Is it wrong not to care about race issues?

I don't know where to begin...so I'll just go ahead and say it. After getting saved and reading the bible for the first time, I realized there are only 2 races: Jew & Gentile.

But I live in America in 2010 and there's always talk about racism. (Especially being Black History Month.) Is it wrong not to be interested in your race and being a Christian? I don't participate in these issues because I know the real issue is not skin color, nationality or sex. It's sin!!!

I don't know a lot about Martin Luther King but I respect what he did. I just don't hear him speaking about salvation issues. Is there a time and place for that? Am I wrong to even think that?

1 John 2:9

You are right about the real issue: it is sin!!
GOD is not concerned about color, creed, or
race; HE cares about character. Our character
should be conformed to Christ. Christ prayed
that we all be made one in heart, mind, purpose
in the Spirit of the LORD !!

I guess I'm getting a little fustrated because I know a church whos really hitting this issue hard...trying to end racism: showing videos, etc.

America loves to give ideas about how to end racism but to me that's like trying to end sin...without the cross.

im personally nt sure if racism is ever going to end because theres still people who hold on to the past and dont want to make the future better ending racism.

I do find it interesting that in the many times I've listened to Ravenhill, Tozer, etc., I never really heard them speak up on race issues... and they lived in a time where race issues were very big things.

What is earthly is earthly and want is spiritual meditate on the things that are Godly. And they that worship God must worship him in spirit and truth. So, is spirit and truth a color or a race? So if you can answer that question then you will have your answer about race issues.
satan still trying to keep the world in bonds and race issues are chains to keep one bounded. Silly, silly humans we can be-until- the spirit of Christ comes into our life.

As a soldier on the battle field fighting under fire from the enemy if race matter when Black man and a White man and a Mexican man are huddle together in a fox hole fighting the enemey.

So,in the spiritual battle field Saints are huddle together fighting the good fight of faith. We know God has created everything -and Christ our saviour has died on the tree for good--- so don't be fool any more by satan with this foolish deceptive issues-- go out and serve Christ and tear down the walls of any in your life or society---because it is a stone thrown at the throne of God. And like Michael the Archangel--we can not stand for that--so on ward Christians soldier.

in Christ's service,

Gerald Harris

I think God likes ethnic diversity (race is such an ugly word, there's only one race after all...human ;)

Rev. 7:9-10 "After these things I saw, and lo, a great multitude, which to number no one was able, out of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in their hands, and crying with a great voice, saying, `The salvation is to Him who is sitting upon the throne--to our God, and to the Lamb!' "

I have found since my conversion that I don't really care either. Of course I don't want anyone mistreated, but I'm far more concerned with spiritual matters. Like someone else just posted, I think race, and I also think politics, are tools of the enemy to keep us earthly minded.

Hey Nathan

and ONE of them is the sin of slavery, which this nation is still accursed by, the dysfunctions of the inner city are the bitter fruit of that terrible sin, and nobody has the Grace or Truth or Honesty to come clean about it!

What do you mean by this? How or what would one have to do to come clean about this sin? Not sure I am understanding what you mean.

BUT WE ARE STACKING ALL SORTS OF SINS TO THE HEAVENS!!!!

I agree with you on this.

much love in Him
ebeth

slavery, the institution of slavery, ripping whole families OUT of Africa, which is the theft of people, and bringing them here, selling and tearing families apart, is the equivelant of a Holocaust visited upon Africans. Its just that while the nazis documented their hell unleashed upon the Jewish people with throughness, there was no such documentation of the rape and murder of African slaves in the Americas. It grieves me no end, that while the founding fathers of this great nation were writing the high and mighty words, "All men are created equal", we did not ABOLISH the fell institution of slavery, think about it? Thats a NATIONAL sin, and it took the hell of a civil war to end this institution, hundreds of thousands dead...and even then, it took a preacher and a working woman to organize the Montgomery bus boycott, so that anybody can sit anywhere on a bus!....or that negroes could only drink out of water fountains so alloted to them?....less than 60 years ago....in this country? thats national sin, and its never been dealt with. dear sister, i'm a Jew, who follows Jesus. i have a bi-racial sister. let me ask this, on this very forum, is there one other Jew who follows Jesus?, is there a black person on this forum? You know the old saying, whats the most segregated hour of the week?, Sundays at 11, (or 10) there are national wounds to be bound, and if anybody, in the clear Light of God, can deny that, so be it. i've said what i had to say, God love you, God love you all. S'chma! neil

______________________________________________

I get what your saying about slavery and the wicked evil that it was and the effects you talk about, but I don't understand what you mentioned in your other post. How would or what would you want to see when you speak about coming clean? Do you mean like on a national level or individual people? Just trying to understand your heart on this a little better.

With much love in Him
ebeth

Hey natan
Thanks for your response.

It defiantly is important to treat all men with love unto Christ Jesus.

with much love in Him
ebeth

Santana: I actually don't even believe Jew and Gentile are different races. God drew a distinction, but I don't think the distinction is racial. Humans are humans. At Babel, when the people were divided, the pool of genetic traits among the smaller groups was, well, smaller. So certain traits tended to come out more than others. This was accentuated by the fact that geographic separation led to "natural selection" of traits that made it easier for people with particular genetic traits to survive. It was a harsh world after the flood. Imagine trying to live in a land just recovering from TOTAL destruction. Wow! Notice darker skinned people tend to be equatorial and lighter skinned people nearer the poles. It has nothing to do with race. Skin color is nothing more or less than hair color. Scripture says God made of one blood every nation and tribe on earth. There are very great cultural differences, but not racial differences. I think it is good to plainly state the Biblical position on race when it comes up. "Racism" is an ugly thing. I am not so sure that becoming centered up on trying to right all the wrongs done because of the "race" issue is very fruitful to the kingdom, although I guess God may call some to ring that bell continually. Paul actually taught on this to some extent when he told Christian slaves not to resent their masters and Christian masters to treat their slaves will. Titus 2. He was not trying to say "Slavery is good." He was simply saying that the important thing was to allow Christ to live through you in whatever condition you find yourself rather than to become an activist trying to change the conditions. The eternal spirit is of more value than the position of the flesh on this earth. Slavery is wrong, but to be a slave or not to be a slave is not as important as to be born again or not to be born again.

Hi Santana,

I think that you've asked some reasonable questions and worth considering.

If I could I like to share some things in response to this and what others have shared.

Is it wrong not to be interested in your race and being a Christian?

Personally I don't think it is wrong at all and I think that for many of us, this is normal(that we do not normally or often think of ourselves in terms of a race anymore), especially if our race has never been a significant issue in our lives. But too, we should remember that for others, race has been and continues to be that, and I think we should be ready to be patient with others about this even if we believe that the normal and mature attitude about race is that it is no longer an issue for those who have come to Christ.

I don't participate in these issues because I know the real issue is not skin color, nationality or sex. It's sin!!!

I agree also, but I think that even if we acknowledge this, it is still nescessary to identify sin in particular in order to deal with it, even to say for instance, that attitudes about race can be sinfull and particularly attitudes of hate. This brings to mind something that KingJimmy mentioned:

"I do find it interesting that in the many times I've listened to Ravenhill, Tozer, etc., I never really heard them [b]speak up[/b] on race issues... and they lived in a time where race issues were very big things."(emphasis added)

It begs the question of why not? If bigotry and racial hatred were socially acceptable, even among some Christians, wasn't it still nescessary to call it evil and sin and to identify it specifically?

When I first became a Christian I attended a Pentecostal congregation that was very ethnicly diverse. Because it was a Pentecostal church there was often straightforward preaching about heart issues(relating to the members of the congregation specifically) and the Bishop never shyed away from naming sins from the pulpit and racial sins were no exception. One of the pastors and his wife that took my wife and I under their care were an interracial marriage, just as we are. He and I are white and our wives are both black. I mention that because although the congregation was very diverse I still recall him telling me about racial issues that he had seen and my wife had mentioned some things that she noticed to me also.

I think that racial hatred is a sin that is adressed in the Bible, and even by the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is my understanding that the Jews at the time viewed samaritans as being racially inferior and that there was anamosity between them. With that as a backdrop, I think it makes the story of the 'good samaritan' all the more striking and perhaps deeper in meaning.

A lawyer had stood up to question the Lord Jesus about how to gain eternal life. The Lord asked him(the man that asked the question being a lawyer) how he interpreted the law, that is, what was the requirement that the law gave. When the man replied in a way that was the same as the Lord Jesus' Own summation of the Law, that is, that in essence the Law required that we Love God with all, and man as ourselves, or particulary as it was in this case, [b]our neighbors[/b], when he replied that way, the Lord said that he had answered rightly, and told him "this do, and thou shalt live".

And then the Scripture says something interesting. It says that this lawyer, that because [i]he was willing to justify himself[/i], that he asked the Lord Jesus

"who is my neighbor?".

Well, that's an interesting question and I think it makes this reply that the Lord gave in relating the story about the [i]samaritan[/i], the "good samaritan" as we call it, I think it makes this story all the more striking in its context.

It must have been especially striking to hear for someone, who, so far as we know, may have been a devoutly religous man, and yet hated(or perhaps treated with relative disinterest or neglect for such would be a form of hatred, to have love or care with partiality), it must have been striking for him to hear a story that would say to him in effect, that a love that did not encompass all men, even those that he might have viewed as inferior or as an enemy, that a love like that did not encompass the meaning of the Law.

And so I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that it was a very direct purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ(who knew the heart of the man that He was speaking with) that it was a very direct purpose of His to tell him this story of the samaritan that He did.

I have to wonder did this story not speak as loudly in Churches in America(EDIT during the years of Slavery and Jim Crow and Segregation) as it did then?

Hey Neil, thank you for the encouragement, I could use it tonight.

I just got home and had stopped at the store to pick up a few things. I got into a squabble with the poor cashier over the price of an item that I purchased. It wasn't anything loud or rude but we both insisted we were right(he was and I was wrong).

The reason I was sure I was right was because the item I wanted to purchase was near a promotion that the store was running and I checked the sign carefully to see if the one I wanted was part of promotion, and I thought it was.

I've come to know by now that you have to read some of the signs on these promotions very carefully or you might get charged alot more than you think you will at the register.

So anyway, I should have just let it go and paid the full price like I normally would, or just say I don't want it then, but for some reason I didn't and now I need to appologise to the cashier.

But I thought this might be worthwhile to mention here also, because I think it ties in in a way to what you mentioned about the lingering effects of slavery upon the nation.

Why would I say that?

Well, in this little incident that I related, I think there are two things at least that are more than normal in our society:

We want to get something for nothing and we want to get the most we can, for the least amount, even if it is at the expense of others.

And I suppose too that I'm not unwilling to suspect that our big corporate benefactors are not unwilling to take advantage of these our desires in order to lure us into paying more than we would otherwise. Even if by deception.

In the end we have a generation called the entitlement generation and everybody is a victim and everyone deserves the best.

Alright, so what does any of that, even if it is true, have to do with slavery and the past?

A while back in another thread we were talking about this topic. It was around the time of the election. Another forum member had mentioned a Christian man that had been an early advocate for the abolition of slavery and it so happened that at the same time(it might have even been that same day) I decided to stop in a bookstore, and looking over the titles I came across a book about the man that he had mentioned. His name was John Woolman, a quaker, and he's been referred to as 'the Apostle of Abolition'. One of the pages that I came across contained a qoute and also a reference to a passage in Leviticus and the qoute really stood out to me.

I looked for it and found it online then. It still seems very profound:

"When proceedings have been from that wisdom which is from beneath and inequitable gain hath been gathered by a man and left as a gift to his children who entangled by the same worldly spirit have not attained to that clearness of light in which the channels of righteousness are opened and justice done to those who remain silent under injuries it hath under humbling exercise of mind appeared to rue that the sins of the fathers are embraced by the children and become their sins and thus in the days of tribulation the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon these children who take hold of the unrighteousness of their fathers and live in that spirit in which those iniquities were committed To this agreeth the prophecy of Moses concerning a rebellious people They that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies lands and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them Lev xxvi 39"

[url=http://books.google.com/books?id=zMEEAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA283&ots=RpOzLqZin4&dq=%22John%20Woolman%22%20%22Moses%22%20%22iniquity%22&pg=PA283&ci=58#v=onepage&q=&f=false]http://books.google.com/books?id=zMEEAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA283&ots=RpOzLqZin4&dq=%22John%20Woolman%22%20%22Moses%22%20%22iniquity%22&pg=PA283&ci=58#v=onepage&q=&f=false[/url]

It is interesting to note that the establishment of slavery is not actually declared to be sin. However, the abuse and unjust oppression of slaves is a sin. In fact, in this very manner, we are called the slaves of Christ. The lingering effects of slavery are thus, not slavery itself, but the horrendous brutality and neglect by slave-traders and owners in the mass dehumanization of our neighbor.