Race Relations

By Dale Brown


The world will only function properly when we show true love and respect to one another and eliminate all forms of prejudice.


Mankind has never advanced a centimeter by hating or showing prejudice towards each other.  The only notable advancement we have ever made in the history of the world is when we have been brothers and sisters at labor towards a common goal.


Prejudice is a great time saver; it enables one to form opinions without bothering to get the facts.


To live by relying on one another implies a risk, but without some trust in humanity, life would be unlivable.  One of our greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln said, “If you trust, you will be disappointed occasionally, but if you mistrust, you will be miserable all of the time.”


Naturally, we all have traits that aggravate one another, but we should work hard on liking each other and overcoming our own bad traits.  The more you grow as a person, the less shocked you become about people who are different from yourself.  When a person is wrapped up in himself, the package is usually pretty small.


It is a law of life, as certain as gravity, that to live fully, we must learn to use things and love people–not love things and use people.


Nineteen of twenty-one notable civilizations did not recognize that and died from within and not by conquest from without.  The world must learn to work together or finally, it will not work at all.  Kipling tells us:


“Now this is the Law of the Jungle–as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf
that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.  For
the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”


One of the greatest dynasties in the history of sports was the Boston Celtics.
 What was their secret?


Once a year, the Boston Red Sox held a fellowship breakfast at Fenway Park.
Rabbis, priests, ministers, and civic leaders gathered in ecumenical fashion, to
extol the virtues of brotherhood.  At one, such conclave some years ago, Red Sox
GM Dick O’Connell addressed the group.  “You are sitting in a sports building
talking about brotherhood.  May I suggest that the best example is right down
the street from here.  There’s a team over there in the Boston Garden, made up
of whites, blacks, Catholics, and Protestants, coached by a Jew, and they’ve
been world champions for a long time now.  Everyone’s running around looking for
theories and searching into history for explanations.  If you want a perfect
example of what we have been talking about, just look at the Celtics.”  The
harmony O’Connell alluded to was one of the beauties and mysteries of the
Celtics Empire.



Unity involves a devotion and dedication to a cause which puts everyone closer
together.  When an individual loses oneself in something they think is bigger
than they are, they instantly find peace, love, happiness and success.


Martin Luther King, Jr., told us, “All people in this world are tied into a
single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all
indirectly.  We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure
of reality.  It was a tragedy of history that the children of darkness were
often more determined and forceful than the children of light.”


God says that if we build the kind of relationships with each other where we
enter into a covenant to belong to each other and be involved with each other in
pursing our goals together–that we are unstoppable.


The most important thing in the mind of God is our relationship with one
another.  God made us in such a way that everybody needs somebody, and God’s
idea for success is a community, a group of people who will become committed to
each other.


Communities and nations will be transformed when mankind returns to God and his
purposes for them.


The relationship we have with each other is what creates a relationship with
God.  If we are not capable of getting along with each other, then we are not
capable of having a relationship with God.


So the question in our journey of life is not whether God can bring peace into
the world.  The question is: Can we?