God doesn't care about the color of our skin.
....or our socioeconomic status or what country we call home. Every life matters to Him and every life matters to me and it should matter to all of us. There is no room for racial, social, or monetary division among Christ followers, Buddha followers, scientologists, or wonderlusters. God's response to us is always love and grace. We would be wise to imitate that grace without exception; grace when we deserve it, grace when we don't, grace when others do, grace when others don't, and grace when we don't have a clue. It's only by God's grace that we even have the cognitive ability to rationally reason between options. It's only by God's grace and design that we have an innate moral compass. It's especially only by Gods grace that we get to partake in the forgiveness he offers us. To hoard it and lord it like a sledge hammer of self-righteousness like it's something we earned is not pleasing to God.
It doesn't matter if we position ourselves on a micro level as the jury in regards to who we think deserves love and forgiveness and who doesn't. Truth is not relative to your opinion. We are not and will never have that authority other than in our own little one-person world. Rest assured God is not pleased when we choose to respond in this way to the weak, misinformed, and hurting. But all the more, His grace is sufficient for this attitude as with all our shortcomings. We must humbly seek forgiveness if we have tendencies to harbor this toxic attitude of superiority and lordship of our own or others lives.
We must ask ourselves the question, "how have I personally and we collectively failed the Michael Browns of the world?" If he really was a thug who was assaulting an officer, and by all accounts of the law was justly shot, then we failed him. It should break our hearts that we didn't love him enough, and shepherd him enough to have respect for himself and his fellow human beings, who in this instance happened to be an officer performing a job. If there is one thing that is consistently lacking across all races in entitled America, it's respect for others, ourselves, and especially authority.
If however Brown was an upstanding young man who respected authority and just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time facing the bullets of a racist cop, then our heart should be breaking for Darren Wilson. If this is true then we failed him as a Christian nation in teaching him that race is meaningless in Christ and we are to love and respect our fellow human beings no matter what faux earthly divide seems to barricade us from doing so.
Our natural bend as Christians needs to always be love and grace, taking it all to the father in prayer. When in doubt, forgive. When you are justified to hold a grudge, forgive anyway. To take matters into our own hands is to in effect say to God, "I don't think you have this under control. I will now make myself a god of my own life and the life of those around me."
If you justify yourself because of your white skin. Stop.
If you justify yourself because of your black skin. Stop.
If you make excuses for yourself or play a victim role because of any sort of skin color. Stop.
Red, yellow, black, and white we are precious in His sight.
Photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1244037.stm
