“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

~ Psalm 118.22

Race does not give our lives a chance.  They are not allowed to speak for themselves.  Race says before we are born, “I know you already and I know what you can and cannot do.”  It is a god of our thoughts.

Race tells us where we belong and sometimes, it is no where.  It limits the possibilities of relationship.  It restricts our dreams; they need not apply because race gives them to us.  Right from the beginning, race says based on your appearance, this is what you can do.

This is how race rejects us:

1.  Race rejects our bodies.  Race says, “I does not like its appearance.  I don’t like how your body looks so I don’t want to see it.  It reminds me of things that I fear.  Your body does not look like mine so it must not be beautiful, the right kind or human.”

2.  Race rejects the presence of our bodies.  Race says, “I don’t like your body and I don’t want to see it.  I don’t want it in my neighborhood or at my school.  I don’t want my children to see your body or like it or think that it is acceptable because it is around.  In fact, I don’t believe that your body belongs in my state or my country.  I want your body to get out.”

3.  It rejects the gifts of our bodies.  Race says, “I don’t believe that someone who looks like you is capable to doing this.  Only we are capable of offering good things to the world and its inhabitants.  Someone must have taught you or you must have took it.  This can not your own idea or ability because it does not match my feelings about how you appear to me.”

4.  It rejects the opportunities that our bodies represent and offer.  Race says, “You may be a nice person but I’m just not interested.  I can create my own and for my own people.  I can do it myself.  I can do it without you.  Why don’t you do the same?”

5.  It rejects the possibility of relationship.  Race says that persons from different cultures do not go together.  We do not “match” so we don’t belong together.  We must stick with our own kind.  Race says, “Not only do I not want to know you or be around you, but I don’t want to share life with you.  In fact, I am better off without you.”

6.   Race teaches us self- rejection.  Race, says, “I don’t like you so you shouldn’t like you either.  I have rejected you; consequently, there is nothing about yourself that you should accept.  You need to change everything about you; look/ act/ think/ behave like me and then I will accept you.”

7.  Race says that God rejects us.  Race says, “God created you to be a curse, to be a comparison, to stand as the definition of all that is wrong and evil and dark with the world.  Just look at you.  There is nothing about you that you suggests that you should lead and this includes your own life.  You were created to follow the lives of other social colors.  You were created to serve and support.  You are the burden and the burden- bearer.”

So, God created the whole universe, galaxies, bodies of water, continents and billions of people and doesn’t like your culture or mine?  God created some thing that He hates and that He hated so much that He keeps creating us?  Not only that, according to race, God did not put the purpose of our existence into His plan.  Despite the reality of our existence, race says, there is no place for us and no plan for us.

There is a place for insects, animals, fowl and fish but there is no place on earth for you.  Race says, “We don’t have anything for you to do in the earth; please leave.”  And go where?  We belong here just as all of the other created things do.  The rejection of race is absurd.  Its words can’t move anything and no one should relocate based on its beliefs.

The rejection of race is immediate but the acceptance of God is ultimate.  The good new is that we can talk to the God who knows how it feels to be rejected.  He doesn’t have to imagine how it feels but has experienced it first-hand.  Jesus was rejected.  Isaiah foretold it, “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (53.3) and Jesus lived it: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1.11).

But, there is always good news.  “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Psalm 118.22).  I am so glad that there is a kingdom that is not of this world and it places great value in those who are rejected.