Does God care about race? Should Christians?

                Within the past few weeks, we have seen racial tensions in the United States rise to the highest they have been in decades. I do not want to comment on who is right and wrong in these police involved shootings, but I do want to talk about a topic that I’m sure will come up. What role does race play in the church? Should we care as Christians? Does God see race? Well let’s take a minute and look to scripture to see how the church should be handling race.

                In the beginning God created man in His image (Gen 1:26-27). Notice this did not say one group of people or the other. Just man as humanity. We fell as mankind, but God so loved the WORLD that He gave His only son, that we would not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). God does not show favoritism based on outward appearances (Deut. 10:17, Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11, Eph 6:9). We are commanded multiple times to love our neighbors as ourselves in a general sense, no stipulation about who our neighbor is (James 2:8, Mark 12:31). We are taught by Paul that there is no distinction in Christ between Jew or Greek, male or female (Galatians 3:28).  We are also commanded to go into all the WORLD to preach the gospel, once again no general qualifiers on who we are to preach or not preach to (Matt. 28:16-20). So in all of these we see that God does not see color/race in his people, so why should we?

                Now granted that is a theological back up to why we should not think of race as a church, what are some practical ways we can do this to help with the racial tensions that are escalating around the country and the world? For starters, we just need to be civil with one another. We don’t need to be name calling or stereotyping, because where is the love of Christ in that? `We need to be willing to offer to help and build each other up, not tear each other down in an effort to claw our way to the top. We are all children of God! My parents used to get on to my siblings and I for fighting like cats and dogs, they would tell us we need to get along because we are the only siblings we have and we are all that we will have when my parents are gone. This argument can apply here. We need to stop fighting and treating each other like the enemy. We are made up of individual creations of God, and we are the only ones like ourselves out there. When we are gone, no one will replace the unique joy and perspective we bring into this world.

                So please, I beg of my fellow Americans, stop fighting and burning each other down, because we are all in this boat together, and we will sink it at the rate we are going. I’m not asking for a hive mind with no individuals with no choices, but let’s honestly work together so that all may prosper. Let’s keep this in mind as we go to the ballots this election season, and honestly look to our hearts and to God and pray that we vote in a way that God is glorified so that maybe our country will get back some of the peace and prosperity that we have lost whilst we have taken our eyes off of Him. May God bless you and have a good rest of your day.