Mixed Relationships, Race and God

There I was planning a beautiful night that I believed, so did my sis that was to be my last valentine’s day as a single woman. The men in my office were a little envious but didn’t want to show it. How can she love herself so much she plans a meal, candles, music, and wine for herself and there is no sign of bitterness about her singlehood? In fact they suggested I invite a friend because they couldn’t imagine me being happy with my own company. I’d been talking about it since beginning of February.

In the end though God had other plans, I shared this beautiful meal with a friend, not because we were hiding from our loneliness and sought company but because we were sharing God’s romance for our precious hearts. It was beautiful!

Nkondlo joined the dinner and prayed with us before the meal. It is such a privilege to listen to a seven year olds prayer. You get why God says we ought to have faith like children. Anyway, we talked till the morning and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company and the thick presence of the Holy Spirit in the room.

 

Anyway, happy and content as I was that Friday, on Sunday morning before service I was sharing my beautiful night with a few ladies at church. They were so excited that we had such a lovely night. Then they relate to me how the young adults’ guys planned this amazing Valentine’s Day for the girls at church. I tell them how lovely that is, to remind young women that love comes in different forms and valentines’ day can be shared between brothers and sisters. How precious is it for these young men to have planned this? I then get to ask if they went, and a scoffing NO came out. Now I’m shocked because I believe I would have gone had I been asked but why would these ladies refuse, not only that but scoff at it as if it were some ridiculous thing to suggest. I ask them why not, they say “oh because we didn’t expect to be invited and actually were not”. I ask why not, they say “well the white guys in our young adults (which currently are a majority) have made it clear that they find nothing attractive about a black girl, maybe if she dresses nicely they might look but never be interested enough to date”. I had no words!

It’s not that I was shocked because of our South African history but I wasn’t just standing in South Africa but I was standing in my church yard. I was all mixtures of emotions, I was angry, disappointed, hoping it’s not true maybe it was an exaggeration, but mostly I felt my heart hurt so badly I thought it would explode. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t focus on anything with clarity. I was also wondering why I am experiencing such intense emotions about this racial differentiation of black girls. I had to talk to someone, so I dragged a friend out of pre-service prayer and told them what I just heard. I’m not sure what kind of response I expected but when she didn’t look surprised, and in fact looked at me like I was insane for being shocked it just hurt deeper.

I took off, went to complete my task for the morning. I walked into my Pastors’ office and greeted the Pastor I was there for and didn’t even see the other two Pastors sitting there. They had to greet me themselves and hug me making jokes that they know I’m here for makeup but hey they deserve hugs as well. I felt embarrassed at this but not too long cause my heart wanted to come out of my mouth still.

I went down to listen to the service. During worship, I kept on asking God what is wrong with me. Am I overreacting? Do I have issues? I mean, no one else seems to be feeling the same way about this. Just there, in front of everyone, I couldn’t breathe or sing and tears were just falling out. I couldn’t control them. I had to step outside because I felt I’m two seconds from screaming. It felt like violent waves were crashing onto me all at once.

During the weeks after that, I really went to God with this because I didn’t understand my reaction to it. Was I having an identity crisis? Was I having self-image crisis? Was it because I didn’t love my black skin? Did I feel like a dog, that when dressed nicely could be pretty but not enough to date? Did I want to be married to a white guy? Is it all the political talks making rounds, opening old wounds? What was it really, WHAT?

 

 

 

 

 

Some days later I was reading this blog about 10 Truths about A Woman’s worth by Jarrid Wilson, and it hits me. This had nothing to do with race by the way but it had some points about the effects of the world on a woman’s image of self and worthiness. After weeks of asking the same questions over and over.  I realised I was hurt because:

1) I won’t date guys outside of Christ lest I be unequally yoked to an unbeliever.

2) My heart is placed at Hatfield Christian Church, dating and marrying a guy from another church might mean I must change my home. I feel strongly that my home has been made by God and right now it’s this one. Unless God sends me elsewhere. So in essence I haven’t been looking for relationships with people I know are in other churches.

3) I’m very passionate about the young adults and the heartbeat mentorship I’m part of. If these girls are in this church to learn more of what Christ looks like, how are they to accept, love and treat everyone equally when they are told they are not good enough because of the colour of their skin?

4) How are we to overcome the race history when our church’s young men have not removed the veil placed by the devil on their eyes? I felt they have never asked God what attractive is? Or what their wives look like. They are just basing it on skin colour. Worse, it feels as though they compare black girls to pets. I don’t like dogs but if you dress them up they are cute, but not enough to marry.

5) Who must the black girls at our church marry when the young men there are discriminating against them? Where is God’ heart for the black girls placed then? Should we then move churches and look for a black dominated church? Is that part of God’s plan?

6) What is the Christian view of marriage then if the meeting and joining together of two people is measured by their skin colour and not the intention of God’s heart. Who puts people together then if not the One who made them? Are we not asking God to reveal our spouses to us and the path that He has put in place? What then does it matter what they look like if we are chasing after hearts?

I didn’t feel these young men understood the effect their words would have. What image they portray of themselves and the condition of their hearts. I was hurt because I have no idea what we (blacks) ever did to white people to be viewed in such light. I have no idea what it would take to change those mind-sets. How do I protect my son from that pain of constantly being viewed as less than enough and whatever else is associated with his skin colour. How does my sister’s child fare up against this?

I also realised that these questions had been in my heart for a long time. I’m not physically attracted to Black guys more than White guys or Indian guys or Asian guys. I don’t have that filter in me. So it was always confusing for me when other people did it. I’m well aware of our past as a Black people vs. White people or even other races but I strongly felt those wounds will be closed by God. I’ve never consciously felt inferior to a white girl, or felt a white guy wouldn’t chose me because of my skin colour. I’ve dated an Indian guy, a Spanish speaking guy, Afrikaans guy, Zulu guy, Xhosa guy and I never thought we broke up because of colour but what I was looking for I then found in Christ. And now patiently I wait for my husband, whatever race he is.

I read an article written by Cooper P. Abrams III on the origin of race (<http://bible-truth.org/race.htm#001>): please read it for you. I was earnest in my search for this and I only read bible based literature because I didn’t want to be diluted by an already diluted opinion of black people. We are all generated from the same seed of Adam and Eve, how then could we hate each other so much? How has God viewed this? In trying to understand the origin of race and the amount of hatred I see and feel from other races, this article came close. The only thing missing is my heart’s connection to the hatred. He cites many explanations offered by different groups of people to account for their discrimination like (quoted):

1)        The curse of Canaan: One of the great tragedies of this erroneous biblical interpretation has been the interpretation by some of Genesis 9:18-27 bring related to a curse upon the black people. Specifically, some individuals have used the prophecy of Canaan being the "servant of servants" to mean that he would be the slave of Shem and Japheth. Leupold believes that the curse was on Canaan and did not include Ham's three other sons.⁸ If this is a correct interpretation, it would be difficult to relate the Negroes of Africa to the descendants of Canaan who settled in the Middle East.

2)   The curse of Cain: Often we hear the mark of "Cain" being related to the black race. To briefly deal with this erroneous idea it should be simply pointed out that the Hebrew word "oth" does not mean "mark" as an outward physical token or mark placed on Cain. Leupold says that the word is better translated "sign."⁶ Also, the text does not say that God set a mark "in" or "on" Cain and certainly does not even hint at the mark being related to his skin colour or physical characteristics. The word used indicates God gave him a sign of guarantee, or an assurance that he would be protected. Ryrie says it was a sign to reassure him of God's gracious protection of his life.⁷ Furthermore, even if one were to take the position that Cain was given the mark of being black, all of his progeny died in the flood and since Noah's sons were Sethites (Genesis 5) the curse would have ended with the flood, rendering the issue moot.

3)     The Tower of Babel: God did not indiscriminately change the languages among the people, because to do so would have broken up and confounded families. The genealogies in Genesis 10 extend beyond the time of confusion of languages so it would seem that God kept families together by giving them the same language. Furthermore, Genesis 10:5 states that God divided them by language, family and nations. At this point, it is very important to keep in mind that as these groups of people migrated further from the Middle East they became isolated from other groups. This separation caused isolation from other groups resulted in breeding within a specific smaller number people. Because of isolation, genetics then began to limit the physical characteristics of their offspring as the dominate genes began to emerge.

4)    The role of genetics (outside of the bible): In ‘genetics, any of the elements by which hereditary characters are transmitted and determined, regarded as a particular state of organization of the chromatin in the chromosome factor: theoretically, each mature reproductive cell carries a gene for every inheritable characteristic, and thus an individual resulting from the union of two such cells receives a set of genes from each of its parents.” It can be seen from this definition that it is the gene which determines the physical characteristics of men. Each parent contributes his or her genes to their offspring, and the child is a product of both. When we look around us today and see all the different physical characteristics in people and relate this to Adam, who was the first man. We can see that in Adam, the potential combination of genes was enormous.

5)        Isolation of people scattered in different parts of the world: We have seen that the decedents of Noah's three sons were generally dispersed over all the earth. Furthermore, the physical characteristics of any of his sons were not exclusive to his progeny. Each could and did produce offspring with different characteristic. The most important factor in reaching an explanation for the origin of race is the understanding that as the migration from the Middle East proceeded, contact with other groups became less frequent, and in time each group became isolated from all others, and became smaller. Because of this isolation men and women married within their own group and breeding took place within an isolated group and between kin.  Without isolation, it is unlikely that "race" would have ever occurred. It is a vital part of understanding how genetics caused the different physical characteristics of isolated groups of people which we call races.

6)        Conclusion: The model or explanation or the origin of race as presented in this paper can afford the Christian with a basic understanding of how race came to be. It is easily understood when all the evidence is considered. Racial differences can never honestly be said to be the result of curses placed on people by God, or the nonsensical theories of evolution. Race occurred because of the work of the physical laws of human genetics that Almighty God instituted and race has no spiritual significance.

In my understanding of our Great God I can see how vast and beautiful in its magnitude the creation of man was. He planted the potential of all these different genes in one man to make a people so different, so intelligent, and so beautiful so that He could marvel at each and everyone’s potential to building a Kingdom so magnificent. When He said in Genesis 9v7 “Go and populate the earth”, He meant for these differences to occur. Not to choose which group of people are worthy but to add to the beauty of His world. If He made the earth in seven days to have mountains, seas, grass and trees. To have animals that walks the earth and swims the seas in their different colours and characteristics. Why wouldn’t He give Adam and Eve the capacity to produce all the different people populating earth now? If Adam had the intelligence capacity to name all and I mean all the animals of the earth, from ants to elephants, why would he be limited in his reproducing seed as well?

 

Suddenly I remembered the last part of the song Hosanna: “Break my heart for what breaks Yours”. I can’t speak of what God feels about this but I can speak of what He lays in my heart. My heart was broken, the kind of broken that threatened to choke me of life itself. It had nothing to do with the fact that I’m black but it had to do with that I’m a follower of Christ. It broke my heart to see unchanged perceptions of these young men and the indifference of the young women make it okay to not see people as Christ sees them. How can they not see how He has made them, beautiful, colourful and with every potential to be each other’s wives and husbands? I remember Ps Herman Charles once said, each time you reproduce you are creating a new race never seen before, such is the greatness of God.

 

I wasn’t upset that the black girls were not asked to dress and attend this beautiful Valentine’s Day planned by the hearts of the young men. It was that because of their blatant words, for whatever reasons, good or not, they were excluded for, it seemed to the black girls it was because of their skin colour. Without intending to but they hurt them. They said they were not worthy. They implied they are less than human and therefore are tolerated because of the church but not in their hearts.

I also had to ask myself what are the challenges Christians face with mixed relationships? The fact is everyone assumes that a mixed couple faces much more challenges than a same race couple. I remember a radio interview with John Piper, where a woman phoned in to ask if she can marry a black guy. What does God have to say about mixed relationships? He answered her by showing her that the scripture only referred to races in relation to believers and non-believers. It was about being unequally yoked and nothing to do with one Jews or black or whatever. I look at my sister with her husband and all I hear I things I went through with my previous relationships. Like, who’s cooking tonight? Honey, wash the dishes. Let’s wait for a year and enjoy our marriage before we have a baby. These are normal conversations and arguments every couple has.  I feel the cover of Christ is different for His children and it should be more possible to ignore races there than anywhere else. My sister and her husband love each other and they pray for each other. Her mother in-law adores her. God Himself pointed them to each other! I can’t imagine what their lives would be like with different people. It is not that God makes good of every situation to those who serve Him; it is obedient hearts that followed God saying this is who I have made for you. To forgive is to offer your heart again to the same person who hurt you without reservation and without holding back to the possibility of being hurt again, and again, and forgive once more. Because forgiveness releases you from being bound to a lone tree by the devil, it further allows you to see the love of Christ that is offered to all. I went all this way, from prayer to prayer and from reading this Christian article and the other, to reading God’s word for my heart and for others that I have come to this: I am divinely favoured and knitted in my mother’s word with the genes that flow from the first man created. They are gorgeous, astounding and beyond my comprehension. I am loved. Because I was loved first and filled each day to my core with the love of Christ, I love you just as I love me.

Lord, my Maker, Who planned every intricate part of me. Who knows my heart and every thought in my mind. I surrender this hurt and offer it back to you, to heal and mend anew. I forgive this, in its entirety and I offer my heart again, clean with new love for my brothers. I thank You for revealing me to me and my own misconceptions and judgements and forgiving me. I love the work You’re doing in my heart and I’m grateful for it! I pray Lord that this wool covering our eyes and preventing us for seeing each other as You have made and see us is removed. I pray that our first instinct should be to see You first in each other and forget any other flaw. I pray for bent hearts towards You and your people. I pray You clean and heal the hearts of the young people and You cover all of us with Your precious blood. In only Your beautiful Name, Jesus Christ, Amen.