larshaukeland

One big family

Text by Jasmine Ireland and Stacia McKeever

We’re all different

Sometimes people use the differences between us(skin colour, hair colour, etc.) as an excuse to do terrible Things to other people: tease them, Call them names, fight with them—even hurt or kill them. Wars have been fought because of the idea that some people groups are better than others—because their bodies aren’t as hairy or their arms aren’t as long. One time, a man was put on display in the Bronx Zoo’s monkey house simply because he was a pygmy from Africa, and he was thought to be ‘less evolved’ than the zookeepers! And the Australian Aborigines were once thought to be the ‘missing link’ between apes and human beings.

Terrible crimes were committed because People chose not to regard the biblical teaching that we’re really all much the same — all people are amazingly closely related.

We’re all the same

We all have the same skin-colouring pigment (just more or less of it); we all have eyes, noses, mouths, hair (well, most of us do). And the Bible teaches that we all come from the same two people (Adam and Eve — Acts 17:26), and we all have the same Creator God (Acts 17:24, 25).

It also tells us that we all have the same problem— sin—that separates each of us from God (Romans 3:23), and we therefore all have the same need for a Saviour (1 Corinthians 15:3, 4).

The real reason people don’t get along with each other all the time is not that we’re all different, but that we’re all sinners.

We all have the same choice

No matter what colour our skin, where we live, or how we talk, we are all faced With the same Choice: where we will spend eternity.

Jesus Christ paid the penalty for sin by dying on a cross and rising again three days later (1 Corinthians 1–4). To all who believe this, the Creator God gives eternal life With Him (John 3:16–18).

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