by Tom Brennan,
Recent tragic events in America have led many to ask “Why”? Many are exploiting racial, ethnic, economic and social issues for political and personal gain to be sure. But Christians can look to the Bible and Israel for the only real answers.
In Israel every morning people rise and say in one voice” “Shema Yisrael”. This has happened for over 3,500 years without fail. “Hear O Israel thy G-d is One”. The evening closes the same way. Israel is one nation under One G-d. Yes there are sects and a difference; yes there are disagreements and sometimes fights. And yes there is poverty, and some inequality in the way human agencies interpret laws and finances. But each day the faithful rise and declare in one voice that prayer.
Humans have a way of taking a straightforward instruction and spinning it into something they can personalize and use for their own benefit. It’s called marketing or branding in today’s terminology. Churches call it a denomination, a doctrine or other unique term. The early Gnostics saw an opportunity to take the Gospel and create a unique and very marketable version of a basic truth and create their own version of it. We have the “Gospel of Judas” and other spinoffs as proof, all in conflict with the Gospels and Epistles actually transmitted by the Disciples.
Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS and the Ayatollahs are dividing up the Muslim world, threatening Christians and Jews with extinction. In America a racial agenda has been adopted to divide and conquer the Nation by many sides. Are we meant to be divided and at each other’s throats?
The Bible has a very straightforward solution. There is One G-d. Male and female He created them in His own image and likeness. So we have One G-d, two genders and one race: human. All else is “branding” and marketing to divide what G-d made for the personal gain of the dividers.
We must all look to the Word as given to us in Scripture for the solutions. This is work and will not be done overnight. We must protect and defend our families and faith against the attacks and persecutions that Israel’s and Christians’ enemies are generating. But through prayer and perseverance the enemies will eventually see the absolute sense behind the Bible’s declaration of our being in His image and likeness.
A house divided against itself cannot stand and we must stand with Israel against a world set on exploiting differences and emotions. It’s Biblical, after all.
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Richard Knelsen says
I am impressed with the clarity of your comments, and will share the link to your blog on my Facebook page. Please check out my blogs; use the “blog” link on the home page of http://www.knelsenkollection.com
Greetings to Ian,
Rick
J.G.S Editor says
Shalom Rick – Good to hear from you again – Blessings from Ian
Tom Brennan says
Dear Rick,
thank you for your kind words. Working within G-d’s Kingdom is serious work. The writing must be clear, truthful and totally reflect our service. We are in perilous times and secular and manmade solutions are useless. Only the Word of The Almighty has value as we look toward His return and the restoration of the perfect world He made. I have “bookmarked” your page and blog. I am planning to volunteer with Sar-El next year and hope to meet you.
Sigmund F. Kerns says
I keep seeing “Race” being shoe-horned into topics, so I feel that it is at last my turn to “Play The Race Card:”
My name suggests Scandinavian origins, but it was given because of a “Race Issue:”
I am, you see, Native American— only the names I bear had been given to avoid racial violence!
Shortly before I was born, a terrible incident took place in a North American city: A group of juniior-high-age boys had gone to a B-Western double-feature show, in which some star had been shot full of arrows on screen.
The boys had come out of the theater jazzed by the “slaughter,” and had spotted an Indian boy across the street. You may or my not know that there are many “Indians” in cities like New York, Brooklyn, and elsewhere.
Then as now, as the story goes, if you want to be thought of as a hero, you get a hero’s job; Most Native Americans took jobs in tall-building construction.
And that’s why there was a young Native American in the city.
The boys yelled at him, he yelled back; it was hot, tempers flared, and a chase ensued. The mob of young-teens chased him several blocks before cornering him, and had ultimately beat him so badly that he lingered in a coma for several days (this was in the early 1950s) before he died.
That was why I had been given the resolutely Norse names— and why my parents had been adamant about my “Passing for White” when-ever possible.
With this cultural camouflage in place I learned first-hand how a simple change in perception can result in a major change in treatment by other people. Individuals who treated “Caucasian Me” one way had–far too often, and far too smoothly!–slid into treating “Native American Me” an entirely different way when it was “revealed” that I did not fit the preconceptions they had built around the “Me As A White Man” character.
It’s amazing! I’ve seen “long-time friends” literally hesitate and look chagrined while trying to “relate” to “The New Me,” and then tell that they were having trouble “relating to me,”
The whole image-of-man entered into it! We have “Written Scripts” which include how Whites, Blacks, and other people are “supposed” to behave, and (for the most part) we expect people to keep to their assigned roles.
It’s an entire non-published cultural history! We openly frown on the use of “cultural shorthand type-casting” but by gosh, we rush to refresh ourselves with our “Cultural Cliff’s Notes” when we are called upon to “Relate” to a stranger!
I’ve noticed all sorts of “Type-Casting” over the 63 years I’ve been around, but the most important fact is that we are far, far better off when we ignore those “Scripts” and fall back to the lessons of Jesus:
When we treat other people ultimately as we wish to be treated, we will ultimately get along much better, and have far greater meetings of minds.
Do Not Assume!
If we can put aside the “Dogmas” and the “Profiles” and meet as friends, with no expectations or fears, we ultimately achieve greater unity and understanding.
Tom Brennan says
Dear Sigmund,
Thank you !. “race” a totally artificial term has been used to create boundaries between people. It has been used to place others in places where they can be categorized, classified and used by others. It in short, un-Biblical. We are made in the image and likeness of our Creator, no other. We are bound to love our neighbor as ourselves. These commands are from a Source Who knows no bounds or errors and that’s where I work from. Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Raymond Dobos says
Thanks for an agreeable ending,the world gets baffled in the “Numbers” chapter as well as a bunch of the others,but still retains its explanations RDD