"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." This message came to the Apostle Peter as he prayed. It puzzled and disturbed him, for it challenged the conventional attitudes toward Gentiles that he had entertained throughout his life. However, his deep desire to obey God led him step by step to the liberating realization that, in his own words, "God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." Acts 10:15, 34, 35.
How wonderful for Peter to discover that those he had considered "common or unclean" Acts 10:28. by virtue of their religio-cultural differences, were in fact his brothers, heirs to the same promise that God had bestowed upon him! As this great truth of the universality of God's love and the inherent ability of all men and women to respond to His Christ embraces human thought, Christianity will embrace all peoples.
To some degree we all harbor educated misconceptions about our fellow-man; beliefs that man is mortal, material, and so born to a particular class, race, gender, nationality, physiognomy. Perhaps, like Peter, we are awakened with a jolt. We discover distrust, distaste, fear, and hostility masquerading as our own thought. Can we not welcome the uncovering of such unhallowed thoughts as a rich opportunity for further spiritualization of our sense of man? If, like Peter, we are willing to yield up, in fidelity to Truth and Love, our mortal preconceptions and conventions, we will have a sure reward of greater expansiveness, wholeness, and freedom—a spiritualization of thought that will bless the entire body of our experience.
