Would it be different?

Teaching history to my children for the past years and being a news junky I have had this thought recently.... would it really have been different....  Being the mother of both black and white sons and black and white daughters I feel like I have a unique perspective.  Teaching history to young kids (and older) can sometimes put quite a dim light on the world's past.  It can be easy to see that there is pervasive sin in all cultures.  We even can try to put a happy spin on things that end not so happy....teaching the founding fathers, falls into the demise of Native Americans and slavery, or if you go further back as my 11 year old put it recently...let me guess the king comes to power says he will do good things but instead beheads people.  So in the news I fully support the movements in the news that have come forward for racial and gender equality.  I believe fully that we should not be oppressed or harassed due to our God given genetic make up.  We are ALL created in God's image.  However, after raising all these children from all over the place I have come to wonder, if men of European decent had not held power for so long, if perhaps women had the opportunity on a large scale to rule the nations generation after generation, would they have ruled differently, would we have avoided a gender gap or racism.  I am not so sure because I do not believe the problem is in the genetic make up of a person in so much as the problem we were warned about far back into the Old Testament....power.....pride.....

The Bible and history proves our genetics does not cause us to act in reprehensible ways, no one population is a consistent tyrant.  But it is clear to show that the amount of power we receive (or feel we have or feel we deserve) is at the core of the problem.  Watch someone rise to power (or in our current culture with out a royal class, we can call it fame) and watch the tyrant in us rise.  Try to challenge ones power or fame and watch the wars begin.  See in all of us is both tyrant and victim, to pull ourselves up we must push someone down. 

So while it seems bleak it has me thinking then how to we achieve this equality that we desire.  Biblically....loving one another as God designed and giving God the glory...humbling ourselves at the cross...not culturally, but really....  We are fooling ourselves if we believe that we have humbled ourselves in front of an almighty just God but can say things like "I would not let my child date a child of another race"  or "this cultural group is lame"  or  "all men are pigs" or "fill in the black race or gender or lifestyle is the cause of problems"  STOP  humbling ourselves requires ourselves to look in the mirror and realize if the people who look, think and act like you had the power historically and currently we probably would have made just as bad decisions.  We would have been drunk on power and fame and money.....  So as we embrace these movements towards equailty lets also turn to Jesus and find the only true way to equality, humbling ourselves in front of our creator and truly looking at others as God's creation and loving each other.