We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Quotes to Chew on: Racial Reconciliation
Jesus perfectly embodied God’s heart for racial reconciliation. For example, most Jews of Jesus’ day despised Samaritans as racially impure and as heretics. They avoided physical or social contact with them if at all possible. Yet Jesus went out of his way to have contact with them, even touching some who were lepers. Moreover, he consistently treated them with respect, even making them the heroes in some of his stories.
Similarly, most Jews of Jesus’ day looked down on Gentiles and had a particular distain for the Romans, the group who ruled Palestine. Yet Jesus treated them as equals. Most remarkably, Jesus was willing to interact with and serve Roman centurions. These were high-ranking officials in the oppressive Roman military and were thus despised by Jews. Jesus went so far as to praise the faith of a Roman centurion as being greater than the faith of any Jew (Matthew 8:5-11)!
This sort of behavior was absolutely scandalous and revolutionary. It reveals that where God reigns, the Powers that fuel racism will be confronted and racial walls will be torn down. Where God reigns, God’s vision for a united human race will be in the process of being reconciled.
Boyd, Gregory A., The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church (pp. 114-115). Zondervan.
Category: General
Tags: Quotes, Racial Reconciliation
Related Reading
Speaking of Tragedies
Since we’ve been reflecting on recent tragedies and the varying responses to them, we thought we would add this voice to the mix. This article from the New Yorker points out the differences in media coverage between the Aurora shootings and the shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. From the article: Sadly, the media…
King’s Kingdom Way
In this conversation between Greg and Dennis Edwards, they discuss why we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and what King’s message of justice means for us today. If you are interested in hearing the entire conversation, you can watch it here.
Christena Cleveland on Practices for Sociological Imagination
Christena Cleveland recently sat down with Tod Bolsinger (Vice President for Formation and Vocation at Fuller Theological Seminary) to discuss the intersection of privilege and leadership. You can find a series of short videos capturing different aspects of this conversation here. Today we wanted to share one of these videos with you. We hope you’ll take the time to…
Jesus & Racial Reconciliation
Lorenia via Compfight If you were to read an account today of a white man offering his front row seat on a public bus to an elderly African American lady, you’d probably think this was a nice gesture, but nothing more. However, if you learned that the event happened in Birmingham Alabama in 1955, you’d…
Reversing Babel
Several generations after the flood, we read in Gen 11 how humans were still living in one locale and had one common language and culture. Then someone came up with the brilliant idea that they should construct an enormous tower that would reach “to the heavens” in order to make a name for themselves and…
Part 9 (of 15): Peterson on White Privilege
Assessing Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life by Greg Boyd “The degree to which the terrible part of the world manifests itself in your life is proportionate to how insufficient you are….If you got your act together completely, maybe all the suffering would disappear from your life, or at least all the unbearable suffering.” Jordan…