Dissolving Prejudice with God’s Love

“Being a black man, you always have to prove yourself,” says Emmanuel, a Nigerian student at Yale University. “People implicitly make assumptions about you from the way you look and treat you differently.”

The scenario described here is called prejudice. It is a negative attitude or feeling towards an individual based on insufficient information.

Prejudice is the prejudgment of members of a group or another person because of race, physical looks, gender, religion or any perceived difference.

For all the much vaunted social integration of the 21st century, prejudice is still a global problem.

A 2015 European survey reveals that ethnicity constitutes the most widespread form of discrimination in the EU.

In India, 180 million Dalits or “untouchables” are among its most wretched citizens because of an old, cruel caste hierarchy that condemns them to the lowest rung of the ladder. These people cannot touch or use even the common utensils others use.

“My birth is my fatal accident,” wrote Rohit Vemula, a Dalit, in his suicide note. “I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself … And that’s why I’m doing this.”

Few days ago, the Nigerian Senior Assistant on Foreign Affairs, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, called on the African Union amid reports of renewed xenophobic violence against Nigerians and other Africans in South Africa.

Another news report from the US indicates that “historical, structural and systemic racism combined with implicit bias” played a role in the Flint city water crises. The thread of prejudice is interwoven through all these crises.

But why is prejudice so widespread even though many people seem to condemn it? The reason is this: it has a blinding power. Many who disapprove of prejudice fail to recognise it in themselves.

It’s easier detected in others than in ourselves. Our hearts are deceitful, and if we are not constantly probing it with the searchlight of truth, we will keep thinking we are tolerant of all people of all types, when we actually resent some groups of people. Prejudice feeds on stereotypes.

When a certain image about a group of people – whether based on past negative experiences or misrepresentations – is imprinted on the mind of others, a “single story” is developed.

Talk about Mexicans for example, and a flurry of images of immigrants fleecing the healthcare or landscaping readily come to many minds.

Talk about Americans or Europeans and most Africans think of sexual deviants. These are stereotypes. They are not only untrue, but also based on a single narrative and they make that single narrative the only narrative.

Here in Nigeria, almost every ethnic group has derogatory stereotypes attached to it by other ethnic groups.

The Hausa are dismissed as oafs and terrorists; the Igbo as greedy and fraudulent; the Yoruba as cowards and betrayers and the Bini is deemed promiscuous.

Just as the New Testament quotes a prophet who said: “The Cretians are always liars, savage animals and lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). The social media today is awash with similar lines.

Someone who has barely known or interacted with ten individuals from a tribe or race bashes on them in sweeping, condescending and derogatory terms.

He puts gigantic groups of people into a box in which their motives and actions are to be prejudged by others. It’s prejudice nonetheless.

When caricatures and stereotypes are reinforced by words, actions and (mis)representations, they form a bedrock from which ethnocentrism, racial discrimination and xenophobia draw their strengths.

The scapegoating of groups has a long history all over the world. For about 3 centuries after Christ, Christians were heavily persecuted and mistreated for no reason other than their beliefs.

Tertullian wrote that if the sky does not move but the earth does; if there is famine or a plague in the Roman Empire, the immediate response of the people is to cry: “[Throw] the Christians to the Lions!”

Similarly, when the Bubonic plague swept across Europe in the Middle Ages, killing about a quarter of the population within a few years, the Jews who were already hated by many were blamed for it.

A Jewish man in the south of France was tortured until he “confessed” that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning the wells.

This information was false, since it was later discovered that the plague came from a bacteria, Yersinia pestis, found on rats. But the prejudice that was already entrenched led to the slaughtering of entire Jewish communities in Spain, France and Germany.

People didn’t even stop to observe that the Jews died of the plague like everyone else! This is why prejudice is potentially destructive. It unnecessarily divides people, breeds resentment and leads to murder.

Prejudice can be detected by:

1. Negative remarks. It makes an individual speak disparagingly about the people he dislikes. Prejudice is easily detected by words.

Anyone who underestimates the power of rhetoric to facilitate destruction should ask the half a million Tutsi who died in the Rwanda genocide. The 2015 xenophobic violence in South Africa was triggered by the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, who called immigrants “ants” and “head lice.”

2. Discrimination. With this, those disliked are excluded from social privileges, housing or certain types of employment. It makes people give you hostile glances even when they are meeting you for the first time.

Some will make fun of your culture, even though that’s not the topic of discussion. It also manifests by preferential treatments given to someone – even in official settings – because of race, status or physical look.

3. Physical attack. It fans the fire of hate and violence and even rationalises it. In 2015, many South Africans – professing Christians – took to the social media to justify the murder of foreign nationals and even promised to do more. This is rephrehensible.

4. Extermination. Today in many parts of the world it’s not a difficult task to bring people to the streets to kill a minority group under any pretext. This is because the roots of prejudice are already present within.

What causes prejudice?

Our sinful nature: It makes us judge others by how we perceive them on the outside. Our carnal nature makes it easy for us to believe something negative about others – even if they are not true – because it fits the single narrative that we’ve heard about them.

The kind of association one keeps: Parental upbringing and friends shape our values. It has been shown that children as young as 3 years of age can develop racial biases which they have picked up from others, especially parents.

When I was little, we used to attend a children Bible club. During our major outings, our teachers would come with a bus, pick up some ghetto children in another section of the city and ask us to share our seats with them. We used to despise those kids because of their poor looks – something I’m ashamed of today.

This was probably a mentality we picked up from our own upbringing. We were so cocooned in our leis that we didn’t realise that there were other children who didn’t have the privileges we had.

That’s why if your close friends are bigots, there is a likely chance that you’re also prejudiced as well.

Pride: This is a form of inordinate self-esteem that makes a person believe he is superior to others in terms of educational attainment, background, physical look or social status.

A proud person feels better by demeaning those whom he considers inferior to his standard. Our races, tribes, status or looks do not make us better or worse than anyone else. God hates pride and so must we (Prov. 16:5).

Religion: How many times have you met Christians who felt “superior” to fellow Christians because of their spiritual gifts, denomination, theological system and even the Bible translation they use? This is masked prejudice.

This can also come from some church traditions that put people into a box, dictate to them how they must dress and talk. Consequently, those who don’t fit into the box are scorned or mistreated by those in it.

The non-religious are also guilty. Many atheists label theists as “stupid,” “dingbats,” “nit wits,” and “mentally ill people with an imaginary sky daddy”, while simultaneously carping about the “hate”, “intolerance” and “discrimination” fostered by religion!

It doesn’t occur to them for a second that they’re the quintessence of what they are decrying. It’s amazing how people maintain their blind spots.

Nationalism: This is a sense of national consciousness which makes a person exalt his nation above all others and place much emphasis on promoting its culture and interest above others.

It leads to xenophobic attitudes that deem immigrants to be culprits of every crime. But God is not partial and He doesn’t favour one nation above the rest. When we become Christians, we become citizens of God’s Kingdom and no longer allow the walls of earthly heritage and nationalism to divide us. (Acts 10:34).

The Lord Jesus taught and exemplified love and acceptance for others irrespective of race, class or gender (Luke 17:11-19, 30-37, John 4:7-30 etc).

In the same way, we must deal with prejudice by having the mind of Christ. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). This love cannot be faked neither can a non-believer have it.

When we walk in God’s love, we will no longer prejudge people, but will want to get to know them and accept them as they are.

This was what Daryl Davis, a black man, did and he led about 200 white racists to abandon the Klu Klux Klan. Love is stronger than hate and forgiveness than retaliation. Let us allow the Lord work on our hearts and remove our prejudice.

Seeking Guidance in the Stars?

“What’s your sign?” a friend asked me some years ago. This zodiac sign was supposed to foretell my life through horoscopes.

“I’m not into astrology,” I replied.

“My sign is cancer and it accurately blends with my personality and eating habits,” he said with a re-assuring smile.

I was quite surprised that a Bible believing Christian would find astrology astutely compatible with his Christian life.

Tragically, there are many Christians in this shoe. They not only compartmentalise their lives but also curiously defend astrology as one of the ways of knowing God’s will.

Astrology is technically a form of divination and it shouldn’t be confused with astronomy – a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena.

From the earliest times, humans have observed the precise movements of the heavenly bodies and the seasonal changes of their locations in the firmament.

This teleological framework points to the existence of God the Creator (Ps. 8:3). Indeed, celestial bodies and their movements significantly influence our lives. The sun, around which the earth orbits, is a basic unit of human timekeeping.

The moon influences ocean tides and rivers. The stars are reliable guides in navigation, even for astronauts, and a working knowledge of the constellations can be used to predict floods or seasonal changes.

Astrology, though from astronomy, goes beyond the natural influence of the sun and moon on our environment. It asserts that the location and patterns of the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, planet, stars and constellations) reveal a person’s character and future.

Astrologers claim that the precise positions of the planets and the signs of the zodiac at the time of a person’s birth can influence his life course. This position at any given time is called a horoscope.

Thus, people seek information about their lives (e.g their “predestined” actions, finance, marriage or future warnings) by observing the alignment of key heavenly bodies and “calculating” their interaction with one another and with the earth. Many people faithfully follow their daily horoscope affirming its veracity.

The practice of looking to the heavens for omens to direct earthly events has been traced back to ancient Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C.

Evidence of this can be seen in ziggurats (monuments that marked the solstice and equinoxes and transits of the planets) discovered there by archaeologists. Understandably, God directly warned His people against this in Deuteronomy 4:19.

Following the Persian conquest of Babylon, astrology spread to Greece, Rome, Egypt and India. From India, Buddhist missionaries spread it to Central Asia, Japan, China, Tibet and Southeast Asia.

The Maya civilization also had an elaborate system of astrology. The “modern” form of astrology spread from hellenized Egypt influencing the Arabs and Europeans.

The early astrological system was based on the disproved geocentric model of the stars and planets rotating around the earth supposedly at the centre of the universe. Astrologers thought that the sun travelled through the sky yearly along a specific path, passing through the stars and constellations.

This path was divided into 12 zones or segments with each zone named after the constellation through which the sun passed. This gave rise to the 12 signs of the zodiac.

But science has now demonstrated that the sun doesn’t travel around the earth, instead, the earth travels around the sun. This was one discovery that blew astrology out of the water.

Research has also shown that the different astrological signs have no correlation with the actual physical science of the stars. In some cases, a person claiming to be an Aries may actually be born during the period of Pisces.

Some astrologers don’t base their predictions on stars but more on positions of planets during a birthday, but this is not without some problems as Dutch researcher, Nees Noorlander points out:

“For instance, ebb and flow are caused by the moon and the sun, but not by the planets. So the planets cannot influence your life. But even in the hypothetical case that there is an influence of the planets, which of the planets are important? Formerly astrologers used the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But in the last centuries they discovered new planets: Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930. And the number of planets is not complete yet. The astronomers expect a tenth planet, which is too dark to see now” (quoted by David Benoit and Eric Barger, Entertaining Spirits Unaware, Evangel Pub., 2000, 41).

Astrology is based on fatalism, an illogical and unbiblical belief. If horoscopes are based on truth, thousands of people born in the same month should have identical features and lifestyles. But this is not so.

A study was conducted in a London hospital in 1958 in which more than 2000 babies born in early March of that year were registered. Based on the astrological system, these babies are “time twins” that should have identical characteristics.

Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, sociability, IQ levels and ability in arts, sport, mathematics and reading – all of which astrologers claim can be determined from astrological birth charts. The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between these people.

Granted, a group of people born at different times can die in the same accident thus refuting the uniform influence from the stars.

If our fate or destiny is tied to the stars and astrology unravels it, then it wrongly ignores the effects of genes, parenting, education, healthcare, climate and personal experiences in altering our choices, lifestyles and thinking even if we were born on the same day or month.

This is also a reason to reject the “4 Temperament” theory, because like astrology, it attempts to reduce diverse and widely complex human personalities into 4 cute boxes. It’s simply preposterous.

In the astrological framework, there is little or no room for positive change or personal development.

Those relying on horoscopes to find a marriage mate soon realise that cultivating good character and moral values are what sustain good relationships. Students following the stars soon discover to their chagrin that academic success doesn’t just fall on people like cherries.

Some psychics, in a desperate claw at validity, argue that just as the stars led the Magi to baby Jesus in Bethlehem, the stars can also guide our lives. This is flawed exegesis.

While it’s historically true that the wise men were astrologers from the East (Medes-Persia), God who created the stars used them to lead these men to Christ just as He also used a donkey to warn Balaam; ravens to feed Elijah and a fish to arrest Jonah. Certainly, God’s one-time supernatural use of the stars is not an implicit endorsement of the zodiac.

Furthermore, when we examine the Bible in its entirety, God’s denunciation of astrology becomes clear. In Isaiah 47:13-14, God says to Babylon:

“Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them.”

In ancient Babylon (and other cultures), astrologers and magicians wielded so much power that major military or political decisions weren’t made without consulting them, yet, their failures were documented in Daniel 4:7 and 5:7-11.

Once you take away the superstition, quackery and lies making up astrology, what you have left is a demonic web. Little wonder the Maya who made use of an extensive system of astrological calculation couldn’t foresee the collapse of their own civilization in the 9th century AD.

Astrology doesn’t just lead people into the occult – it is occultism. In every instance where people dabbled into it in Scripture, they also adhered to deeper occult practices like sexual perversion, demon worship and child sacrifice (e.g 2 Kgs. 23:5-13).

Worshipping of the heavenly bodies was closely linked with Molech worship. It’s hard to separate astrology from demonism (Jer. 8:1, Zeph. 1:5).

Astrology divides the sky into 12 zones or “houses” which the sun passes through in an ecliptic fashion. These “houses” are considered to be abodes of specific deities which are symbolized as the 12 zodiac signs.

Ancient myths and occult writings such as The Book of the dead and the Pyramid texts contain cryptic descriptions of stories of deities residing in the heavens that control earthly events.

In the Yoruba religion of West Africa, these deities are called “orisha.” In fact, the divination tray called Opon Ifa is somewhat similar to the astrological chart in that it can also be divided into 12 “houses” with each area ruled by a particular orisha.

Aries or Mars, symbolized as the ram is called Ogun (god of iron) in the Yoruba version. Pisces is called Olokun (sea deity); Gemini is Ibeji (twin deity); Scorpio is Oya (goddess of violent storms); Aquarius is Sango (god of lightning) and Leo is Orunmila (god of divination). Taurus, known as Baal or Marduk elsewhere is associated with Oshun (fertility goddess).

The lies astrology is based on reveal it to be from the devil, the “father of lies” (Jn. 8:44).

Now when a Christian who calls on the name of the Lord also identifies himself as “a Scorpio” or “a Leo,” he is attaching himself to demons and cutting himself off from divine approval. This diabolical self-renaming should be prayerfully renounced.

You don’t need to know the future, all you need to know is the One who holds the future. When you come to Jesus, you won’t need the stars because you’ve found the Creator of the stars.