Do you see a racial problem in our world today?

I had thought at one point that once we had an African – American President that Martin Luther King‘s dream would be realized. I am sorry to say that it has not happened. It actually seems to have become worse, from both sides. Blame is being thrown between people who don’t even know each other and yet it is always, or seems to be, the other guy’s fault.

Why are we so divided this way, by hate and anger over generations of abuse true enough but the understanding of the depth of hatred and bitterness escapes me. It is like the bitterness in the Middle East that has been going on for centuries, it is so deep until no amount of “peace negotiations” will ever work. It also seems that that is exactly what is happening in America.

We are allowing our racist pasts, on both sides, to cloud our judgment and our sense of morality. Where in the Scriptures does it say that we are to hate each other because of our skin color? It is not there, because I have read them many times and in no way or in any book from the Old Testament or the New is hatred for any reason encouraged!

We, as a nation not just certain groups of people, need to get back to God‘s Word and repent before things get completely out of control. Jesus is coming back and whether it is in ten years or in fifty it will happen. Yes, things are going to get worse economically before He returns but if we cling to Him and to following Him we will be the ones who triumph in the end.

God loves all of humanity, not just certain “races” of people. The Israelites were His chosen people, but with their rejection of Jesus they shunted their status aside. Not permanently, but God sent to us Gentiles the message and the blessings that they would’ve had in order to make them jealous enough to want Him back!

Jesus called the religious leaders in His day hypocrites because of their attitude toward the people that they were supposed to be leading. Hypocrisy is what we have shown to the world because we claim to be a Christian nation and yet we kill innocent children, unborn babies as a normal thing! Why is that happening? What purpose does killing an unborn child serve? We are going to be held accountable for this by God, so we should be considering this.

Many people in America as well as all over the world, don’t want to have much to do with Christians or church or God either. They want their own god, their own way of doing things, but He will hold you accountable, each of us! How can this be fixed in the religious climate that we live in today? Only by Christians doing what they are supposed to do by telling others about Christ and His love for them. Although, this will infuriate some people it will help in the end. Read God’s Word, pray about the problems at home and abroad, pray about your own problems since we all have them, God hears your prayers and will answer them in His own way and time.
The biggest problem that we have as people, not groups of people separated by race or ethnicity or culture, is that we expect everyone to think as we do. Regardless of where they grew up or how they were raised in their culture, people everywhere seem to expect others to know how they live, how their culture sees things or does things. Then we get offended when others don’t understand our unique position or our unique place in the world as a whole!

Why would or could you expect someone who has been living in Indonesia to understand the problems or the culture in Nigeria? Why would anyone expect an American, whose family has lived here for over two hundred years, to understand a Middle-Eastern culture, regardless of the religion involved? We cannot do it personally or individually or even as a country! Perception is the one part of life that everyone has, just as each of us has an opinion about everything, but our perception is clouded by our culture and the norms that we each grew up with.

It is the same with racial divides in our world today. Perception and our cultural norms that we each have, causes and compounds this divide and adds to our racial problems even further because we expect each other to understand how the other feels when it is impossible! If your skin is black or brown and you grew up in sub-Saharan Africa your perception of the world is going to be totally different from someone who looks like you but grew up in Chicago. Conversely, someone who is Caucasian and grew up in Atlanta won’t have anything much in common with a person who grew up in Russia other than their skin color.

The racial divide in our world is not getting any smaller, it is still there and in some places and people it is getting larger and deeper. The only way to come together as humanity and not as racial groups is to accept the One who can cross those divides and change our hearts so that we see each other as Christians and not as we do in our limited human ways. Give Jesus a chance to make a sweeping change in your life, to open your eyes to the humanity that is around you and not the racial differences and cultural differences. Because until we can, there will always be strife, anger, bitterness, hatred and loneliness in our world and Satan will make each of these worse.

He will use his ways and his powers to make all of these so bad that we would think of nothing more than killing each other just to feel better, or even killing ourselves so that the pain and loneliness would go away. The pain and loneliness that we feel are there because of him and because of the divides that we feel toward each other, and if he can make it worse he will. As long as he can use our emotions and our own racial or cultural divisions against us, he will. If it will keep us from giving our lives to Christ, even better.

The only “fix” for these problems is a relationship with Jesus which continues to grow until He comes back, because He will! We are not promised tomorrow, only today and while we have the day we need to be seeking Jesus and His Kingdom, because nothing else really matters because the “stuff” that you have here will not travel in either direction. It will be left or sold or destroyed in some way after your death, it is temporary, just like your life here. Life with Jesus is eternal, life in hell is eternal too but your “stuff” nor your position in life will not matter one bit in the life after this one. Think about it.

What shall we do then?

Should we believe the testimony of man as many seem to do in the world today or should we cling to our salvation through Jesus?

There are many today that are leading people in the wrong direction, some of them supposedly doing this from their pulpit in the church. What will become of them and their followers? If they will pray and humble their hearts toward the God that is spoken of in the bible, then they can and will be saved from their transgressions. Yet, many people today place their faith in the messenger rather than the message. This was a fine thing to do when Jesus was the messenger before He ascended back into Heaven, but today the messengers are just as flawed and sinful and the one bringing the message (yes, I am including myself in this ).

We are all flawed, sinful human beings and none of us who stand on this earth are any better than anyone else, but there are some who think that they are and they are the ones who are leading others astray. They are subtle, like the one that they are serving and not the One that they think they are serving. Many deceivers are present in this world today, but they have learned well. The message that they bring is wrapped in words that are beguiling, some of them from centuries past, some of them from recent times but their meaning is that we can do it ourselves and we don’t need God’s help.

We cannot do it without Him! Can you command a storm or rain on parched ground? Can you tell the sun to come up an hour later today? We are the created and not the Creator, only He can do those things if it pleases Him to do so! It would bring glory to Him and would make us see that He is in control and not us, but there are many today who would scoff at signs like these.

Our God, the only God, is in control even when things seem to be going wrong. We only have to place our faith and our trust in Him because He will bring about good things from what we see as bad. Our times and our time-table don’t line up with His unless we are surrendered to Him and know Him by His Word. When we walk with Him daily, then our wants and our desires will be the same as His, although we will still be attacked by Satan and his demons in very subtle ways.

Some of those will be our own feelings like depression or feelings of not being in control, which we are not, or even emotions which overwhelm us to the point of hopelessness. All of these come from the one being who is trying to derail your faith and your belief in God and His Son. This has always been the goal ever since Eve decided to follow her own desires rather than listening to Adam and God.

Before anyone gets upset or thinks that I am blaming Eve for our problems, I want to make it clear that she had encountered a master of lies, Satan himself. Adam couldn’t have withstood him either and he didn’t so it wasn’t the woman’s fault! They both knew what God had commanded, yet they chose to follow their own desires. God knew that this was coming before they did so it wasn’t a surprise but it still hurt His feelings just the same.

If we really knew Him and the awesome power that is being held back because of His love for us and the grace that has been given to us through Jesus, we would be humbled beyond measure. Considering His power to create or destroy with a word, how could you tell Him that you don’t believe in Him? What pitiful arrogance we have to confront the Creator of everything and then tell Him that we don’t think that He is real so we won’t believe in Him!!

These words and deeds are being done all over the world today. In different ways and different words but the message toward God is the same. We should be on our knees begging Him to forgive us and to take us as His sons, pitiful though we are, and make us as His servants just so we can have a place at His table if nothing else!

The time is coming when mankind will bow to Him. When that time is, no one knows but it is coming and soon. The prophecies of His Word are clear enough for all to understand and we are in what is called the “birth pangs” prior to that time. We will know when that time has come, but for many it will be too late. Read God’s Word, study it carefully, pray over it so that you will understand what you read and then get your heart ready for Him, ask Him into your life because He is the only cure for what is ailing our world and each of our lives.

What do you see here?

It has been through a tremendous fire with a lot of heat which is what did all of the damage to it. The fire was particularly hot but the safe was not breached, it seems that it was capable of still being locked even though the outside was scorched and then discarded. I see an analogy of our country and the state of religion in it.

Christians, whether black or white, have taken the heat from people who follow Islam and from people who don’t follow any religion at all. We have not been broken, we have not stopped being Christians but there are some who are discarding their belief in Jesus or their religion. Why is this happening?

Is it because of the state of our country and its economy? Is it because of the state of relations between the so-called “races” of people in our country? Now, before anyone gets all bent out of shape, the reason that I have races in quotes is because God did not make us this way! God created mankind! We are all the same race, whether your skin is white or black, yellow or brown or any shade between those. Our main difference is cultural. There are cultural differences between most everyone on earth regardless of where you may live.

We are brought up by our parents and grand-parents into a culture, regardless of where you live. You may be brought up in a community in Chicago or Detroit or New York, but your culture will be in line with those that you are around.

Christian’s, regardless of race, should follow Jesus’ example. He didn’t pay attention to the cultural norms of his people, He spoke to women and to Samaritans which other Jews actively avoided. He healed lepers, he touched them which no one in His culture would do. We are to be His hands, His eyes, His feet in our time because others need to know Him. How will they know about Him if we don’t take Him with us through our actions or our words?

How can we possibly fulfill the commission that Jesus gave us to take the gospel to every nation and tribe if we don’t do it? If our cultural differences keep us apart and separate us into “us” and “them”, how can we show each other the love of Christ?

At the beginning of this post there is a picture of a burned safe which had been discarded. It did what it was supposed to do because it protected the contents to the best of its ability from the fire. That is what Christians are supposed to be doing too…protecting others from the fire of hell by telling them about the love and forgiveness of God.

Then, telling them about what Jesus did for each of us regardless of our skin color or our race or our culture. He did it for all of us and if you need to know what “it” is I am going to tell you: He took the punishment and the torture of being apart from God as well as the punishment of the cross for our sins!

God loves each of us, and it doesn’t matter which culture we claim or what skin color we have but in order for us to be considered a child of God and forgiven, we have to accept Jesus’ sacrifice and believe that it was for us because it was! The way that the world has everyone thinking is about groups of people and we need to look at each other as individuals. Each of us is unique and different but we are all the same in God’s eyes!

The contents of that safe may have burned up, but it did its job as well as it could. It may not have been designed to take as much heat as it looks like it was exposed to, but we are. Our character is molded by our culture and that character is what we should be showing the world. If your character and your ability is modeled after Christ, then they will see Him and that is the best that we can do as individuals because we were created to be mankind and have a relationship with each other and with God.