Friday, August 23, 2019

Overcoming Bigotry

I do not remember the young man’s name; but I remember what he said, and the look on his face when he realized what he had said. His words were, “I hate bigots!”

If he had said, “I hate bigotry” it would not have been the same. If he had said, “I hate the fact that I still find a bit of bigotry in myself” it would have been significantly different. But he said, “I hate bigots.” That was nearly 40 years ago. I still wonder how life has gone for that (no longer young) man.

I wonder if he would have hated Pete. Pete was a preacher in an earlier era. He preached about how much God loved everyone. He preached about taking the gospel to everyone. But he was unwilling to eat with people of other races. God might love everyone, and he might even be obligated to say so in his preaching, but surely God did not expect Pete to eat with Gentiles.

So Peter thought and so Peter practiced. Even after the Lord gave Simon Peter a vision regarding inclusiveness and commanded him to change his practice (Acts 10 & 11), he still fell back into his bad habits at times (Gal 2:11-14). Peter was wrong, and Paul rebuked him sharply for it. But Paul did not hate Peter, bigot though he was.

It is hard to hate the bigotry and yet love the bigots. It is hard to hate the sin and yet love the sinner; yet most of us manage to do it with reference to ourselves. We hate our sin; and yet manage to avoid hating ourselves. Could we not extend the same grace to others?

Someday we will approach the gate of heaven. If the old jokes are correct, a recovering bigot named Peter will be there to greet us. Will we hate him? I hope not. Because if we get inside that gate we will find the city full of people who had failings, and who never completely overcame most of those failings in their earthly life. Eternity will be rather tedious for us if we choose to focus on those failings.

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