Racial Discrimination
Mark potter
Over the lockdown period, as huge as it has been, the threat of Covid 19 is not the only thing we have had to be aware of. Amongst the plethora of challenges and issues that impact the lives of individuals and communities, the issue of racial prejudice has rightly been highlighted as an evil that we should continually and vehemently oppose. The murder of George Floyd in Minnesota rightly caused a fresh outcry against racial violence and discrimination of any kind. What can we say about this from a Christian perspective? Certainly, a great deal. Here are a few brief thoughts.
If, as the Bible points out, there is a God who made all of humankind in his image, it follows that when we treat someone as lesser because of ethnicity or skin colour we are attacking and damaging a person or people who God loves deeply and has created precious and sacred. Indeed, the view that an individual is inferior to another is based not just on one person’s skin colour, but also an absurd authority that a person assigns to their own skin colour to enable them to make that judgment.
Therefore in a racist mind set, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not recognised as the authority on what it is to be a person; furthermore, the testimony of God’s interaction with the world as seen in the Bible is not treated as the gauge for whether or not people are deemed to be equal. This is something that is so vastly removed from God creating all of humankind, every single person, in His image.
This God who gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, that he would save the world through him (John 3:17).
Indeed, it is, the Lord Jesus, who John refers to in his gospel’s prologue as having life and that life is the light of all mankind! (John 1:4.)
Racism is a deep offence to God, an example of what the Bible calls sin - sin that is rightly once again being exposed at this time, as people are drawn to consider how it is engrained in today’s society in such a way that we can all on some level be affected by it (of course we are not all victims of it). There are numerous places in the Bible that speak out against racial discrimination. Apart from these, (and this list below is just a select few) when one looks at the life of Jesus Christ and the early church as seen in the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, we see a clear message that God so loves the world that he would enter into its messy chaos to bring the possibility for all people to share eternity with him.
Romans 10:12-13 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. 13 For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
James 2:8-9 8 You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
Acts 10:28b “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”
John 1 :4 and 5
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Our prayer, here in the Parish of Wisley with Pyrford, when it comes to this grave issue is that God’s light will shine to change hearts and minds and eradicate the obscuring and damaging darkness of racial prejudice.
Luke 1:37 – Nothing is impossible with God!