Heavy Heart

I need a moment to vent because my heart is heavy today.

I confess that I wasn’t thrilled when it became clear 4 ½ years ago that we were moving to South Carolina. I grew up in Florida, and not the small town parts of Florida, either, but in an area where there were always new people moving in and out from many different places. Then I went to the University of Florida, where my husband and I met, and later Drew and I moved to the greater Tampa area once we were both finished with our school work in Gainesville. Obviously, Brandon, FL was not a small, southern town, either. Though Florida may be geographically south, I don’t really consider it a southern state, at least, not where I lived, if you understand what I mean.

Anyway, I confess that I had some stereotypes about southern living, and most of them were negative. Especially did I have those stereotypes about the type of old southern town where we now find ourselves living. And, let me tell you, this is one proud little town. Proud of its southern heritage. Proud of its location. Proud of its land – don’t get me started on the unreal cost of living here. Please don’t hate me, southern friends! I know it’s wrong to stereotype, that’s the whole point of this post…..

What concerned me the most, and I’m being very honest with you all here, is that we have tried really hard to shield our children and protect them from developing racist attitudes. We truly want them to understand that all people are really ‘one blood’ – that we all are created in the image of God, that we all are descended from Adam and Eve and from Noah’s family, and that we are not to judge anyone by what they look like. We don’t allow that kind of jokes or unkind things said in our home, and it does seem that our kids have been protected, as much as we were able, from some of those horrible prejudices. One thing I really appreciate about Answers in Genesis, by the way is how that organization stresses that we are really one race – the human race.

Before I go on, I am aware that racism is not just a southern thing. My chief editor, also known as my loving and very patient husband, mentioned that while proofreading this post. It’s something that can affect anyone from anywhere, and it is evil, no matter who is espousing it. Period. But when we moved here originally, I was concerned that we might find it to be more of a problem than where we had been before. This is one reason we were so thrilled to find the church where we are now members. Imagine a church, in the deep south, no less, where black and white and Hispanic and many other backgrounds are sitting together in the seats and in the choir and serving alongside each other as family members in the Body of Christ. I love this about my church. This is how it should be, friends. Because those of us who belong to Christ should be worshiping together with no regard to the color of our skin.

This is why something that happened today in Sunday School grieved my heart so much. Drew and I have finished up the Discovery Class, which is a basic class that is a good entry point into the church and is a good thing to brush up on even when you’ve been a Christian for a long time. We have been going to a new class for a few weeks, and we ended up sitting near the back today and in front of someone we had not met yet. This older gentleman began talking with us and we had a nice little conversation until he let slip a very unkind and disgusting comment about “the blacks.” And he didn’t stop there, but proceeded to single out other groups, too. Drew and I both had our jaws drop in astonishment that he would say what he said like it was nothing, and we ended that conversation quickly and turned around. What bothered me most is that this man didn’t even seem to see how incongruous his words were. He slurred several whole groups of people just by the color of their skin, not even seeming to care that there are dear brothers and sisters in that very class with him who would have been deeply hurt by what he’d said. I do know absolutely that this man does not speak for the majority of the people of this church and that his prejudice is preached against forcefully, and the fact that he would feel okay about voicing it so loudly left both Drew and me dumbfounded.

My stomach churned all through Sunday School, and when we got into church before the service started, Drew and I were talking about how awful we felt about that whole episode and how we were so flabbergasted we didn’t even know what to say to him. As we sang worship songs this morning, I was crying because I kept thinking of how evil it is to despise those God has made in His image because we’re blinded by the pride and sin of racism. I kept thinking about how precious it is that Jesus shed His blood to reconcile men and women from every tribe and tongue and people to Himself, and how ugly and dirty I felt just for having heard that man say those hateful things. I don’t understand how anyone can sit under the kind of preaching we do and sing the glorious songs about Jesus’ blood being shed for our redemption and harbor the kind of hate we heard there in that comment and not even realize there is something vastly wrong with his thinking. As we sang this morning, I kept thinking how that must be a real stench to God, to sing praise out of one side of our mouth and cut down people for whom Jesus died out of the other side – or to sit quietly when it is said, as we did, not knowing what to say being so appalled that he would say such things at all so openly and so without concern.

Friends, there is no call or place for the sin of racism in the Body of Christ. We must love our neighbor and serve together to bring the gospel to a lost world. Our pastor has been preaching through the book of Acts for a long time now. A few weeks ago, he got to Chapter 21, when Paul was in Jerusalem and was arrested in the Temple when a mob broke out. In Chapter 22, Paul asks the Roman commander who is taking him away if he can speak to the crowd. He allows him to do so, and the crowd hears him until he gets to the part of his testimony where he tells them that the Lord has sent him to preach to the Gentiles. At that, they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live!” The very hope on which I stand, that even I, a Gentile sinner, could be reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ, they saw as hateful. They did not understand the vastness of God’s grace. In Ephesians 3, Paul wrote about the mystery that the Gentiles should be made fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel. Friends, the Gentiles who are to be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel come from every race and tongue and tribe and people! We dare not despise those whom Christ would save! We have no right to be racists. None. John 3:16 says that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus commanded us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth – to everyone! Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” One day there will be people from every tribe and tongue worshiping together at the very throne of God. Praise His glorious Name! What amazing, matchless grace! That should change how we view everyone, not just those who look exactly like us.

Revelation 5:8-10
“Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying:
‘You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth.’”