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

They say that one human body, with its cells and DNA and acres of systems intertwined, is more complex than the entire Milky Way. It's a grand mystery that we will never unravel as long as we're mortal. The word on the street, after the grand human genome project, is that we are all related to one woman. They call her "Mitochondrial Eve." I could've told them her name, just from what I learned as a child in Sunday School.

We grownups want to make everything complicated, when the truth rarely is. Our Bibles told us about our beginnings, about sin and redemption, about the heart of man and how scoundrels can get made right (hint: we're all scoundrels, you know). We airbrush silly arks with animals in them on nursery walls, but don't really consider that a flood might have actually happened. Check out Google Earth and note how the water trailed back into the oceans (or creation.com, where brainiacs explain that stuff). 

Going back to the genome project, and our origins (no matter what you believe about the Bible)... it has become more than evident that we are all derived from the same gene pool. There are kinks and dips and variations in expression, but we are the human race. Many cultures, many tribes, many islands, but we are all of one blood. We got off the boat with Noah. There were eight, then there were billions. It didn't take too long. (They're trying to make everybody slow down and quit making so many of us). Today we face new challenges as technology brings our differences into the light and our prejudices into clearer focus. No longer can we hide in our protected corners and act like nothing's wrong. Old roots of bitterness have been growing quietly, seeping under the parched earth, looking for purchase. 

As a Christian, and as I look to God's Word, I am just beginning to turn my untilled ground over. There's a plow pan there...hard places that resist the truth. Stiff beliefs that deny reality. Much as some would like to say the scriptures support oppression, the whole story shows that Christ came to set us free from ourselves and our bent towards murderous racism. The Word traces us back to our beginnings, to the facts of our blood. It doesn't varnish the heroes of scripture -- it shows us what they (and we) are: sinners in need of saving.  People in need of love. That includes the skinny, fat, white, black, yellow, red, privileged, poor, rich, depraved ones all.