The Ground at the Foot of the Cross Is Level

by Curtis Shelburne

MY DAD celebrated a big birthday this week. He’s 85, and all of his kids were in Houston on his birthday to help him celebrate. Dad’s birthday is January 15, a day when at least three noteworthy events converge. January 15 is: 1) the day when, for many folks, quarterly tax payments are due; 2) the day when Martin Luther King was born; 3) the day when my father was born. Concerning item 1, the less said the better. But items 2 and 3 are, to me, significant.

The issue of race relations is not a simple one, but I think several truths should be self-evident.

Men and women of all races are of tremendous worth in the sight of God. God sent his Son to save them all. God loves my family’s friend whose skin is the richest ebony just as much as he loves me, short on pigment though I may be. He loves people of all shades in between. So should we.

Color-blindness can be a fine affliction if it helps us see men and women of all colors as equal partakers in the image of God. People and programs that focus on color don’t help any of us of any color. “Red and yellow, black and white,” and brown and purple and green and polka-dottted, all children really are “precious in His sight.”

Good people come in all colors. So do fools. And color has precious little to do with it. Racism is no prettier in one shade than it is in another. Farrakhans and Fuhrmans share the same sickness. They are equally blind because they see only in color.

Does a Martin Luther King holiday make any practical difference? Unless you’re a federal or bank employee, I don’t know. I know that only one perfect man ever lived. He died in Jerusalem, not Atlanta. But I think I also know that Dr. King’s life made a difference for good because he dared to dream a lofty dream.

A group of church leaders once told my dad, the visiting preacher, that “colored folks” weren’t welcome in their church. Dad told them kindly but firmly that if he couldn’t preach to anyone who wanted to hear the message, he wouldn’t preach at all. I’ve heard him preach in fluent Spanish. He’s preached in Mexico. He’s preached in Africa. It has always been the same message. There is, after all, only one worth preaching: Christ died for all.

I never knew Martin Luther King, but I grew up at the feet of a man who shared his dream that we all recognize that the ground at the foot of the cross is level for all. Not only is that a dream worth dreaming, it is profoundly and eternally true.