original family tree. Thank you God for that revelation. We are ALL family.

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