Take Every Thought Captive (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)
Gary McManus, 06/14/2020Part of the Words that Divide, Words that Unite series, preached at a Sunday Morning service
June 14, 2020 2 Corinthians 10:3-6
Fear serves an important function for all of us.
Fear can lead to bias. Is that wrong? Maybe.
Maybe not.
Her decision to be bias might be safest while
costing a little money—choosing equally between
two stores might be deadly.
You and I make hundreds, maybe thousands,
of decisions every day. Really, our life is pretty
exhausting, so we do a lot of things automatically
and out of habit.
It lightens our own mental load.
Corporations like to call it BRAND loyalty when all
we’re trying to do is keep our brain from wearing out with all those decisions.
In many ways bias and prejudice can and do help us.
Point NUMBER ONE:
We ALL HAVE PREJUDICES and BIASES.
No one can say, “I am not prejudiced.”
Yes, you are. We all are.
Further: your biases and prejudices have been helpful to you.
Example: wild mushrooms
What about racial bias?
Look at World War 2. . .
The difference between mushrooms and differences
between groups of people has to be taught/learned.
Truth: we are ALL different from one another.
Still millions of people DECIDE to group people
or put people in groups. THEN, having grouped
people, some folks decide to treat people differently
based on what group they are in.
They do not base their treatment on the individual.
Why? It is a shortcut—it saves our brains from getting exhausted just like many other decisions we make.
However making things easy for ourselves, we make
things hard for others—maybe impossible.
We have taken our ability to see the differences in people and MISUSED them! Racial discrimination is a MISUSE of one of our mental abilities that usually helps us.
—but in these cases of misuse, others get hurt.
Galatians 3:28: NEITHER JEW or GREEK in Christ Jesus.
How about rich and poor? (See James 2:1-7)
Prejudice and bias begin in the head.
Prejudice and bias are solved in the heart where our Jesus lives.
Step 1: notice what we are doing/thinking
Step 2: Remember James 2:1: SHOW NO PARTIALITY!
Step 3: Fulfill the royal law: “You shall love your neighbor. . .” James 2:8 (Also Galatians 5:14, Romans 13:9, and, of course, Jesus: Matthew 19:18-20)
Why do Americans feel that it is so important to speak
our prejudices and biases?
This is a problem that has plagued the church
since before Paul wrote his letters.
But we, like the early church, have Jesus for us!
What do you see? 2 Corinthians 5:16
Grow in love (2 Thessalonians 1:3)
Colossians 3:11: HERE there cannot be Greek and Jew. . . Amen
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