By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
This is a very painful article to write and no doubt very controversial. I came across a child’s chalk art a month ago on a sidewalk and it read “White People Only”.
I’d guess the author to be 10-12 yrs. old given the printing style. To say it stopped me in my tracks would be an understatement. 2024, Bryan Ohio.
I’m not naive enough to believe that we have reached a time of racial harmony and because I am white in a city that is 96% white, I don’t see much racial disharmony like this chalk art.
And maybe because I don’t experience this discrimination, I don’t think about it much either. But this sure got my attention.
I was in Columbus a couple of weeks ago speaking at a free medical clinic convention and had time to have lunch with a friend of 20+ years. Tony is a black man. He was an executive in a large insurance company and has been a bi-vocational pastor for 40 years in Columbus.
His church was probably 100% black most of that time. When I preached there once, there were no whites besides those of us from Bryan. I showed Tony the picture I took of the sidewalk. His response shocked me.
I saw his eyes read it then his mind caught up with them. His face totally changed. I saw his eyes pull in and his cheeks almost disappeared. And his face took on a flat plane.
Truthfully, if I had a picture of him then and a picture of him as he normally is, I’m not sure I would have recognized him. Later, I asked him if he could tell me what went through his mind when he saw the message.
Part of his response:” To me, (they were) words of hate and disregard for anyone who isn’t “white.”…This kind of thinking is “taught or caught,” by those this child lives with and around.”
“This saddens me as it did you. You nor I could think that in the year 2024, we would continue having to deal with children accepting racial superiority and separation.”
I’ve lived in Bryan for 34 years and I know things have changed since I arrived, but we haven’t fully arrived where we need to be. Why do we teach our children to hate when teaching them to love is so much better for them?
How can we claim to love when we live in a town where we have people teaching their children this kind of evil? Let me say this in the clearest manner possible: first, the preamble to our Declaration of Independence written in 1776 says boldly: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
And second, where did Thomas Jefferson and those who signed it on July 4, 1776, get this philosophy? From scripture! “So, God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) Is God white? Black? Yellow? Brown? No. Is God male or female? No. God is spirit.
Our skin color has nothing to do with God. It comes from where our ancestors lived. Mine came from Ireland and England and didn’t see the sun a great deal so I have very light cream-colored skin. Skin color means nothing. We know that. It’s what’s under the skin that counts. What’s in the mind?
The emotions? The heart? It’s how generous or loving or hate filled or selfish a person is that counts. We weren’t created to be judged on our skin color. We were created the same by the Author of Life.
He just gave us different pigmentation to better cope with the UV effects of the sun. Jesus was not a white skinned man. He lived in a hot arid land, so his skin was darker. Probably the closest we can see the same skin tone today is the color of many Mexicans.
His facial features would be different, but his skin tone would have been honey-brown to a little darker. Would that sidewalk drawing have given him pause?
Yes, but like me, not over the color of skin but over the hatred it exposes. 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 reads: “I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other.
Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose” Get that? “By the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ”, live in harmony. Not hatred, not divided but be of “one mind, united”. All men were created to be like God! Let us treat them that way!
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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.