Is God Racist?

Is God Racist For Choosing His People?

An Atheist and even a Muslim remarked to me that the God of the Bible was racist because in the Old Testament He chose only Israel wholly to Himself. If we look to the New Testament we see Paul giving an answer against a people who were thought to be the most powerful nation in the Mediterranean. The Greeks thought they were the superior race on earth, but in Jesus' time they were governed under the Roman empire.

In his address to the Athenian philosophers the apostle Paul made a definitive statement about God's plan for the ages: "From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from us" (Acts 17:26-27).

Paul says that every race and culture was present in God's mind before he created them and gave them their territories on earth. God positioned each of us in a particular race and yet Paul reminds us that not just as part of our race but as an individual, He is not far from any one of us. This assurance that God planned the very core of your personality, that you were purposefully born and fashioned according to God's plan, and that He is near to you wherever you are is reason to celebrate the way He has, to use the "woven you."

In the vastness of God's creation, your birth and your reach is something unique. With the psalmist we may personalize it and say, "What is there in me that you take notice of me?" (Psalm 8:4). "You knit me together in my mother's womb. . . . I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13-14).


Resource: Recapture the Wonder by Ravi Zacharias.