“Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”
1 John 3:15
“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”
1 John 4:20
I deeply suspect many of the stories we’ve read about in the past few weeks stem from racial hatred. And let it be known, Christianity has no room for hate.
But I want you to think about this. THINK!
Racism means hating a brother or sister. If you believe those Bible verses, then what does every racist born from the beginning of time have in common?
They. Don’t. Love. God.
So many of my friends have expressed confusion and frustration that I would talk about God’s love, when I should be condemning hatred. And while many would readily praise the verses I posted, some of my friends have told me outright that they do not need God to address racism.
If you have a bag of skittles, and you pull a blue one out, it tells you nothing. But when you pull out skittle after skittle, and every single one is BLUE, that means something.
Not loving God isn’t a mere CORRELATION. It’s not just, “Oh! Look at that, how strange! Racists don’t love God, who would have thought? How crazy is it that this bag of skittles is all blue?” No! Failure to love God is the CAUSATION of all hatred! And as Jesus taught, hatred is murder of the heart.
For a time, I worked in software exploit development — commonly known as “hacking”. A Navy Seal that I worked with taught me that to be a successful hacker, you had to look for repeating patterns. Patterns can be exploited. If the security code never changes, that is a weakness to exploit. If your enemy patrols around the base the same way every night, you can exploit that, it is a WEAKNESS. If you want to combat racism, then you must first target the pattern: a heart that does not love God.
And the exploit? Love.
We love others, because He first loved us. But God did not tell us to only love the downtrodden, the weak, and the foreigner. He also told us to love our enemies — racists included.
That is the only way I know to combat racism. And so, that will be the only solution I offer.
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom (or hashtags) as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
1 Cor 2:1–2
