The Only Cure
I like the way Tony Evans, a pastor, author and speaker, put it: “Racism isn't a bad habit; it's not a mistake; it's a sin. The answer is not sociology; it's theology.” As we’ve seen in the past many days, racism is deadly, a deadly sin. People have no doubts about the fact that it has to be addressed and somehow fixed. But marches, protests, speeches, riots and other human constructs will never produce a cure. Ultimately, there is no power in those things. The power is in the Blood.
In an interview with Fox News, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, said it quite succinctly: “You gotta love God to love people.” Racism, as well as all other forms of prejudice, is a byproduct of the human condition. It comes with our fallen fleshly nature. We can’t simply be talked out of it any more than a cardiac patient can be talked out of his heart disease. It’s a heart condition with only one cure.
Every culture in every era of human history has had its own forms of discrimination. Human beings seem to be particularly skilled at identifying and highlighting the differences between people. We learn it at an early age and hone the skill throughout our lifetimes. No doubt you can remember the first time some other kid pointed out a unique feature of yours and made you the subject of ridicule. Perhaps you felt marginalized due to the physical trait the other kids suddenly found amusing. But you weren’t amused.
My very obvious feature, making me a perfect target for teasing, was the undeniable enormity of my ears. Yes, they were big and stuck out at right angles to my head. You couldn’t miss them. I can still remember the first instance of mocking I had to endure from an older kid at school. I was 5 and he was about 7. From that day forward, it was a nearly daily routine that didn’t miss a beat when we moved and I entered fourth grade at a new school. “Dumbo,” “big ears,” “elephant ears” were the usual affronts cast my way. The really creative ones would ask, “Can you fly with those?” Self-conscious doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt about the satellite dishes protruding from my head. I wanted desperately to be “normal.”
Kids can be cruel. Unfortunately, so can adults when it comes to marginalizing people based on nothing more important than physical features. The fact that it starts so early and is universally present in people everywhere shows it is not just learned behavior. It is genetic. We don’t all discriminate in the same way about the same things, but we all participate.
The color of one’s skin seems even more arbitrary than the size of one’s ears for creating unnecessary separation, discomfort, anxiety and hatred. It makes no sense. Satan loves it. He loves division and disunity. He originated it. It started in the Garden. Racism is just one symptom of the heart disease that entered the world when that division took place.
The racism and bigotry of the first century was primarily between Jew and Gentile. The Apostle Paul knew that form of racism as a Pharisee prior to his rebirth in Christ. He wrote to the church at Ephesus,
For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. (Ephesians 2:14-16)
Only becoming part of the family of God will heal the hearts, break down the walls and establish the peace, justice and unity for which humanity longs.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
─Galatians 3:28