So, honestly, my first thought about Martin Luther King Day
is always the same: we should definitely
celebrate that wonderful man.
Unfortunately, my second thought is almost always the same,
too: It’s a shame that Martin Luther
King ever had to stand up for people.
I mean, really. It
seems like such a shame that we can’t just figure out some way to get
along. Didn’t we all learn that in
Kindergarten? How to get along?
If you didn’t, listen up, people, because I found something
that should totally rock your world off its axis. Seriously.
Recently, I started a new plan for Bible reading that
completes the Bible in one year. In the
past, my attempts have been very scattered and rarely successful, but this year
I am trying something new. Keep me
accountable. Anyway, the year ended with
the end of the both the New and Old Testaments, and I came across a verse I had never seen before. I have been thinking about it to this very
day, and I think in light of this holiday celebration, I want to share it with
you.
Malachi 2:10 says this:
“Have we not all one Father? Has
not one God created us? Why, then are we
faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our Fathers?”
Let that sink in for a moment. I am pretty sure that if you look up the word
“all” in this verse you will find that it means that NO ONE is left out. We share a father – like Tony Evans once said
– if you call God Father, and I call God Father, doesn’t that make us
siblings? Yep. It does.
A week or so ago I posted something about how we have to
rule over sin (See Genesis 4:7). Why do
we think that this does not extend to the sin of not being able to get along
with people with a different color of skin?
Sometimes, regrettably, our attitudes towards people of
different color are taught to us as children.
Some of us have more to overcome there than others. My parents were born in the Depression
era. It sort of surprised me later that
I could find things in the way that I was brought up that made my family
racist. What about yours? And I am not just talking to white people,
here, friends.
This is a gospel problem.
This is a sin problem. If this is
a sin that you find yourself in, you need to abolish it. You really need to deal with this
problem. The world is watching to see
Christians get something right. We
cannot afford to sin in this way. It is,
perhaps, more damming to us than any other sin apart from preaching heresy.
I say that because it is so prevalent. So many people are out there claiming that
some of their best friends are (fill in a color here), while secretly still
hating those of that color. You do the
surgery. Cut deeply into your heart of
attitudes and see if you are part of the problem, and not the solution. It does not honor the God that we say that we
love to treat other people with contempt because they look different.
My friends Mitch and Char are in Africa serving the
Lord. My friends Luther and Ronda want
to do this, too. I have friends serving
the Lord with a tribe in Papua. They don’t
care about color so much.
What about my friends living in America? Will you lay down the unjust hatred you have
towards people who look different this Martin Luther King Day? Isn’t it time you did? After all, there is only once race – the human
one.
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