It don’t matter if you’re black or white. – Michael Jackson
My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? – James 2:1
Michael Jackson doesn’t hedge in this song. He doesn’t qualify. He just says it straight: it doesn’t matter where you’re from or what you look like, you’re my brother or my sister. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white.
James would agree. But then he would look us in the eye and ask a harder question: Do you actually live like that?
James wastes no time. He plainly tells believers that faith in Jesus and favoritism cannot coexist. If we treat people differently based on wealth, appearance, ethnicity, influence, or usefulness, something has gone wrong — not socially, but spiritually.
That’s what makes James uncomfortable. He doesn’t let us keep discrimination “out there.” He brings it into the room, into our churches, into our conversations, into our instincts. Because favoritism rarely announces itself. It shows up quietly.
It shows up in who we notice first, who we listen to longer, who we assume is competent, who we assume needs help. We may never say, “You matter more than they do,” but James says our behavior says it all the time.
Michael sings about unity. James examines our practice.
James asks whether we’ve become judges with “evil motives,” which sounds harsh until you realize what he means. We size people up. We make mental calculations. We decide — often in seconds — how much time, respect, or patience someone deserves. And then we decide who will benefit us and who will not.
James calls that a faith issue and then he flips the script entirely. He reminds us that God has a long history of choosing people the world overlooks — the poor, the marginalized, the ones without status — and making them rich in faith. In other words, God keeps honoring people we keep passing over. That should stop us, because it means the problem isn’t that we don’t believe the right things; it’s that we don’t love the right way.
James calls loving our neighbor “the royal law.” Not a suggestion. Not a value statement. A law. And he says when we show favoritism, we don’t just bend that law — we break it, and in breaking it, we sin.
James isn’t asking whether we agree that everyone has equal worth. He’s asking whether our faith and our love shows up equally for everyone we encounter.
Michael gave us a song that still moves us decades later. James gives us a mirror that still confronts us centuries later. And the mirror asks a simple question: When someone walks into my world, do they experience love — or evaluation? Because in the family of God, it was never black or white. It was always love.
There is a rap section in Michael’s song that is worth notice:
Protection for gangs, clubs and nations
Causing grief in human relations
It’s a turf war on a global scale
I’d rather hear both sides of the tale
See, it’s not about races
Just places
Faces
Where your blood comes from
Is where your space is
I’ve seen the bright get duller
I’m not going to spend my life being a color
Here’s a “man in the Mirror” question: Look in a mirror and answer this: How many of you have ever judged Michael Jackson? How many have a right to do that? I thought so.
For an enlightening video of John “in the mirror” click here.
John Fischer The Catch 
Russ Taff’s signature anthem “We Will Stand” says pretty much the same thing.
I immediately thought of the same song! Maybe we should bring back the music that first called us and formed us. There was a powerful imperative message that tugged our hearts.
Same song came to my mind also!
In the 2006 book CCM Presents: The 100 Greatest Songs in Christian Music, Russ Taff talked about growing up in a small town in the San Joaquin Valley of California surrounded by fruit orchards and itinerant migrant workers.
He said he, “saw how all the Hispanic workers in our town were treated by the locals. It gave me an understanding of what it was like to be an outsider, of how it felt to stand alone.“
After moving to Nashville and finding success as the lead singer for The Imperials, Russ Taff embarked on his solo career.
He remembered how he sat on the living room floor with his wife, Tori, trying to come up with a song for his first solo album:
“I was thinking about this story I had heard from a guy named Archie Dennis. He was a singer that travelled with the evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. He was a Black man, and he had this huge voice like an opera singer.
When he sang, you couldn’t tell what color he was; I guess on the radio most people thought he was white.
[Archie] told about being invited to Alabama in the early 60’s to sing at this big church.
It was Sunday morning, and when he got there early to set up his little sound system, the pastor walked in and asked who he was.
When Archie told him he was the guest singer, the pastor said, ‘This is not going to work. This is Alabama, and there’s just no way this can happen. You are not going to be able to sing this morning.’
So, Archie started packing up his equipment, tears running down his face.
He walked out to the steps of the church on his way to his car and almost collapsed crying, saying, ‘God, You know we are all brothers and sisters in Christ – why won’t they let me in?’
And he said he felt a Voice say back to him, ‘They won’t let Me in either.’
As Russ recalled the story he had carried with him for years, a theme of looking beyond our differences and finding unity in Christ began to form in his mind.
‘By about 4 o’clock in the morning, I had the chorus,’ he said. ‘I went upstairs and woke up Tori to sing it to her, and the next day we finished the verses.'”
Russ Taff recorded the song for his Walls of Glass album. The following year he won the 1983 Grammy for Best Male Gospel Performance for the LP.
We Will Stand
I grew up in the 60’s, like you John. Sixty years ago the chief differentiator that fueled discrimination and prejudice was skin color. Without question. It divided us. It overshadowed public dialog. It established a line between “us” and “them” that sharply separated America.
I would suggest that today’s chief divider is not skin color.
What chiefly divides us now is political affiliation.
I would ask a similar “man in the mirror” question: Do you narrowly condemn the “other side” of politics without ever having talked to someone from there? Might you be relying upon increasingly manipulative electronic feeds to found your condemnation of a member of the “other” tribe”? Do you devalue and dehumanize those who self-identify as an “other” simply on the basis of their membership with the “others”?
Like M.L. King’s admonition to disregard melanin, we need to disregard political tribes. King favored the “content of character”, the outworking of the heart (Matt.15:19). We should favor an individual’s inherent dignity that is inalienable from every creature made in the image of God. Period.
Sure, in our 21st century some people still act sinfully based upon color. Shame on them. But in every age fallen creatures persist in feeding their pride by attaching to the faddish divisiveness of that age in order to elevate themselves.
Two thousand years ago the Pharisees unjustly elevated themselves over the Samaritans.
Sixty years ago whites unjustly elevated themselves over Blacks.
Today the “socially pure” unjustly elevate themselves over their political adversaries.
In truth, division can only be eradicated when Jesus remakes our hearts, when he humbles us with the conviction of our sin, when our ambitions of greatness are subsumed by our worship of the only one worthy of praise.
Nothing else can explain how fisherman, zealots and tax collectors can suddenly find themselves in an unlikely unity. When Jesus is in your boat it’s just not about you anymore.
As I write this, I admit I’m a bit bothered by how quickly we (me included) jump in to proclaim our preferred (implying superior here) musical “alternatives” to otherwise legitimate “worldly” offerings.
Whether we choose to accept it or not, Michael Jackson and numerous other “secular” singers and groups have had messages from God to share with the world (whether they knew it or not) – the whole world including you and me – addressing social injustices that have always grieved and infuriated God.
Whether they personally live(d) by Godly convictions or not doesn’t necessarily dilute God’s message through them to the generations.
Many Christian artists (then and now) have primarily made their musical appeals to Christian audiences with a hope their message will somehow filter into the mainstream zeitgeist.
Whether they personally live(d) by Godly convictions or not doesn’t necessarily enhance God’s message through them to the generations.
The past 75 years have seen Civil Rights movements, Jesus Freaks, Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds, and Godspell, and Everything is Beautiful by Ray Stevens, and Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire, Michael Jackson’s Black or White, and so forth and so on.
And, also, here we are: almost half-a-century since Band Aid and Do Something Now, followed by Farm Aid and Freedom, and other profound causes, etc., etc. etc.
The big question here is how we – as professed disciples of Christ, bearers of His Word, Spirit-led proclaimers of Truth, demon-thwarters, gracious, compassionate, generous, forgiving, cheek-turning, extra-mile walking, humble servants – responded to any of these appeals that are still broadcast around the planet even through the decades.
To be sure it is all great music with thought-provoking tear-inducing heart-wrenching lyrics – and still just as relevant in 2026 – but did it or does it get any of us off of our butts to truly engage for any meaningful duration of time?
Were we – and are we – only hearers and not doers?
Well, tickle my ears! I’ll be the first to confess that I was and am.
Are we satisfied with simply contributing our credit card number to some charity in hopes that that will build up our credit with God, and then just leave it to others to do the “heavy lifting?”
Visit an Adult care community? Heavens no!! But I’ll write a check…
If we had been doing our work(s) as diligently as James exhorted, shouldn’t things be better by now? Or, at least, the challenges less confusing and divisive? Especially in the Church?
What will it take to fire us up?
Or are we content being lukewarm?
Whether it’s Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Bob Geldof, Willie Nelson, or Russ Taff, Brown Bannister, Michael Omartian, John Fischer….
… does it really matter which instrument God is using to motivate us to act?
God used Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, the Herod’s, Caesar, and others in His plan to change the world and eventually, reconcile His people to Himself.
I would suggest we drop our prejudices and, as the Imperials sang, “Heed the Call.”
Heed the Call – YouTube
Shalom, Peace… 🙂