Monday, April 7, 2008

Red and Yellow, Black and White (Part 4-Final)


By Taft Ayers

The sin of racism among the churches of Christ needs to be exposed for what it is. It is a failure to respect man as a bona fide member of the human family regardless of color. It is a robbing of elemental rights. It is a failure to openly accept a person as a child of God into the body of Christ. In the extreme form, racism is to the religious and racial bigot what alcohol is to the alcoholic. Both will feed upon prejudice. When taken away from them, both will lose their identity and panic into emotional insecurity.

Prejudice, just like all sins, is against God. Preachers and church folks need to cooperate in order to seek wholesome company of people that may be from other ethnic groups. We need to be sincere social contacts. We must try our hardest to not cultivate friendships with other races merely to build up church attendance and promote pseudo movements out of diversity. If our churches get bigger, then that will be a welcomed result, but never should it be the intent to start with.

Jesus Christ was color blind, money blind and status blind. In John 4 Jesus crossed the barriers of sex, race, morals, history and culture. He did all of this to save a woman and a town at Jacob’s well. His enemies even admitted this in Matthew 22:16. Christ never did anything by accident. One cannot love God by hating his fellow man. Jesus made the fatherhood of God the center of everything giving the idea of "father" new depth and content. Jesus himself felt the sting of prejudice. He did not respond.

Racism is wrong on both sides. Religion (man-made) is guilty of many mistakes. Whites have given non-whites sympathy and money, but not equality. Men must be changed from within. The non-white must understand the white and they must do the same. This requires time, effort and education. What if the Lord returns to see us segregated on both sides of the cross and professing to wear His name? We must remember that Jesus loves the little children, "all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white."

3 comments:

Alan said...

Good stuff, my friend.

Taft said...

Thanks man.

I have to say it is cleaned up a bit (thanks to Editor Clark)...

He takes out my profanities, slurs and rants each week.

Anonymous said...

It's true. I usually feel like I need to take a shower after reading his first draft; but I'm just making sure my boy can keep his youth ministry job.

You should have seen his "illegitimate children" portion of last week's article before I took out his references to Al Sharpton....now that could have landed this blog on the Attorney General's "Watch List" by itself.