On Sunday morning, for our fourth lesson on Christian Hospitality, we talked about the ugly practice of discrimination and how, at its core, it is fundamentally against everything we believe as Christians.
To be followers of Christ, we must not treat anyone as “other” or “less than.” The belief that all people are created in the image of God is fundamental to our faith.
To further the point, we watched a video of a master teacher filmed more than a half century ago. She wanted her students to know firsthand the ugliness of discrimination.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous “blue eyes/brown eyes exercise.” As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed. She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people.
National Public Radio
You can watch the video above; it is truly eye-opening. If racism is something that is taught, so must anti-racism.
The message is as true today as it was in 1968: God welcomes all.
The Pipe 