I am a middle aged guy in an interracial marriage. Let me say, the world is not colorblind and neither is the church. That’s neither good nor bad, it just is.
When we had children, I hated that my son was always the only child of color in the room. I hated that the teachings were not reflective of my life experiences. I hated that people assumed I listened to rock growing up. The older we got the more uncomfortable it got.
We didn’t fit into white church or black church. We needed to find a multi-racial church. Though we helped plant a church, after 5 years we knew it was time to move (for many other reasons).
My wife fell in love with a white church in town. For me it was too sedate.
Through a series of prophetic events, we wound up at a pentecostal church (not that kind). It had a white pastor but a brown choir.
The first Sunday there I enjoyed the preaching. My wife like the choir. But we didn’t know if this was the church for us. After service we went to guest reception and then to pick our son up from children’s ministry.
I clearly remember when my son came out of children’s ministry that first time and yelled to us, “There was a kid in there just like me, brown!” I about cried.
Folks who grew up in a singular church culture don’t get it. But color matters. God sees skin color. It was his idea
If you grew up in a singular racial culture you are bound to think that your way of thinking about race is the way to think about race. You might say things like, I don’t see race. That’s too bad. Jesus saw race.
Jesus taught stories of morality based solely on the race of the people in the story. He was talking to people who did not see their conclusions about race as being faulty.
Race is not everything. But it is something. It is not the center of the Gospel. But it is part of the Gospel. And you might not be aware of race but the minorities in your spaces are. That needs to matter to us.