WHERE DID I COME FROM?
My 7-year-old African-American friend Tobias asked me a
thought-provoking question the other day: “Since Adam and Eve were white, where
did black people come from?” When I told him we don’t know what “color” they
were and asked him why he thought they were white, he said that’s what he
always saw in Bible-story books at church and in the library. My heart sank. I
wondered if that might make him think he was inferior or possibly not even created
by the Lord.
All people have their roots in the Creator God, and therefore all are
equal. That’s what the apostle Paul told the Athenians: “[God] has made from
one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts
17:26). We are all “from one blood.” Darrell Bock, in his commentary on the
book of Acts, says, “This affirmation would be hard for the Athenians, who
prided themselves in being a superior people, calling others barbarians.”
However, because we all descended from our first parents, Adam and Eve, no race
nor ethnicity is superior or inferior to another.
We stand in awe of our Creator, who made us and gives to all “life,
breath, and all things” (v.25). Equal in God’s sight, we together praise and
honor Him.
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. (RBC)
