John 14:6
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
I was recently given this verse as the defacto word of Jesus promoting color blindness in his followers. My interpretation of the reason is that Jesus says that it doesn’t matter who you are. Jesus will love you and accept you into the fold and grant you eternal life as long as you come to God through him. Jesus says this regardless of race, gender, or nationality. As the followers of Jesus are called to be more Christ-like they are also called to accept all others as brothers and sisters in Christ regardless of who they are or what they look like.
On the surface this seems like a kind and inclusive view of the followers of Christ accepting everyone. The problem here is that a leap of scriptural interpretation is made. That leap is that the differences aren’t worthy of perception. You could just as easily read this to mean that we should honor and respect the differences of all coming to God through Christ. You could say that those differences are to be celebrated as we weave a tapestry of different people together in the love of Christ.
There have been many interpretations of the Bible in the past that have served to harm so many people justified by the inspired word of God. I think this is one of them.
To sum up, Jesus said differences don’t matter for inclusion but did he say to ignore them or to celebrate them?
Another argument under this umbrella of color blindness is Philippians 4:13.
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
If you try to say that humans cannot be 100% objective and can’t help but notice differences and build internal bias you can be shut down with this verse. It’s building on the assumption made in the first scripture and then backing it up with the power and obvious will of the Father.
The final argument for someone so ingrained in their interpretation of the Bible over may years is that they are simply right and that the Devil is using my words as his instrument. Honestly there is nothing I can do but turn by back on this level of hubris and intolerance. I can’t combat someone who thinks God is speaking obvious truth directly through them. They are closed off to conversation and any suggestion that they could possibly be wrong.
These are dangerous tactics utilized by so many evangelicals who can justify that they have no place in racism while simultaneously using this strategy of denial to maintain the status quo and keep the money and power where it has been for so many years. I’m not saying most of them do this consciously or maliciously. However, most of them sit in all or almost all white churches claiming they are not racist. Of course they would accept a black family that came through the door to worship. However, they don’t look internally and ask what are we doing and how can we change so that a black family feels comfortable coming into our church to worship?
It is this inward look that we are all being asked to take right now. As my Mother once told me, “The first step in fixing a problem is realizing that it exists.” We have to all recognize and accept that at some level we ALL have a problem that needs attention. Don’t hide it with the Bible.