How the Church Should Respond to Racial Division
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Can we become any more divided?
Where does the church of our Lord Jesus Christ stand in all of this division?
The human race has heard all of this rhetoric before. Pharaoh demeaned the Hebrew people and made them slaves to build the storage cities and great monuments.
Black leaders in Africa demeaned the members of other black groups and sold them into slavery to British and North American traders.
A German Chancellor and his propagandists demeaned all Caucasians who were not blonde haired, blue eyed Arians or who were disabled and sent them to concentration camps and eventually to the ovens.
How the Church Should Respond to Racial Division
Where the church of Lord Jesus Christ stood in these moments of history is where the church needs to stand right now.
When the Hebrew people were in slavery to Egypt, being treated as less than human, God said to His servant Moses:
“I have surely seen the oppression of My people… and have heard their cry… for I know their sorrows… So I have come down to deliver them… and to bring them from that land to a good and large land… I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you…” (Exodus 3:7-10 NKJV).
That has been the plan of God in every generation.
When mankind is dehumanizing and oppressing a segment of the human race, God sends His “called out” ones.
When African kings were selling other Africans to Arab, British, and American slave traders, “Estimates vary that between 10 million and 28 million Africans were sent to the Americas and sold into slavery between 1450 and the early 19th century” (David Smith, “African Chiefs Urged to Apologize for Slave Trade,” The Guardian, November 18, 2009).
God saw.
God heard their cries.
God knew their sorrow and pain.
God called His people to deliver them.
1. John Newton would not be your first choice.
He became a cabin boy on board a ship following the death of his godly mother, when he was only seven years of age. His work on the seas led him into the slave trade transporting slaves from Africa to the Americas.
He had a miraculous salvation experience and became a preacher of the Gospel and a firm abolitionist.
He wrote one of the most popular hymns of all time, “Amazing Grace,” in 1779.
Interestingly, he wrote the music in what early Americans called the “pentatonic scale”; or it was written entirely on the black keys of the piano.
The words of “Amazing Grace” are set to the melody of the black slaves.
Rev. John Newton was also a very close friend to a member of the British Parliament, William Wilberforce. Ten years after the writing of “Amazing Grace” Wilberforce began introducing bills into Parliament for the abolition of slavery.
That victory was won March 25, 1807.
2. She was a most unlikely candidate to be a missionary.
Her health was very poor. However, God saw young girls in India were being forced into temple slavery and prostitution.
He heard their desperate cries.
He knew their sorrow and suffering.
He found a Scottish women with brown eyes and called her to India.
Amy Carmichael founded the Dohnavuer Fellowship in 1901. Amy is said to have rescued more than one thousand girls from slavery and prostitution.
Her greatest victory came three years before she passed away. The Indian government outlawed temple slavery in 1948.
3. The German blitzkrieg had swept through western Europe like a great hurricane.
With it came the required hatred and demeaning treatment of the Jewish people. It seemed all the world had turned the back of them or at the very least forgotten them.
After in 1939, Cuba, the United States and Canada refused entry to nine hundred Jewish people on board the MS St. Louis.
All of them were returned to various western European nations; all of them were again under the Nazi jackboot.
In Haarlem, Netherlands, God had a “called one” who loved the “Apple of His Eye.”
Casper ten Boom was a watchmaker with a heart sold out to the Lord. He could not passively sit by and see “The Chosen People” being systematically arrested, deported and murdered.
He and his son and three daughters opened their home to be a rescue center for the Jewish people.
All of them but one would give their life rescuing God’s Chosen from the killing machine of the Nazi regime. Corrie ten Boom was miraculously delivered from Ravensbruck, a concentration camp north of Berlin through an administrative error.
From there, God sent her a round the world to declare to all of mankind, “There is no pit so deep but what God’s love is deeper still.”
The Apostle Paul preached a similar message to the Athenians on Mars Hill.
“I perceive that in all things you are very religious…” he said to the men of Athens. “For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship with knowing, Him I proclaim to you.” Who was this God the people Athens needed to know? He is the “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth… and He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings” (Acts 17:22-26 NKJV).
Almighty God made mankind, the human race, “all of one blood.”
Whether Asian, African, European, American, black, Caucasian or Latino; we are all of one blood, no matter the color of the skin.
The Apostle Paul gave further clarification in his letter to the Ephesians.
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14-15).
Every human being has the same Father and are members of the same family.
No wonder we are all of the same blood.
We may have a different appearance and even have a different skin color; but, we have the same Father and we have the same blood flowing through our veins.
We are brothers and sisters.
Just as God called Moses to rescue his people from Egypt; just as He called John Newton and William Wilberforce, Amy Carmichael and the ten Boom family, God is calling His church in America.
God sees the affliction.
He hears the groaning. He knows the suffering and oppression. He is calling His people to rise up to the occasion.
Do not get caught up in the rhetoric.
Do not become swayed by the politically correct labeling and cultural pressure.
Refuse to be divided by the hatred and the anger of the men and women who are not born again.
Rather, seek the Lord Jesus Christ.
Allow the Holy Spirit to penetrate your heart deep and wide, revealing those areas of your inner person that has anything less than God’s eyes and God’s heart for other human beings.
Ask Almighty God to give you His love for His children, your brothers and sisters, whether they are African, European, Asian, South American, or North American.
We are all family!
“Love has been perfect among us in this: That we have boldness in the day of judgment. Because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love: but perfect love casts our fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fear has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:17-18 NKJV ).
When we allow our heart and our life to be filled with God’s love we will live in this world as Jesus is in Heaven.
We will not fear and hate one another.
We will live in peace and harmony.
That must be the message and the mission of the church at this critical time.
Resources mentioned in this article
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