Those of us who grew up before the new millennium remember how far away the year 2000 seemed to sound. It felt like an era that would represent flying cars and robots, a time we couldn’t quite envision that would surely be marked by a futuristic aesthetic and all types of unforeseen discoveries.
Of course, then 2000 actually arrived. And while there has been rapid technological development—and the growth of the internet has changed daily life as we know it—things aren’t exactly the type of wild many imagined. Our cars still drive on roads, for example.
A similar phenomenon can occur when we hear projections like this one: by 2045, the American population will no longer be primarily white. 2045 sounds pretty far away at first. But in some ways, the promised future has already come. For American children 15 years old and younger, the demographic predictions have already occurred.
“Fifty percent of this age group is nonwhite,” write Helen Lee and Michelle Ami Reyes. “For this reason and more, it is imperative for race-wise parents to be actively communicating God’s posture of valuing multiethnicity and embracing it ourselves in our families.”
Lee and Reyes encourage parents to recognize the shifts that are happening and, rather than living as though they are lightyears away or fearing them, embrace the changes. They list a few questions that parents can reflect upon as they raise their children in an increasingly multiethnic country:
- Why did God choose to create humankind in different shades and ethnicities?
- What purpose do these differences serve in addition to giving God pleasure?
- How do we show people of other ethnicities and cultures that we value them as fellow human beings?
As we consider these questions, may we see the opportunity before us that Lee and Reyes see: “Here in the US, because of our increasingly multiethnic demographics, we have an opportunity to provide a beautiful foretaste of Revelation 7 in a way that many other nations do not.”
