Of Races and Colors

As someone who views everything with an artistic mindset, I see things differently than most.  Where some rush by life, I am so detail oriented that I often stop in awe when I notice the varying shades and hues and textures and layers and even the sounds, of every day life!  Although different, there's as much beauty in the sparkling city skyline as there is in the farmer's field and a mountain forest.  There's as much wonder in studying the wings of a moth as there is in viewing the Grand Canyon.  There's as much mystery in listening to the ocean's waves crashing to the shore as there is in hearing the buzzing hum of a tiny hummingbird.  Every minute detail, no matter how grand or how minuscule points to a Divinely creative, infinite God!

God's majesty, His glory and creativity, aren't just found in nature and landscapes.  Take people for example!

I miss living in the city.  In the city, I couldn't get enough of the diverse nationalities.  The layers of ethnicity ran vast and deep!  It was music to my ears to listen to the differing dialects of our neighborhood.  On one side - our neighbor was a second-generation Polish ship-builder while on the other side - we had a first-generation Puerto Rican store owner.  Across the street was an African American hair dresser and behind us was a Heinz-57 (like me) automobile worker.  The children that amassed upon our home after school were so beautifully individual!  No skin color or vocabulary was the same.  And we shopped at a Polish fruit market, ate fish dinners from the Czech club, bought Gyros from the Greek restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed the melting-pot of cultures, colors, dialects, and lifestyles.

Aren't you glad that God doesn't care where we came from, what our backgrounds are, what languages we speak, what color our skin is, or how much money we have?  Isn't it comforting and freeing to understand that in Jesus, we are all equal in God's sight?

Colossians 3:9-11 (NKJV)

Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

Now, knowing that God created all people (in His image by the way), I don't mind telling you that I'm appalled by the news that a Kentucky church banned a couple from worshiping with their congregation because of the fact that the man and woman don't share the same skin color.  Sadly, I'm certain this isn't the only church that behaves this way.

There are churches (and perhaps whole denominations) that take 2 Cor. 6:14 out of context and try to force it to mean that differing races should not "yoke" or marry.  It doesn't mean that at all.  That portion of Scripture means that for a Christian to unite with an unbeliever (in marriage, in business, in fellowship, in beliefs) would not work because we're supposed to be God's holy people and their ways and lives are contrary to His Word.

But no where does Scripture mandate that Christian people can't marry someone of a differing race or shade of skin.  Skin is skin.  It's simply the covering that we wear over who we are inside.  And if we belong to God and if His Spirit lives within us, we're all the same.  Moses (a Hebrew by birth) is one of the best examples.  He married Zipporah who was an Ethiopioan/Cushite.  By the way... read what God did to Moses's sister, Miriam, when she criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah - Numbers 12:1-15.  Yet Zipporah and her family were followers of God.

God doesn't prohibit any of us from marrying someone of another skin color.  God's only concern was that we marry within our faith!  As a matter of fact, 1 Cor. 7:39 tells us that a widow is free to marry "anyone she wishes" as long as he belongs to the Lord.  

Christianity is fractured enough and it has a multitude of struggles as it is.  We live in a time when our focus should be on multiplying the kingdom - not about further dividing it!  We certainly don't need some ignorant pastor elevating himself and his church by banning mixed-race couples from worshiping or working in his congregation.  What's next?  Will elitist pastors begin banning couples of mixed height?  Perhaps couples who drive Fords won't be permitted to worship at a Chevy-supportive church?  Yet we scratch our heads and wonder why so many people are turning (or being turned) away from 'churches' today.  

Perhaps one day people will stop taking God's Word out of context and stop using Him to support their own bad behavior.  Until then, this Native-American, Irish, English, French-Canadian girl and her Czechoslovakian, Irish, German husband are praying that the Holy Spirit would open the eyes of this pastor (and all like him) and deliver him from his ignorance into all Truth.  And may the Lord heal all who have been hurt or abused by churches/leaders who teach this ungodly doctrine.