The following article was written for the January edition of Lifeway’s EC Magazine

From Southern Racist to Adoptive Dad 

I was born and raised in the South. The roots I have in the state of Tennessee run deep.  I firmly believe that in Heaven my granny’s syrupy sweet tea will be served with lunch on Sundays. I still love the same kind of country music our local station played through the static on my great grandmother’s cheap kitchen radio.

With much pride, I embrace my southern heritage. And yet, there is one connection with my past for which I am abundantly ashamed.

I was a racist!

It turns my stomach but I cannot deny that racism was a part of the way I was raised.  Now, it wasn’t the sort of violent racism of the 50s and 60s. I wasn’t scandalized that black people drank from the same water fountains I did. We attended the same schools, played on the same sports teams, and it all seemed right.

It wasn’t until we gathered for dinner on Sundays that the racist residue of our past could be smelled.  It was in the secret of heated church business meetings that our prejudices were defended as even being biblical.

For reasons unknown to me at the time, we still had to protect our families and churches from becoming ‘mixed.’  After all we were told, “Birds of a feather flock together.”  And even, Moses was forbidden to intermarry. (Numbers 12:1)

Such thinking didn’t stop us from praying for the lost in Africa during our prayer meetings. We even held backyard bible clubs in predominantly black areas in nearby inner cities. We had no problem going to them.  We just didn’t want them ever coming to us.

The subtly of the sin I willingly embraced was just as loud as the color of orange I still wear as loyal Tennessee Vol fan.  Its hard to believe I didn’t see it just as clearly.

As a young Bible college student I began to see that God’s family, the church, is designed to be a mixed with more than just different skin tones. His plan is to adopt people from every race and culture into one family. (Revelation 5:9)  I came to see that using, ‘ya’ll’ when talking about the church is more than acceptable. And yet, Jesus’ bride isn’t just white with a southern accent.

This new way of thinking led to some heated debates with a few relatives.  It also led my wife and I to adopt two boys from Ethiopia.  It was on July 13, 2009, that these abstract theological concepts of race and adoption became a living, breathing rebuke to all I use to think and believe.

The racism I formerly embraced now followed me to the grocery store. I began to notice second glances from others upon seeing a white dad with two black sons.  My prejudices cornered me when people would ask me, “Why black kids?”  The sins of my past haunted me when I heard folks begin their sentences with, “I’m not racist but…”

For some time I found myself constantly irritated with the racist tendencies of others. Then I realized why. The reason I know what’s behind their stares and comments, is because the same foolishness was once in me.  No longer was my anger directed solely toward relatives who still use the ‘N’ word.  My indignation toward racism had to first be stared down in the mirror.

Through the process of adoption that God has thoroughly transformed my thoughts about race. He is also changing many in my family through two black boys who now share the same heritage and last name as their white grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

And yet this is the same story Jesus is telling over and over in the world.  As He builds his church, racists from Tennessee to Zimbabwe are to take notice of the many shades and colors of Jesus’ brothers and sisters.  Our prayer should be that they not only hear us sing, “Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world.”  But that they will come to know its true and begin to sing with us, “Red, yellow, black and white, and even former racist like me.”