“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow” (Tozer).
It’s time for the Body of Christ to grow up. Like a refrigerated teething ring given to an infant cutting her teeth, I have offered Paul’s ‘Body Metaphor’ for the church to chew on as we seek to become One Unified Body of Many Ethnic Parts.
The “Love Poem” in 1 Corinthians 13 is often pulled out of context and read at weddings. When applied to racial division and ethnic differences in the local church, its doubly explosive!
This is the task of the church today: for Christians of all ethnic and racial backgrounds to receive those of different backgrounds as a gift to broaden our perspective and deepen our love as we learn to not only understand each other’s experiences, but enter into each other’s pain and, God willing, to learn how to suffer in solidarity with them.
Paul emphasizes our mutual interdependence in the Body which, when applied to race/ethnicity, offers some of the following revolutionary and far-reaching principles for racial healing and cooperation in the church.
Let us revisit Paul’s ‘One Body, Many Parts’ metaphor and draw out key insights for more nurturing more harmonious multiethnic relations.
In the age of Trump, Christian leaders and committed followers of Jesus know deep in their bones that a kind of “melting” needs to take place if the message and mission of the gospel is to bear fresh fruit in a culture where so much is rotten.
Anyone interested in a sample of my academic work, here’s a full essay on race and ethnicity in the ancient world and today. (I shared a few sections a few weeks back.) Dr. Dennis Edwards said of it, “This is great, dare I say prophetic!” Unfortunately, the formatting […]
PENTECOST REFLECTION | Gen. 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21 Can you imagine Facebook or Twitter without disagreement or conflicting viewpoints? Can you imagine a world without political division? Can you imagine a world united by one language and motivated by one grand purpose? We live in a cultural moment of […]
In November 1979, while I was a 4-month old sucking down baby milk, Bob Dylan was getting his first taste of the milk of newfound faith in Jesus Christ. Dylan was about to shock the world and confuse and offend most his fanbase with his first tour as […]
The human ego is a sly and persistent bugger. Our bent toward self-centeredness is an ever-present menace in times of well-intended Christian living. You never know when and where the individual ego, under the strong influence of the Enemy, will take and distort an otherwise good, God made […]
