Our True Aim in Racial Reconciliation

Out of the many friends God has brought to me, I thank Him greatly for bringing Elijah into my life. Though we are of different races he and I share many of the same passions, and one of them is RR (racial reconciliation) within the church. As we chatted last night we discussed how sold out we are for RR, and with all the humility and discernment I could muster I said that I believe we are. The greatest evidence to me is that in our training for ministry God has brought us under the leadership of pastors of different races and contexts; Elijah has worked under a Black pastor, and I was trained in ministry under a White pastor. After bidding my friend goodnight I recalled my past work in RR, and was saddened. During that time I made the grave mistake of having the wrong aim; my aim at that time was simply RR. But if RR is what I wanted, then how was it the wrong aim? In truth RR is a byproduct of another pursuit, the pursuit of Christ Himself. Often times I have found that many Christians’ pursuit of RR is like this:

We tend to use Christ like a ladder to ascend to the higher plain where RR is said to be, and once we achieve the cross-cultural friendships we boast about how we got ourselves there. Now there are others who use Christ as a means of avoiding the issues, they will say “Since we have Jesus we are reconciled…so there is no race problem”; this of course is not true and reeks with ignorance and denial. The truth is that Christ ought to be our one pursuit and a church with the greatest potential for RR is not one that is just multi-ethnic, but one where Christ is treasured and loved. I have been a member of multi-ethnic churches and neighborhoods, and have watched as people go for years without even talking to each other or establishing relationships; yet we rejoice in the fact that we have members from Hong Kong and Nigeria (and we don’t even know them).

When you have a church that truly treasures and loves Christ they will seek to obey Him, and in obedience they will seek to love their neighbor as themselves which is not easy. As they seek to love their neighbor as themselves they will get into their neighbors world and issues and many of these will be cross-cultural ones. Through this process they will continuously cry out to God for strength to maintain the friendship and be real. In the end Christ will be the one with all the glory, not the programs and intentional cross-cultural living situations; those things will be byproducts of a pursuit of Christ and the fruit of them will be RR. I pray that Christians with the goal of RR will start the pursuit treasuring Christ above all, then and only then will we have real RR.