God’s Ringing Condemnation of Prejudice
Acts 10:1-16
"Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean." Acts 10:15 (NLT)
"What God has made clean, you have no right to call profane." Acts 10:15 (NJB)
"God has made these things clean so don’t call them ’unholy'!" Acts 10:15 (NCV)
Pastor's Blog:
The story is told of CS Lewis as a small boy of about 6 or 7. One day he announced to his father, “Daddy, I have a prejudice against the French.” “Why?”, asked his father. “If I knew that”, replied the young Lewis, “it wouldn’t be a prejudice!”
The word prejudice comes from the word pre-judgment. It has to do with making up your mind before having all the facts.
Personally I am convinced that most of what we think is well reasoned thought is in reality reasoning in defense of what we’ve already decided before getting the full story.
Jews and gentiles of the day had all kinds of pre-judgments about each other. Imagine then the uproar when Peter discovers that non Jews can have the same access to God as the Jewish “insiders”. This is not about 21st century “tolerance”. It’s about full inclusion.
Although we will see that there is a difference between “invitation” and “acceptance” into God’s Kingdom, we do well first to ask, “who is it I look down on?”. “Whom am I predisposed to call ‘unholy’, ‘profane’, or ‘unclean’?”
What do you do to counter your prejudices (and I suspect that there is no one without any)?
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It's one thing to have prejudices, but it's another to be the target of prejudices. I find I have to fight off such thoughts against those who do not worship as I do. Yeah, right inside the very Body of whom I want to embrace. I am so sorry and am trying to be inclusive because we all have that special place where we feel accepted by God, even if it looks different to us how we get there, or what worship music we enjoy. And I do feel sometimes that is turned around as to I am the one who is being prejudiced against because of the same. This side of that same coin is very lonely.
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