The world needs real change - where do we find it?

The world needs real change.

George Floyd. What comes to mind when you hear his name? Rage? Indignation? Indifference? Don’t care? There’s no question that a lot of feelings come bubbling to the surface. Unless you’ve lived under a rock, you’ve seen the horrifying video of George Floyd and what happened to him up here in the Twin Cities on Memorial Day. You’ve also seen the resulting backlash across America and it’s not been pretty to watch at all.

Racism’s root cause is the sinful nature that every man and woman is born with. We waste so much time looking at each other’s outward appearance, don’t we? I’ve never understood the need to judge someone based on the color of their skin. It doesn’t mean I haven’t done it, mostly to impress my friends when I was a younger man. What do the melanin in a person’s epidermis and the color it produces have to do with what kind of a person they are?

Partiality has been something rattling around in my brain lately and I needed to get this down on paper. That hadn’t happened to me before. I was sitting in my house in Maple Grove and I kept thinking of the word partiality and felt PUSHED to write something. I don’t know if preaching is in my future, but I do know that writing is. I’m hoping this is a way I can help spread the Good News.

The Greek word for partiality is Prosopolemptes: that means “an accepter of the face.” It implies accepting someone based on what they look like. To take it further, Webster’s Dictionary defines “partiality” as “the quality or state of being partial; inclination to favor one side of a question, more than another; the undue bias of mind. It also means a predilection or inclination to favor one thing over another. Think racism might fall under this umbrella?

We’ve been judging each other based on external characteristics forever. Deuteronomy 16:9 says “Do not deny justice or show partiality to anyone.” Most sources seem to suggest the book was written by Moses about 1,400 years before Jesus entered the world. That’s just the earliest example I could find while doing research. You know there are more because we have plenty of examples in the New Testament. Romans 2:11 says “there is NO partiality with God.” Our Father in Heaven doesn’t pick favorites.

How does the old song go? “Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are precious in His sight.” The Bible says, “Man looks at the outward appearance while God looks at your heart.” I may be somewhat paraphrasing there, but I think you get my point.

I came across an interesting story on the Rocket Company Dot Com website that illustrates one simple way to avoid the problem of partiality and racism. Listen. Listen to the people in front of you. Remember, they are all precious in God’s sight.

A guy by the name of Paul Tournier was a brilliant thinker and writer, as well as a very influential Christian therapist. Doctors from around the world traveled to his home in Switzerland. This guy was basically the Elvis of the therapeutic world. They all wanted to learn from him and frankly, he found it a little hard to understand.

“It’s a little embarrassing for students to come over and study my ‘techniques’ because they all come away disappointed,” he says. “They always do. My technique is this; ‘I accept people.’”

After a half-century on this Earth, I’m starting to realize that accepting is not the same as approving, condoning, and even tolerating bad behavior. That has nothing to do with “acceptance.”

At the heart of acceptance is the fact that we recognize that, despite someone’s behavior, he or she has VALUE in the sight of God. We honor our Father by honoring each other, and not just those who believe the same way we do, either. We especially honor Him by honoring those who don’t know Him yet.

Romans 12:10 says “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Notice it doesn’t say do so only to the people you know? It certainly doesn’t say only to the people who look like you. Notice the verse is saying “one another” not once but twice. That means honor “EVERYBODY.”

There’s no question that the idea of honoring everyone you meet is a hard thing to do. We aren’t perfect creatures, so show each other some grace. A lot of outside factors could influence what that potential face-to-face chat might be like.

One of the best ways to communicate acceptance is to LISTEN to the people you’re talking to. Listen with patience and compassion and receive them with love in the name of Jesus. Wait, that’s hard to do too. You’ll have to ASK Jesus to help you. He can hear your thoughts. While you interact with someone you don’t know, ask the Holy Spirit to help engage each person you meet in a way that shows you value them.

But we all have that internal voice that looks at people we don’t know and evaluates what we see in front of us. We’re constantly making judgments and analyzing them. Remember, you’re doing that based on the OUTWARD appearance. Yes, you can learn something, but you have no way of knowing them in ways that matter. You won’t know their character, their love for family, their love for Christ (or if they even know who He is: could be a witnessing opportunity), or any of the other things that truly define a human being.

Paul says in Second Corinthians 10: 3-6 that “we take every thought captive to Christ.” Filter those thoughts through Christ. Remember the old “WWJD” (What Would Jesus DO?) bracelets? Think of it as was what would Jesus think about this person I’m interacting with? South Fellowship Dot Org makes an interesting point: The more we think with the mind of Christ and extend His grace toward others, the more WE are changed.

Let me take it a step further. The more time we take for godly input, to study God, His Word, meditate on and memorize Scriptures, we will build stronger filters. With those filters, not only will it give us a chance to interact with others in ways that avoid the trouble we’re seeing these days surrounding race, it winds up changing us to be more like Jesus. I don’t know about you, but those are some lofty goals I’d like to accomplish.

Hopefully, those changed thoughts will eventually begin to change the way we speak to each other. How about the way we talk to each other? We sure do hear a lot of shouting at each other these days. If we don’t agree with someone, we tend to just shout them down. Or name call. What happened to reasonable debate among people who don’t agree on a topic? There’s absolutely no way two people can agree on everything.

But we can disagree respectfully, can’t we? Proverbs 16:24 says “pleasant words are a honeycomb; sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” The Bible also says, “a soft answer turns away wrath.” You might take someone completely by surprise by saying something positive. Bless someone today with the words you use. Use them to bring healing to a divided nation. Stop letting politicians and the media divide us. We are so much better together, and we have a lot that we could learn from each other. We could all use some of that today. Judging someone based on skin color is not honoring God. If we are doing it, we are sinning horribly.

Be the change. It starts with Jesus.