By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
Can you imagine being raised in a culture that told you from your first recall onward that certain people were beneath you and you needed to avoid them and suddenly you have to change that attitude? We grew up with cowboys and indians…if you could get someone to play the indians.
How many carried that mindset into adulthood? What about blacks and whites? Both cultures were taught to avoid the other, to not trust the other.
Jews and Palestinians, Straights and Gays, westerners and middle easterners, rich and poor, the list could go on and on.
We live in a point in time where our very cultures teach us to avoid certain peoples with no regard to the specific individuals in that culture.
Did you see all the comments from the soccer fans who came to America and were completely surprised to see nice, friendly people who didn’t all carry guns and burn buildings or steal from them, and who lived in clean cities? They had been programmed by the media to expect a totally depraved culture.
Peter lived in such a culture where he had been taught from the crib that he was to have nothing to do with gentiles or certain foods.
So much so that he argued with God about it. “Peter saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.
It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’ ‘Surely not, Lord!’ Peter replied.
‘I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.’” (He couldn’t understand how God would ask him to do something he had been taught from childhood not to do.)
“The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’” (Acts 10:11-15) Imagine how hard it must have been to overcome his culture to visit Cornelius’s home.
Paul had been called from being a strict Jew, observant in all the laws, to being the Apostle sent to the gentiles with the good news of Jesus. Paul tells them that he is proud to have been chosen to be the one to bring this good news to them.
Eph 3:7-8 “I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ.”
He considered it an honor to share the Good News with a culture he had been raised in to dislike and avoid at all costs. He had to drop all his hatred of the gentiles in order to share with them the Good News that they too were included in the Kingdom of God.
Eph 3:6 “This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”
What cultural biases do you have? Maybe they’re hidden under a cover of civility? Or, in the case of social media anonymity, blatant and ugly.
God has called us to be unifiers. And that requires seeing everyone through the eyes of God and his mercy.
We’re called to build up the body of Christ and that means to include everyone… the dirty, the homeless, the poor, the Indians, as well as the rich, the lovely, the privileged, the cowboys. And what about the Buddhists and the Muslims? Them, too.
Ask God to show you your hidden or not so hidden prejudices so that you can repent of them and he can use you to heal and offer new life to the people who previously made you uncomfortable.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.