GOD LOVES VARIETY

I wish all of us could peel our skin off and know each other, at least for a while, as the same blood-red, bundle of nerves, organs, muscles and bones we are. Sure we all have personalities to accompany those features, but that is what would make the difference NOT the color of our skin.

After The Flood, I imagine if Noah and his family stayed in the area and their generations after them, the color of their skin would not change due to the climate of their region. However, they did split up. "The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth." (Genesis 9:18-19) Therefore, since they split up and settled in other parts of the world with different environments, their skin pigmentation was different from each other.

How humanity made "The Switch" of associating skin color FROM environmental factors TO inferior human characteristics is a mystery. In some form or fashion we have always had slavery of some kind of people, so we cannot blame slavery as the trigger or switch. 

After centuries of living and growing in the settled areas that Shem, Ham and Japeth eventually called home - I believe Pride reared its ugly head. Not the side of Pride that shines with confidence in one's abilities, but the side that stinks of lording over another in order to elevate yourself in a spectacle. I think either a group or individual within each area got the idea of Conquest, Expansion, Domination via force or war. Why? Because Pride says, "I/we am/are better than you and can prove it." Plus, there is the being the ruler of the world thing factoring into the equation.

Society still has not gotten rid of our haughty pride. As we have seen time and time again in history and in our current news there seems to be a prevailing attitude/thought that there must be a low-man on the totem pole if for no other reason than to make all the people above feel/look better. The result is three-fold: (1) division of what once might have been a unit; (2) murder of a possible color-blind relationship; and theft of a hope that the past can be the past and restoration as possible. 

Sound familiar? John quotes Jesus as saying, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;". This is the first half of John 10:10. The second half Jesus declares, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.". Yes, a huge chunk of the problem is The Enemy of Our Soul. And there are people out there that don't need any help from the enemy because of the amount of Pride in them. However, under the Lord's Banner, with the Lord's Eyes we can at least begin to see each other as we should.

The Lord is the most creative being. By His creation we can tell He did not desire robots; everything the same. Back at the Tower of Babel, God confused humanity's one language so that many developed. Customs, cultures and traditions all sprang from the different populated regions of Noah's sons. In addition, God knew and allowed for all the different skin color variations. We desperately need to get over ourselves. I do not believe God intended for the differing skin tones to set up a cultural/societal hierarchy of sorts. We have skin color because God Loves Variety.