Viewing entries tagged
discrimination
Prejudice and discrimination are deeply embedded into our society. Too often, the church has been just as guilty as the world around it. This message looks at how the Bible addresses prejudice and how Christians can get free of it.
James 2:1-13
As people in the early church came to faith, they brought attitudes of discrimination and superiority that only the gospel could dismantle. This message looks at the core of the teaching that undid their prejudice and can deal with ours.
As people in the early church came to faith, they brought attitudes of discrimination and superiority that only the gospel could dismantle. This message looks at the core of the teaching that undid their prejudice and can deal with ours.
The Good Samaritan is one of Jesus’ most famous stories. Despite our familiarity with it, most people hear the moral but miss the point. While confronting our indifference, prejudice and tendency to justify ourselves, Jesus helps us to see what’s needed for us to inherit eternal life.
Miriam challenges Moses because of his marriage to a Cushite woman. She seems to be motivated at least in part by prejudice because he has married a woman of a different skin colour. God responds by giving her a skin disease. God strongly affirms the marriage between one of the Old Testament’s most famous Jews and his African wife.
People misunderstand the distinction between the commands to foreigners and sojourners in the Old Testament and wrongly assume that God was against non-Jewish ethnicities. This message shows God’s heart to reach the nations in the Old Testament.
Church-going slave owners used the curse of Ham to justify their enslavement of Africans, reading their prejudices into the text and ignoring humanity’s creation in the image of God. The church missed its opportunity then. What will it take to get it right this time?
