How to Heal Our Racial Divide Quotes

“The Samaritan woman is the first person to whom Jesus revealed that he is the Messiah. She is also one of the first missionaries of the gospel. What is a Samaritan? A Samaritan is a Jew and a Gentile in one body. What is the church? Jews and Gentiles (Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and others) in one body:”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“I have found that many believers filter the “hot topics” of race and injustice through Democratic or Republican filters instead of theological filters. People will leave their churches over politics before they leave politics for a church.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“To mourn means to be heartbroken over the things that break God’s heart.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Political conservatives want me to wrap Jesus in an American flag, and political progressives want me to strip Jesus of ethics that do not fit their worldview. We leaders must address controversial topics through the redeeming work of Jesus so God’s people can think and live in light of God’s Kingdom.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“To my White brothers and sisters, one of the most precious gifts you can give your siblings of color are these words: “I believe you. I am sorry that happened to you. I am for you. We are in this together.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“One of the greatest gifts you can give your brothers and sisters in Christ as we heal the racial divide is to listen to their stories with compassion. Compassion means “to suffer with.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Of all the people Jesus could have revealed his identity to, he chose a Samaritan woman during a seven-hundred-year-old racial feud.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Secular modernism has tried to get the fruits of the Jesus-message without the roots. It can’t be done. Christianity was the original multicultural society, committed to caring for the poor and to sharing a common life across racial boundaries. Trying to recreate a society like that without Jesus leading the way is like trying to type with your fingers tied together.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“We are not responsible for the sins of our forefathers, but we are responsible to mourn and undo their damage as best we can. This is basic Christianity. Mourning the sins of our forefathers may seem strange in American Christianity, but it is a normative spiritual discipline in the Bible.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“In the face of criticism, peer pressure, political pressure, economic pressure, and family pressure, we must love Jesus and our siblings in Christ more than we fear rejection.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“At Jesus’ fountain of living water, there are no separate water fountains for God’s people; regardless of our ethnicities, we all drink at the same well of grace. In our dry and weary land of racial division, Jesus provides living water that reconciles us to him and to each other so we can live in harmony.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“We’ve looked in other chapters at how the individualistic gospel of the United States is a perversion of discipleship. The antidote—the vision of discipleship that the Bible gives us—is wholistic, communal, and unified in Christ.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Can you imagine how different the church would be? God’s people are to be salt and light, a means of grace to a world deeply divided. Our unity in Christ, fueled by holy living, becomes a lighthouse in an ocean of chaos.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“How can children of God sit silently as their brothers and sisters experience racial injustice?”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“The scene of the crime is your mind.” What I mean by this is that how we think influences how we live. We must partner with the Holy Spirit in allowing Christ to form, renew, and shape how we think. Dark powers want to influence our thinking; therefore, we must intentionally set our minds above, where Christ is seated, allowing him to transform our minds as we soak in the sacred Scriptures.[”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Pastor, when those White police officers were terrorizing me, I saw them as less than human. I saw them as maggots. If I’d had a nuclear grenade, I would have detonated it and killed them and me. They filled me with hate.” But he told me, “Then I realized I was a bigot too. But I knew as a Christian, I cannot hate these men. I must love. I want to preach a gospel strong enough to heal this madness and hatred.”[2] JP writes, For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. . . . It’s going to take intentionally multiethnic and multicultural churches to bust through the chaos and confusion of the present moment and redirect our gaze to the revolutionary gospel of reconciliation.[3]”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“But in 1947, when his older brother Clyde, a World War II hero who had earned a Purple Heart, was killed by a New Hebron police officer, it became a matter of life and death. A White police officer had targeted Clyde at the movie theater, striking him in the back of the head with a club. Clyde, not knowing who had hit him, responded to the coward’s attack with a defensive posture. When he did, the police officer fired two shots into his abdomen. JP was with his brother—an American hero—in the ambulance and in the Colored hospital when he died. JP’s brother went all the way to Europe to fight against Hitler and the Nazis only to die at the hands of a racist police officer in America.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“When I first met Jesus, I was infatuated with what he had done for me. It was me, Jesus, and my Bible. But the more I read, the more I learned that the Bible is about Jesus, his church, and his mission to make all things new. Just as Paul told the first Christians, we are adopted into Abba’s family, and in Christ, we are God’s workmanship. We become his paintbrushes, and creation becomes the canvas in which he uses our redeemed colors and cultures to create the beauty of his Kingdom on earth: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“American churches are ten times more segregated than the neighborhoods they are in and twenty times more segregated than nearby schools.[4] Echo chambers of segregation and disunity reinforce ethnic division, intensify political division, breed inequality, and foster injustice.[5] The implications of the segregated church in America stifle the mission of God, hinder discipleship, and display a divided church. This segregation does not reflect the character of Jesus that Christians are called to display.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“The crowd resembled Transformation Church—a mixture of young and old and swirls of different colors. I thought, Why is a BLM protest more diverse than the church in America? This sort of diversity should be the composition of every church in America where demographics make it possible.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Echo chambers of homogeneity morph into cages that limit our capacity to empathize and mourn. When our neighborhoods and churches lack ethnic diversity or when we just do not attempt to connect with the “other,”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“The late John Stott writes, If we love our neighbor as God made him, we must inevitably be concerned for his total welfare, the good of his soul, his body and his community. . . . Which means the quest for better social structures in which peace, dignity, freedom and justice are secured for all men. . . . The gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situations and communities.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Frederick Douglass wrote, We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“He told me, “Systemic injustice does not exist.” I responded, “Do you believe that the media has an agenda to oppress White evangelicals?” He said, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Do you believe White evangelicals are oppressed on the majority of American college campuses?” He said, “Yes, I do!” I said, “Do you believe White evangelicals face discrimination in America?” He said, “Yes, I do!” “Brother,” I told him, “you do in fact believe that systemic injustice exists. But the systemic injustice you believe in oppresses White evangelicals.” “Well, I guess I do believe in systemic injustice,” he admitted. So I responded, “Are you willing to rethink that perhaps systemic injustice against Black people and other people of color exists?” “No,” he said, “systemic injustice does not exist.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“In 1974, the great evangelical leader John Stott wrote concerning biblical justice, “We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Over one thousand people have left our church since I called out [the White supremacy rally in] Charlottesville and reminded our people “only Jesus is supreme.” And by the way, I’m bold and stubborn but very loving, gentle, and measured with my words. Yet we “beat people up over race,” “White people are second-class citizens,” and “it’s all Pastor talks about.” Never mind one would be hard-pressed to find a staff more committed to the exaltation of Jesus and His Word. Sigh. And then George Floyd and the Chauvin trial. . . . Still more loss, anger, and cost. It is idolatry and sinister and sick.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“than the value of community found in Scripture. The individualistic philosophy that has shaped Western society, and consequently shaped the American church, reduces Christian faith to a personal, private and individual faith.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“I have found when White brothers and sisters say they do not see color, it is because their color has not been a historic disadvantage to them and their ancestors. Colorblind ideology also creates a false sense that everything is okay. It acts like a spiritual sleeping aid that causes us to ignore certain injustices.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“God called Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, in response to Genesis 3–11. Wherever there is hostility against the Creator, the creation will be hostile toward each other. They will raise up arms to enslave, oppress, sexualize, and kill their fellow image-bearers. Death invaded life, so God defeated death by calling Abraham and his seed to inaugurate new life.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation

“Suffice it to say, it is the testimony of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, that the living and loving God has always wanted to give Abraham a family from every nation and tribe and tongue. This spectacularly loved mosaic of people are siblings, coequals, and coheirs in God’s Kingdom.”
― Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation