Forty-one years ago today the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
As the son of white middle class parents, I have never really had to deal with racial prejudice being exercised against me. As an activist, I've heard horror stories from men and women mistreated because of their ethnicity. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I can not stomach the antics, tactics and slogans of so many white Americans when it comes to the racial divide in America. I desperately want to connect people's lives to the good news of Jesus Christ, and how the Gospel changes the way you look at the people around you.
One of the books I've recently been reading, "Gracism: the Art of Inclusion" by David A. Anderson, has been helping me work through how, as a Christian, I respond to racism and the different tensions between ethnicities. He said something as an African-American that caught my attention.
"As much as I love the black church and at times miss it, there will be no black church in heaven. There will be one church and it will be multicultural. One Bride, not a harem, is what Jesus is coming back for"
Did you get that? This idea our culture has propagated, that all Christians should worship with only their ethnicity, is dead wrong. You will not find any single ethnicity church anywhere in the New Testament. Why? Because Christ came to save people of every ethnicity. We've got to remember that the universal community of faith is just that Universal. Lets not forget the millions of believers around the world who don't look like us.
As we think about the life and death of the Rev. King, it is my prayer that we would make our communities more like heaven will one day be.
