Jesus and Ethnicity: A Theological Reflection on the Message of John 4:1-24.

Abstract

The message of Jesus Christ is to save everyone irrespective of tribe, culture, geographical location, and language. His main purpose is to restore the human relationship with God. In view of that, the study employed an analytical approach to finding out how Jesus dealt with ethnicity in the propagation of the message of God (the Gospel) to deduce relevant messages across ethnic boundaries. As a result of this, the study revealed that Jesus did not rule out the role of culture in the propagation of the message. It is observed that culture is knowledge, language, values, and customs. Thus, the message demonstrates how Jesus dealt with the Samaritan woman. Jesus communicated to the woman in simple and understandable language. His respect and love for the woman at the well and her view as part of values by requesting water from her suggests that he did not do away with the essence of values and customs. Therefore, this study suggests that Christians do likewise in the quest to disseminate the message of God, instead of promoting ethnicity which will end up limiting the message to a particular group of people. This study revealed that the best way to effectively carry the message across is to achieve the goal of the great commission by engaging people in terms of cultural relativism rather than ethnocentrism