Race Relations
This article was written (2003)
as a reflection to the following book:
Kehrein, Glen and Washington, Raleigh, Breaking Down Walls: A Model for
Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife. Chicago: Moody, 1993.
It is my position that the racial issue is one that must be approached from both a principles and character ethic. This dual-approach harmonizes the need for us to come to a proper understanding of racial identity (deontological) and advance thinking and behavior that is conformed to the image of Christ (virtue). Multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance are the reigning solutions to problems associated with race. That is, most everywhere people assume that racial identity rooted in biology is an objective reality and conclude that the way to manage tensions, difference and strife is to develop greater appreciation for those differences. Ironically, this strategy has produced debate and strife of its own as people argue and quibble about the ideas of diversity and tolerance themselves.
As Christians, we must fundamentally grapple with these issues theologically and not merely sociologically or philosophically. When we turn to the Scripture, we find a very different description of humankind. It's a description that emphasizes that only one “race” exists, that all of mankind descends from one original parentage, Adam and Eve. "Race" is the theory, taking several forms, that there is an essential difference between peoples rooted in biological factors and seen in things like skin color, hair texture, eye shape and color, and a few other obvious markers of difference.
"Ethnicity" is a fluid construct that includes language, nationality or citizenship, cultural patters and perhaps religion. Race as biology entrenches identity in physical appearance. Ethnicity is something that people of various physical appearances can move in and out of. So, for example, when we say someone is "American," we're talking about people of every color. We're talking about an ethnic or national identity. And people can become an American or they can become some other ethnic group.
The emphasis wherever the Bible speaks of creation of humankind is mankind's common biological descent from Adam. Our common ancestry is underscored. The most fundamental recognition is not our difference labeled as "race" but our oneness, not our discontinuity but continuity.
This obvious truth, that all men are descended from Adam and Eve through the line of Noah, demands complete abandonment of "race as biological distinctiveness." The way out of racial quicksand is to recognize and emphasize our common ancestry in Adam and disallow "race" as biology the place of reality or organizing system in our worldview. Thinking in racial categories has been an automatic reflexive assumption for all of us. It seems as natural as breathing. But we must deny it that place in our lives.
But for the Christian, there is an even greater basis for unity across ethnic lines and the abandonment of "race" as a part of our worldview and spiritual life — our union in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, "We have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us."
Paul's insight into this union with Christ comes first from the Lord's own teaching. For example, in John 17:20-26, Jesus petitions the Father for our union with Him and the Father. We are made one in God just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father (v. 21). The Father in the Son, the Son in the Saints (v. 23). We have entered into the eternal fellowship of love shared between the Father and the Son from all eternity.
Our union with Christ produces in us new life. It's surprising how often the New Testament reaches for the little adjective "new" to describe the reality we've entered in Christ (2 Cor. 5:14-18). And in this new reality, as Sinclair Ferguson put it, "We are brothers and sisters together — for Christ's blood creates a deeper lineage than our genes."
Because we are united with Christ, we are together being restored to the image and likeness of God. "Those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom 8:29). "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18). The process of reconciliation should be at the heart of all believers. “The Word of God is not just saying that reconciliation is a good idea. Rather, Paul informs us that the ministry of reconciliation is a mandatory part of every Christian’s daily living.” (p. 283).
This is not merely a problem of integration or tolerance, as I mentioned in my opening statement. It's more serious than that. From Sunday to Sunday, month to month, year after year, Christians of every hue are abandoning one another in lovelessness. Because we are too often loveless, "race" overpowers us even though it is not really real. Our love seeks the limits of convenience and familiarity, to be bounded by the ease that "race" offers, when Christ calls us to a largeness and breadth of love that is like His own, that assembles and gathers and loves and gives to every nation, tribe and language. And that's to be displayed in our churches. Christ has made us one and called us to unity, but we have filed a declaration of independence from one another and voluntarily enacted Jim Crow practices to reinforce it.
