Bigotry is unacceptable treatment and it is not limited to different people groups or even outside a family. It is no secret how awful people can treat one another. Get into a conversation with some mothers about their children's behavior, and you will find that only they are allowed to speak evil of their kids.
The picture to your left is my grandfather; it was taken in 1918 at my grandmother's funeral. He met my grandmother working at an opera house in Calabria, Italy. I've been told that he worked doing just about anything that needed to be done and, even on occasion, stepped in when someone could not perform.
Everyone loved my grandfather and said he would give you his last dollar when a dollar was a good deal of money. My mother told me many times that on one particular occasion he literally gave her his last dollar to go on a date with my father. He was a very caring man and worried about his children.
It has made me wonder what kind of a woman his mother was. He met my grandmother when he was twenty-nine, and she was nineteen. She worked as a seamstress for the opera house where they worked. She was an orphan, having lost her family in the Messina earthquake of 1908. When my Grandfather told his mother he wanted to marry a woman who was an orphan, she said, "If you do, you will never have a part in the family business." So my Grandfather packed up, moved to America, started his own business, and sent for my grandmother a year later. They had six children. My grandmother died at thirty-nine, and my Grandfather would not even consider remarriage or involvement with any other woman.
In my family, prejudice and bigotry became an issue that tore it apart. Racism was not an issue because my grandmother was Italian. She had the misfortune of losing her entire family to a natural disaster, which made her inadequate to marry my Grandfather in his mother's eyes.
"And Peter opened his mouth and said, Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him." (Acts 10:34, 35)
God does not judge according to anything as trivial as race, personal abilities, which He supplies according to His predetermined will, or any other meaningless attribute. In life, what we do matters most and is second only to what we are. According to the prophet Micah, we are to live righteously, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God. (Micah 6:8) All we need to accomplish such a daunting task is to be holy separated to God through repentance (call sin, sin) and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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