Who Jesus Is and Why It Matters (Ebook Shorts)

Author:Jim Wallis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian Life, General, REL084000, Religion, Politics & State, REL012000, Common good—Religious aspects—Christianity
ISBN: 9781441245953
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-14T22:00:00+00:00

Red and Yellow, Black and White, They Are Precious in His Sight

I shared with the young Trinity seminarians the story of my evangelical church’s “atonement-only gospel.” I thought that, as part of a new generation of evangelicals, they might be looking for something different from what I was raised with and what was very prominent in my own seminary years.

I still vividly recall being put on the front row one Sunday night when our church hosted a revival preacher. I was there because all the “unsaved” kids had to be, and my parents were concerned that I had yet to be “saved,” as I was getting up in years. I was six.

It felt like the fiery evangelist was pointing his finger right at me when he said, “If Christ came back tonight, your mommy and daddy would be taken to heaven, and YOU would be left ALL BY YOURSELF” (emphasis added based on how it sounded to me at the time). He got my attention. I knew I had a problem if that were to happen: I would be a six-year-old with a five-year-old sister to support. My mom was good at fixing things, so I went to her. As was her way, she didn’t tell me about the wrath of God, but that God loved me and wanted me to be his child.

That all sounded pretty good to me, so I signed up. It wasn’t very deep, but it was real enough for a six-year-old child. After “adult baptism” when I was eight, I went through the usual evangelical church pilgrimage: church every Sunday all day, Sunday school, vacation Bible school, summer Bible camp, and eventually the youth group. I was very good at “sword drill” competitions, in which the object was to see who could most quickly find a Bible verse and read it aloud. And every Sunday night, I was usually the youngest at the men’s prayer meetings before the evening service, which got me lots of pats on the back and hopes for my future spiritual leadership.

But when I reached my teenage years, other questions began to grow inside of me. Mostly they were questions about what was happening outside of me and outside of our church in the city of Detroit. My hometown, the Motor City, was completely segregated and deeply divided by race—and the tensions were on the rise. In my Sunday school, they had taught us kids a song whose lyrics went, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

But the only children in our sight were white kids; we never saw any black people at all, except when we would pass by them downtown and my grandmother would have us wash our hands afterward. I had heard there were black churches in Detroit, but we never went to them or knew much about them. We also never had a black preacher or even a black choir in our all-white church.

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