The Solution for Segregation

We still live in a segregated world.

With Martin Luther King Day coming up on Monday, and his birthday coming up on the French Pressed Friday of January 15, I’m reminded of his monumental contributions to civil rights and racial equality. Our nation is what it is for many reasons – it’s military, music, and Martin Luther King. I wish Martin Luther King could have been alive to see the Blindside or Barak Obama sworn into office. Those tears would have been beautiful to behold.

Even though racism hasn’t been wiped out completely, things are radically different from the revolutionary days of the 1950′s and 1960′s. Blacks and Whites have been desegregated, but a separation among people still exists in the form of prejudice.

We’re an America of united states, but are we an America of united people?

Prejudice is displayed in a number of ways. Racism is an extreme form. It takes shape in cliques at schools and churches, social clubs, and neighborhoods. Pride, power, and superiority can accentuate it. Style, suburbs, and bank accounts will define it.

The cross of Christ destroys it.

Prejudice is an expression of the condition of our hearts. Our separation from people is an expression of our separation from God. Everyone chooses self over God, which many times is expressed in our gravitation towards those who are a lot like us.

Back in the 1st century Jews and Gentiles had a difficult time mixing.

Oil and water.

And apparently Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles had a equally difficult time getting along with each other. In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul reveals the reality that should permeate the church in Ephesus and the lives of the Jewish and Gentile members.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away [from God] have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two [Jews and Gentiles], thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

The cross of Christ mends our segregation with God and people. For Jesus suffered the hostility of humanity, so humanity could be freed from hostility.

What motivated Martin Luther King? He wasn’t perfect, and people are naturally hostile. There are a lot of good men out there, but we still prefer ourselves over others.  We can’t give credit to Jesus because that would mean we’d have to get religious.

Is reconciliation religious or righteous? Prejudice sure does exist among the religious, but reconciliation will roll down from those right with God.

Martin Luther King proclaim this from Washington D.C. in 1963:

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

Let this adaptation also be heard:

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of PREJUDICE to the sunlit path of ACCEPTANCE and VALUE. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of PREJUDICE to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

: The French Pressed 1 Thru 4 ::