Charles and Paul on Race

There’s no doubt that one of the biggest concerns that the world seems to have right now is racism.

Well, it’s not just racism. There are a lot of words that are used today to identify the “oppressed”. Sexism (against women). Classism. Intellectualism. Sizeism. Or, sometimes we simply say “discrimination”. Discrimination based on age, discrimination against the disabled. And all the phobias, right? Homophobia. Cacomorphobia (that’s a fear of fat people). It’s an endless list. And there are huge problems with the way these terms are used, and with the terms themselves.

Now this may be a shocker for some people, but the term “racism” that is so popular today isn’t found in the Bible. The word “race” is mentioned, but how many times depends on the Bible version you’re using. Actually, in the Authorized (King James) Version, the only “race” is the kind you run in.

Usually in Scripture we have the idea of nations. In Greek, ethnos. We may say in English, ethnic groups. Ethnicity, of course, may include DNA, physical descendants. But it also includes the idea of structures, countries, cultures.

Culture is something that most fundamentally comes from family. You family does things in a certain way. You all talk like that. And then a group of families come together in a community, and that community is influenced to have a certain culture. And so on.

The Apostle Paul was making a speech in the city of Athens, at the Areopagus. During his discourse, he explains a biblical perspective of race and ethnicity:

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us…

Acts 17:24-27

“…he made from one man every nation of mankind…” – there’s that word, ethnos. Literally, in Greek, “he made from one” – that is, from Adam. In that sense, how many races are there in the world? One, of course.

We all come from God, as Creator. We are all descendants of Adam. We are all one family. And God, in His providence, decided where we would live, from what family we would come.

How strange and ridiculous to negate the value of another person in the family, someone else created by God. We are one race.

Of course, today, we commonly use the term “race” somewhat differently. We think about descendants of various groups/families. Or in DNA – physical characteristics, such as skin colour. (Note: this is a more traditional view of race, but new ideas have been introduced here too. Stay with me.)

Dr. Harold P. Freeman has studied this concept of race. He explains that the physical characteristics that we associate with race, differences in physical appearance, are from 0.01% of our DNA! In other words, 99.9% of our DNA has nothing to do with the stereotypical idea of race (see Are There Really Different Races?).

But we insist on a simplistic idea of race – stereotypes. Mexicans have a certain colour of skin, and they eat hot food (in reality, Mexicans come in many shades, and some actually prefer food that’s not so spicy hot). Chinese people are like this. Africans (let’s just have a simplistic view of a whole continent while we’re at it!) are like that. Race.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published a book which is another historical milestone for us. Do you know the title of his book, off the top of your head?

If you said, “On the Origin of Species”, I’m afraid you left out most of the original title, which was “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. Read it carefully, and it will help you understand where Darwin was coming from.

You see, Darwin believed that some races were more evolved, more advanced, than others. In fact – and you’re going to love this – he believed that men had evolved with larger brains, meaning that they were more intelligent than women!

And the ideas of Darwin (and it’s not just Darwin, but remember, we’re trying to simplify) have been used to promote racism.

In contrast to Darwin’s ideas about various races, we know that there’s only one race, created by God. The human race. Every individual with value and dignity.

So what is the world’s solution to racism? Well, people have come up with various ideas throughout time, but let’s talk about the common narrative that we hear most often today.

You may remember our discussion of intersectionality. We all have various characteristics, various histories, that place us more in the “oppressed” group or the “oppressor” group. But remember, for them, individual sin is not so important, or may not exist at all.

Very often, according to the world, your value doesn’t come from God (imago dei), but from your group. And your sin isn’t something from your heart, it’s from your group (if it exists at all). In fact, because of your group, you may have no sin at all.

How does it feel to be profiled because of the group you supposedly belong to?

As we discussed before, many people believe that the problem is actually the system in which we find ourselves. That may be the “patriarchy” or the “hegemony”. And the problem with the system, they say, is that it gives certain privileges to some, and not to others.

Next time we’ll talk about one way in which this concept is illustrated, and why I have questions.