Written By: Clarissa Mangaran
The golf course behind our house has been under renovation for a few weeks. The fairway has been nothing but dirt. Yesterday, I looked out from our balcony and saw the fairway filled with freshly laid, vibrant green sod. I announced to my husband in surprise, “Wow! They finished the golf course this morning!” My husband paused and said, “Uhhhhh…no. They are definitely still working on it.” When I looked out the window on the other side of our bedroom where he was sitting, I saw the other half of the fairway still bare. Not having the full picture leads to false assumptions. It is especially vital that we pause and turn to God for that full picture when tensions are high, and many people are feeling enraged.
It seems that the farther we go into 2020, the more issues arise that divide us as a nation. The “Us vs. Them” mentality is lethal. It kills our trust in one another. It kills our trust in our governing authorities. It kills our peace, and it kills our hope. It is very dangerous. “Us vs. Them” creates division. Division leads to hate. And it isn’t long before hate turns to violence. Before we make a decision to draw a line in the sand and pick a side, let’s stop and consult God’s Word. I’m going to keep emphasizing that we MUST turn to God first!
“Fools give full vent their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end.” (Proverbs 29:11)
I didn’t want to be a fool and recklessly and carelessly vent the rage I have felt recently because I know I don’t have the full picture. I know I will hurt people who are already hurting. Just this week, I have already completely changed my perspective on something after finding out more information about a situation. Only God truly knows EVERYTHING from every angle. So I have been slow to speak, knowing good and well that my assumptions about a situation could be completely wrong. But you know who isn’t wrong about anything? The Creator of all life. God has given us His Word to consult. We can seek wise counsel through the Holy Spirit.
What does God’s Word say about the things going on right now?
Race
We can’t ignore the racism issue going on right now. (Which has been going on for generations, really).
It’s important to know our origins. If you know the story of the Great Flood, you would know that all of humanity that exists today comes from Noah’s bloodline. Noah and his family carried the diverse genetic code to result in all the wonderful colors and shades of skin we see today. From the richest, deepest, blackest skin, to the milk chocolate brown, to the caramel, to the mocha, to the olive, to the pink-undertone, to the fairest, creamy porcelain skin. They are all beautiful to the Creator. I can imagine Him in heaven, putting together all the fantastic variations of colors that would accentuate the earth. To those with different pigments or freckles sprinkled across your face, I picture God with a paintbrush, your skin the canvas, creating a masterpiece. It is good. God loves variety and diversity. Look at the earth. Look at the sheer number of flowers. Innumerable snowflakes that have existed, each unique. Children from the same parents don’t even look exactly alike.
What I love about those ancestry tests that are out there is that it shows you just how diverse your ethnic background can be and how interconnected we all are. My genetic ancestry spans the globe! From the Philippines to the Dominican Republic, to Spain, to Portugal, to West Africa, to Ireland, to Korea, to Japan, to Italy, and China. I wouldn’t exist without the mixing of people groups. Almost everyone today wouldn’t.
Race is not a God-ordained concept. He did create different languages and scattered people across the earth in response to their rebellion against God in the story of the Tower of Babel [Genesis 11:1-9]. But race is a man-made concept we use to categorize and divide. Skin color isn’t even a good way to categorize a race. Look at Puerto Ricans, for instance. You can have one person fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. In the same family, another person with dark skin, black textured hair, and dark brown eyes. That’s just from one island!
God may have set the Israelites apart as His chosen people in the Old Testament, but He did so with the intention of one day making a way through the death and resurrection of Christ to tear down the walls of division and allow all of humanity into an intimate relationship with the Lord. Those who accept Christ are all now adopted into His New Covenant family [Ephesians 1:3-14]. Jesus is the Great Emulsifier! He brings together people who would not otherwise mix. We are all one human race sharing one Heavenly Father, who loves us so much He sent His Son to die a horrific death so that we would ALL have a way to enter into heaven for eternity. As believers, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are all family! The sacrificial and unconditional love of God is absolutely incredible and mind-blowing. Read 1 John 4:7-21. He calls us to love the same way, and not just a certain people group….but everyone! In fact, you’ll read that whoever does not love people who they can see cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
“Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
God may not have ordained the concept of race, but we’ve made it a thing, and the issue of racism exists, sadly. 2020 and we’re still dealing with this?? The Rosa Parks protests in the mid-’50s to the Martin Luther King Jr. protests through the ’60s, and we still haven’t reached a time of racial equality?? How can this be? We STILL have inequality and injustice and prejudices??
The Importance of ALL Life
A solution to the issues going on in America right now begins with addressing the importance of all human life to God and recognizing our own sin-nature and need of a Savior.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
Yes, ALL living, created beings matter to God.
Each person was known by God in the womb before a pregnancy test ever showed up positive [Read Psalm 139]. In fact, He had planned our existence before time even began [Ephesians 1:4-5; 2:10].
If only God’s love for us existed in our world, we would live in a perfect world, but it doesn’t. Out of God’s audacious love for us, He gave us free will. And this is where the problem starts. You know free will exists because, as we well know, we can choose to reject Christ as our Savior. God could have created us without the choice to reject Him, but He wanted our relationship to be based on us choosing to love Him back. I don’t want my husband married to me because he is forced to. I want my husband to choose to love me and be with me. The same is true of our God.
Unfortunately, the result of rejecting God’s definition of good and evil is sin. Sin entered into the world the moment Adam and Eve made the choice to reject God’s authority and choose for themselves what is right and wrong [Genesis 3:1-7].
When we reject God’s definition of good and evil and decide for ourselves what is right, people tend to decide what is right based on what feels good to them. You can see how quickly things go wrong. To a person committing murder, that felt right and good to them. To someone committing theft that felt good and right to them. To someone molesting and raping children that feels good and right to them. To someone who treats another person unjustly based on the other person’s skin color does so because it feels right to them. People are justified to commit crimes when led by their own emotions. Our hearts are sick and deceitful [Jeremiah 17:9]. You need only to look at the atrocities across history, and even at your own hateful attitude sometimes.
God gave Moses and the Israelites the 10 Commandments [Deuteronomy 5], so they would know good from evil. If we really want equal and humane treatment for every person, we must have a healthy respect for God’s definition of good and evil. True wisdom means learning those boundary lines and not crossing them. As Proverbs 9:10 says, wisdom begins with fearing the Lord. That means having respect and reverence for God’s sovereignty and having a humble perception of your place in this universe, especially in relation to His power and might.
Race is not the issue. Sin is.
Please hear me when I say that there IS injustice based on race that still exists today. We all want justice. We all want peace. What I am talking about is the ROOT of every problem across the globe since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Sin. Until we surrender our life to Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to come in and transform our hearts and our minds, we will never achieve the justice and peace we so desperately want. When it comes to the evils of this world, we are all at fault. We all add to the problem.
We need to stop the “Us vs. Them” mentality that is poisoning our society. The truth is that every single person has the generational sin of racism in their family line, whether consciously or subconsciously. You need to pray to break free from the generational sin of racism and prejudices in your own family. Pray it begins with you. If you have children teach them God’s Word and what He has to say about the importance of EVERY life, so they don’t perpetuate the same old corrupt mindset.
If you want to make a difference in this world, you MUST start with yourself. When you surrender your life to Christ, you become a vessel through which God can bring about His good and perfect will. When it’s time to take action, He calls some of us to step out for such a time as this.
[to be continued…]
Written By: Clarissa Mangaran
