Reaching beyond racism

from the Christian Science Sentinel

Seeing each other’s spiritual identity moves us beyond racism.

Racial division and fears are not unique to the United States, where rifts so often form along lines of color. As events in Rwanda and other parts of Africa have shown, rivalries between tribes, ethnic groups, religions, or other differences also keep people apart. Fear, which is so often at the heart of such differences, leads to devaluing individual human beings—no matter what their color—and classifying them as “other.”

Everyone has a role in healing the world’s ills.

This entire outlook cannot be accepted, especially at a time when the world so needs everyone’s talents. Everyone has a role in making peace, saving energy, providing honest leadership, healing the world’s ills. Instead of suppressing some individuals and reaping a harvest of frustration, hatred, and war, we can, with our prayers, help unleash their talents, and lift off limitations imposed by popular thought.

Senator Barack Obama’s victory in becoming the Democratic candidate in this year’s campaign for US President has made history. It’s one example of how longstanding limitations related to race are being lifted. For the first time, many African Americans see a role model whom the nation could elect to its highest office (“Many Blacks Find Joy in Unexpected Breakthrough,” The New York Times, June 5, 2008). On the other hand, some people point to signs that blacks are still the object of hatred among other races, and some have voiced fears for Mr. Obama’s safety.

Spiritual solutions offer help and hope. While the cause of racism may often be identified as prejudice within certain groups, it can be traced back much further, as the ancient wisdom of the Hebrew Scripture points out. There the Bible records an illustration of what might be called the “First Separation.” The serpent who tempted Eve promised her something seemingly good that was separate from God. The wrong choice to eat of the fruit from the tree of good and evil led, according to this account, to humanity’s separation from Paradise, the fratricidal rivalry between Cain and Abel—and every mortal ill that followed.

The Adam-dream presents life as a material round, where rivalry and division are the norm.

These errors of perception present a false history, well described in the second chapter of Genesis, which speaks of God creating Adam out of dust and then—while Adam was in a deep sleep—making Eve, and everything else, from the same material substance. This Adam-dream presents life as a material round, where rivalry and division are the norm.

Throughout history, people have worked hard to overcome separation and inequality through courageous human efforts. But to eliminate racism entirely, we need to eliminate the Adam-dream. Christian Science explains that this is possible because the dream—with all its levels of separation—is forever illusory. It never existed as a reality in the first place. Waking to the truth reveals this in practical ways.

“In the universe of Truth, matter is unknown,” Mary Baker Eddy explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. “Hence the eternal wonder,—that infinite space is peopled with God’s ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms” (Science and Health, p. 503). These sentences express the true nature of creation—entirely separate from separation. And the world needs individuals to embrace this sense of infinity in order to counter the arguments of limitation and discrimination that often seem more and more aggressive among societies.

But how to obtain even a tiny sense of infinity? A first step is to leave material identity out of the equation. When we do this, and identify ourselves and others spiritually, racism, ethnocentrism, gender discrimination, and other forms of separation begin to fall by the wayside because we are looking at creation through the eyes of Truth—something that is totally transformative.

God values all of His creation.

God values all of His creation. Not one of us is purposeless, random, irrelevant. None of us can threaten another. This spiritual fact applies to everyone, regardless of age, color, body type, gender, ethnic background. As “God’s ideas,” we are spiritual, all on a level—infinite and Love-rich—playing field. We are truly brothers and sisters, and gaining this knowledge is a practical necessity if everyone’s talents and skills are to be set free.

Proving this isn’t always easy. The material view of creation threatens to poison even the best efforts. But Jesus’ ministry lifts up a standard to follow. Perhaps because Samaritans were despised, he chose to make such an individual the hero of his famous parable of the good Samaritan, defining the nature of a true neighbor. He spoke with, and stood up for, women—itself a radical step. He also was willing to operate outside his cultural group, and helped people such as a Syrophoenician woman, whose daughter he cured, and a Roman centurion, whose servant was healed.

In many communities, there may not yet be opportunities to participate in interracial dialogue or to work toward mutual understanding. But each of us can pray to break down the mental walls of separation that arise because of racial, ethnic, and tribal differences. Each of us can defend the safety of our neighbors. Each of us can strive to give up thinking of “them” as “other,” and to see them instead as our brothers and sisters, equally beloved ideas of God.