I remember reading about a Japanese businessman who was explaining the overall success of the Japanese automobile producers that had overtaken the American producers in both the number and quality of their products. He explained their factory employees’ diligence and hard work and contrasted it with the “fat and lazy” workers in the American plants. Of course, this drew incredible controversy, forcing him to apologize for such comments later. His apology was insincere. He said, “I did not mean to say that all Americans are fat and lazy. Some are Fat, and some are Lazy.” I nearly choked on my coffee when I read that line. That apology was not meant to mend fences, it was meant to pour a concrete footer under the fence and install a wrought iron gate. Ted Turner issued a similar apology around the same time for saying, “Christianity is a religion for losers.” The insincerity of his sarcastic apology is noteworthy. He said, “I really, from the very bottom of my heart, want to apologize for statements I made about Christianity. I did it mainly out of frustration. At one time or another, I have offended almost every group. I am sure I will be apologizing again.” That is a Hallmark card you cannot find anywhere. Apologies wrapped in air quotes are still just air quotes.

Trobriand Islanders, who live at a minimal subsistence level, nevertheless have little interest in or respect for other people and nations. Their word for an outsider is dim-dim, someone of little consequence. They consider outsiders as lower beings. This is nothing new. Wherever explorers found Indians in America, each band considered itself “the people” or “human beings” and the next Indian tribe up or downriver as barbarians and something less than human. That is the ancient version of “my group chat is correct, and your group chat is full of idiots.” Every race was certain that the other race had been dropped on their collective heads at birth.

This base racial prejudice is the same attitude that was displayed by the party of the circumcision that Paul was describing to Titus. This party was attempting to drive a racial wedge between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers on Crete. They said, “All Cretans are liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.” Paul refers to them as “teaching what they should not be teaching.” Each nationality, each race, has its origin in the sons of Noah. We are all related and of equal value. God loved each ethos, each fragment of the human race, so much that he gave his Son to die for it. Jesus died for each of the persons in every ethos. Christianity magnifies the individual as the object of God’s love. That individual is then added to other individuals to create a church, the body of Christ. Paul told the Colossians, “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Colossians 3:11