Sonya has an excellent post at One Black Christian Woman’s Perspective entitled The Benefits of Loving God. She doesn’t go all theological on us (something that I tend to do) but rather simply provides a list of why loving God brings good things into our lives. Here are her five points:

• He Will Never Let You Down
• He Will Be There For You During Hard Times
• He Will Never Give Up On You
• He Will Forgive You Your Sins
• He Has Prepared a Fabulous Place For You

Her first paragraph really struck me because it brought to mind an experience that I had several years ago:

I’ve been having a lot of spiritual conversations lately. Who God is, what He is about, and why being a ‘Christian’ shouldn’t mean having to following a certain doctrine or religion. And I’ve been having these conversations for years — why bad things happen to good people, the believability and credibility of God, the hypocrisy of Christians, why one religion is better than the other and, my favorite, how black people in America are only ‘Christians’ because of being brainwashed by the white majority society.

Sonya’s words reminded me of being in a restaurant several years ago where there “happened” to be a young black couple sitting behind me. The man was talking loudly and I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. He was telling the woman, who was meek and soft-spoken, that Christianity was a racist religion invented by white people and that the Bible taught racism. He kept on telling her that if she was a Christian she was a traitor to her race. She told him that he was wrong but I could tell that he was really pressuring her with lies and could ultimately make her believe something that isn’t true.

God moved me to turn around and talk to this couple. I told them that God hated racism and that he temporarily punished the sister of Moses, Miriam, because she was angry with Moses for marrying Zipporah, a woman from Cush, which is present-day Ethiopia. Miriam and her brother Aaron were literally angry at Moses for marrying a black woman! To quote from one of my old posts: 

RACISM
“Isn’t that just like God! Miriam was angry because Moses married a black woman so God made Miriam really, really white.”

The Bible tells us that “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” (Numbers 12:1). God was angry and turned Miriam white “like snow” with leprosy. (Numbers 12:4-10).

Isn’t that just like God! Miriam was angry because Moses married a black woman so God made Miriam really, really white. And because her whiteness was due to leprosy, she would be shunned by others just as she had shunned Moses’s wife.

Moses had compassion on Miriam and asked God — the author of compassion — to restore Miriam’s health. God did so, and his mercy is a lesson to all of us today.

I also told her how Paul wrote that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 listen). I admitted that some Christians have committed the sin of racism, but that they were wrong because the Bible teaches that God created all of us — red and yellow, black, and white — and that Christians who walked with God could not be racist.

Once I reminded the young woman about the story of Moses and his wife and what Paul had said she gained the courage to tell her date that she was not going to reject Christianity. Her meekness turned to strength. The young man looked dejected, stopped arguing, and actually began to listen to her as she gave her witness as to how God can change lives.