There's been a huge amount of discussion recently about race in our nation. Though many would point back to the recent and tragic death of George Floyd as perhaps a tipping point, it goes back far further than anyone thinks. If you're thinking the trans-Atlantic slave trade, you're still way off. The problem began, in the garden of Eden.
We all remember the story of the fall, God creates a helper for Adam, whom he names Eve. She's deceived by Satan in the guise of a serpent. She breaks the one commandment at the time, and eats of the tree. After Adam has eaten of the same fruit proffered by Eve, they are fallen. They now know good and evil, and the heart and nature of humanity was plunged into sin.
Sadly, some of those sins is racism. The idea that one group of people is somehow better or greater than another based on innate and immutable characteristics. No, not the new nonsense word vomit that is the idea that somehow one must be in a position of power to be racist. That is nonsense of the highest order, and looks no further than the shores of our country while racism and sin are a global problem. This problem is not relegated to only "all white people are racist", but goes much further. In many Asian countries, racism is a form of normal society for example. Black people are looked down upon by many, and some believe this is a throwback to the second world war. At the time, Japan had imbibed the worst aspects of Darwinism, and believed themselves superior and further along the evolutionary timeline than anyone else. But I digress.
Racism is a figment of the sinful imagination. It is an expression of a nature warped by our sin. There cannot be true racism, as by definition we are all of one race, the human race. All the hatred is tribalism that has been influenced by the neo-Darwinian idea that because our earliest ancestors were amoebas, that we are somehow separate. That we are divided because of simple genetic aspects as inane as our melanin count.
Only the Christian worldview shows us that we are in fact, all one. That we are all created in the Imago Dei, or the Image of God. Since we are all image bearers, it means we are all the same, that whether you believe God formed Adam and Eve fully from the dust of the ground and rib respectively, or that He raised two ape-like ancestors to consciousness, we all are deserving of respect and we all have the same ancestors. We aren't some separate species, we are the same species.
Sadly, a person I call a friend has recently drunk deeply from the misinformation being portrayed today, and has allowed his thinking to become shallow because of it. This was a recent, and very short, interaction he and I had. I've cropped out his name, as that isn't the point. I won't disrespect him in such a way. Here is the crux of the discussion.
As we see, he has responded to the idea that humanity is a single race with mockery and derision. He is an atheist, and so refuses to acknowledge his Creator. That Creator (God) made us all, and so we are one, whether we admit it or not. You see he cannot acknowledge such a fact, as it short circuits his worldview and the anger and angst in which he is currently comfortable. He doesn't understand that if all humanity realized and acknowledged that God is the Creator, that would end racism! Sure the sentiment won't end racism, but neither will blind anger and hatred of others. The idea of dragging down one group, in an effort to raise up another simply drags everyone down. It's the "crabs in a bucket" syndrome on a massive scale.
He goes on to mention the idea that "all lives matter is redundant". How so? In the holocaust that is abortion, do those lives matter? A good many of those abortions are performed on the unborn children of black women. Considering Planned Parenthood was created by the racist, eugenicist Margaret Sanger, I should think we should be railing against those live that are being ended in the thousands every year! Do black gang members' lives matter? Again, apparently not as we see protesting, not for the end of gang violence which also claims thousands of young black lives every year, but for the relatively small number of black men killed by police each year (17 in 2017). Don't get me wrong, any loss of life grieves my soul, and I do not wish to downplay the unconscionable killing of black men by the police, I simply want to put it into perspective.
We see the oft touted "no one is saying only black lives matter". You'll notice, I never stated that was the case. My entire point was that separating us into groups by skin color, highlights the differences, magnifies them and drives a wedge between us. Sadly many on the left today view the sentiment that "all lives matter" is racist. That it "erases black experiences". Nothing could be further from the truth, but that idea tips the hand of those who wish to further the divide. It shows that, instead of the large conglomeration of "us", they wish to divide us into "us and them". No one who says "all lives matter" is trying to erase anyone's experiences, but we are trying to bring everyone together, so that those awful experiences can be lessened, and we can all help bear some of the burden. Stating that idea, that we wish to bring back the state God intended, of all of humanity realizing we are one family, is a "participation trophy" is no more than a shallow ad hominem, stated by someone who is comfortable in their anger and who has allowed it to shut down their thinking to a shallow level. One that I know my friend is capable of dissipating. I know because I've seen his intelligence run circles around others who have employed similar shallow thinking and left his opponents running for the exit. I pray one day God will soften his heart to have faith in Jesus, and that I can get my friend back. God bless.
