The concept of racism is a modern concept and foreign to scripture. The word itself didn’t appear in the English language until 1902 and in French around 1890.
Historically, the word, ‘race’ has been singular, referring to the human race, and there is no evidence for the concept of multiple races in the biological sciences. Races simply don’t exist. Born and educated into the modern lie as we are, this is hard for us to get our heads around. But we ought to try.
The Eunuch in Acts 8 was not a “black Ethiopian”. He was just an Ethiopian. The Queen of Sheba was not “Asian” and the guys from Crete were not wogs; they were lazy gluttons (Titus 1:12).
Paul (quoted above) could say this with a straight face because the bible recognises and defines people according to ethnicity, not race. That is, it recognises cultural, social or religious traditions and characteristics that apply to families, tribes and nations. Skin colour, genetics and the shape of your nose just don’t enter into it.
The false concept of multiple races however is handy. Especially if you want to oppress your neighbour and need to come up with a justification for that oppression.
In the scientific community, that justification came to us via 18th- and 19th-century evolutionary theory. It’s no secret that evolution was used to popularise the idea that the differences in physical appearance and intellectual development was grounded in a multiplicity of races. It was also a handy justification for things like modern slavery and genocide.
Mud sticks, and so the 20th century gave us the idiotic idea and catastrophic consequences of thinking that Jews were an (inferior) race (They are not a race, and never have been. They are a religious identity). The 21st century is not far behind in dumb ideas either, thinking that any objection to Islam is racism.
But even before scientific evolution appeared on the scene, oppressing our neighbour based on physical characteristics was handy for political and social purposes, and so we have a historian from China in the 3rd century describing “barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling the monkeys from which they are descended”.
Once we accept the novelty that our identity is tied to our physical characteristics, it won’t be long before we crack the crusty layer of our skin and start identifying ourselves according to all kinds of inner emotional, psychological and temperamental characteristics. After all, if I can invent such a thing as multiple races and be identified as one of them, what stops me from identifying as a cat or perhaps even broccoli?
And here we are. Whoops.
The absurdity would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.
And it is tragic. Having believed the lie that we would be as gods, we are hell-bent on redefining and renaming our world and ourselves. We were taught to believe that we could be anything. But we can’t. And the horror of our self-mutilation has been and will be tragic.
It is God who made us, and therefore, it’s God who defines who and what we are. And all of His definitions of us are grounded in worship. Or, perhaps more specifically, what we worship.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and beasts and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up… because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator… (Romans 1:23-25)
All culture (from ‘cultus’) is simply the public display and overflow of what we worship. It’s the outworking of our particular cult. If our culture is shallow it’s because our worship is shallow. If our culture is in decay it is because our worship is rotten.
And so, God has every absolute divine right to identify us according to our cult. Be it our gluttony, our laziness or our behaving like evil beasts (Titus 1:12, Romans 1:28-29).
The way out of this is not continued participation in the lie, but in sweet surrender to the glorious truth.
That truth is that you and I are made as the image of God. Made to reflect His attributes and not the attributes of cats, broccoli or invented racial profiles. We are made male and female and called to live as such before God.
We are designed to serve our neighbour and build communities whose culture reflects joyful obedience and love for God.
This is what it means to be truly human. To belong to the human race. And this is why God has come into our world.
And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe, tongue and nation (Revelation 5:9)
Not only did Jesus die to put to death our tragic culture of death, He rose from the dead in order to bring us into a new community. A community of people from all the families, tribes and nations of the earth. A new humanity that acknowledges its rebellion, repents, and is set free by the life-giving mercy of the living God.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands… (Revelation 7:9)
This is the Good News of the gospel. In Christ, we are no longer defined by the invented names and categories of this world. Short, tall, black, yellow, white, bunyip, basket case or broccoli.
We are people, neither Jew nor Gentile. We come from different families, tribes, traditions, cultures and nations. And what defines us now is our standing before the throne, palms waving in the true worship of God.
So let us stand there. Let us dismiss the corrupted labels of this world and, with courage, begin to relabel this world and all its doings according to the will, word and truth of God. And, with peace in our hearts, let us rejoice before the God of Heaven who calls us His sons.
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