Bible Verses About Bigotry

Yochanan responded, “Rabbi, we saw someone expelling demons in your name; and we stopped him because he doesn’t follow you along with us.”

Yeshua said to him, “Don’t stop such people, because whoever isn’t against you is for you.”

Also, to some who were relying on their own righteousness and looking down on everyone else, he told this parable:

“Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Parush and the other a tax-collector.

The Parush stood and prayed to himself, ‘O God! I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, immoral, or like this tax-collector!

I fast twice a week, I pay tithes on my entire income, . . . ’

But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes toward heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God! Have mercy on me, sinner that I am!’

I tell you, this man went down to his home right with God rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”

But when Gallio became the Roman governor of Achaia, the unbelieving Jews made a concerted attack on Sha’ul and took him to court,

saying, “This man is trying to persuade people to worship God in ways that violate the Torah.”

Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of being circumcised?

Much in every way! In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the very words of God.

If some of them were unfaithful, so what? Does their faithlessness cancel God’s faithfulness?

Heaven forbid! God would be true even if everyone were a liar! — as the Tanakh says, “so that you, God, may be proved right in your words and win the verdict when you are put on trial.”

Now if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what should we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict his anger on us? (I am speaking here the way people commonly do.)

Heaven forbid! Else, how could God judge the world?

“But,” you say, “if, through my lie, God’s truth is enhanced and brings him greater glory, why am I still judged merely for being a sinner?”

Indeed! Why not say (as some people slander us by claiming we do say), “Let us do evil, so that good may come of it”? Against them the judgment is a just one!

So are we Jews better off? Not entirely; for I have already made the charge that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are controlled by sin.

As the Tanakh puts it, “There is no one righteous, not even one! No one understands,

no one seeks God,

all have turned away and at the same time become useless; there is no one who shows kindness, not a single one!

“Their throats are open graves, they use their tongues to deceive. Vipers’ venom is under their lips.

Their mouths are full of curses and bitterness.

“Their feet rush to shed blood,