"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."
Acts 17:26-27
Last year, I purchased Richard J. Mouw's book entitled "When the Kings Come Marching In". Our church was going through a series on Revelation and I wanted to delve deeper into Isaiah - often see as the Old Testament precursor (or supplication) to John's writing. The subordinate title of the book is: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem.
The book deals primarily with the visions and prophecies in Isaiah 60 pertaining to the Holy City, which is paralleled with John's City of God in Revelation.
Why am I bringing up this book?
Unbeknownst to me, the book has an entire chapter devoted to race relations, which Mouw called 'The Milk of Many Nations'. This really helped me wrestle with the tragic and horrifying events surrounding the murder of George Floyd that shook the world in the past weeks and I will refer to that chapter specifically a few times.
The Beginning
'In the Beginning...'Christians know this to be the starting lines of the Biblical narrative. A narrative is shaped by its beginning. Often, the starting point is an implication for where the story might go. In the first chapters of the Bible, we see God creatively pouring out life upon a world He himself spoke into being. Adam, breathed into existence, becoming the first human, created in the image and likeness of his life-giver.
Was Adam a white dude? Did he have blonde hair and blue eyes?
Were we to believe Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo, then the answer would be 'Yes'.
A narrative is shaped by those who control the history books and the truth is that the Judeo-Christian Western world has held that monopoly over the rest of the world for the better half of the past two centuries. There have been many books written about this and the way attitudes of Occidental supremacy over the Orient have been shaped - most notably 'Orientalism' by Edward Said.
When you're in charge of the narrative and you're able to choose your own people as the protagonists (and heroes) of the story, then it seems obvious how that could make sense.
This is where the Bible comes in and turns things upside down.
The Old Testament presents a narrative of a distinct group of people, set aside by God to propel His story of salvation and divine kingship. This group of people were the most unlikely, for they were not a powerful nation of warriors. They were a scattered people that became enslaved. Only the God of miracles could free them from their oppression and set them on a new course, toward the Promised Land. Once there, this tribe, by the grace and goodness of God, developed into a mighty nation, powerful enough to keep its enemies at bay. But only while they exclusively honoured the God who saved them. They turned away from Him and were carried off into exile and enslaved again.
Before the story of the Jews really kicks off, we're told that 'the whole world had one language and common speech.' (in Genesis 11:1-8) The Tower of Babel is the prime example and proof that God's original intention for us was to be a uniformed body of Christ. The fact that God dispersed the people after they tried to build this huge tower is still a massive point of contention and has offered grounds to defend 'racial separation' in the recent past.
Mouw writes the following:
"In 1974 the white Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa adopted a report entitled Human Relations and the South African Scene in the Light of Scripture. [...] As a result of Babel, the report argued, God introduced "distinctions among peoples" into the human race. Ethnic "diversity", then, is not a bad thing, and the "church should avoid the modern tendency to erase all distinctions among peoples." Rather, Christians should point to the love of neighbour as "the ethical norm for the regulation of relationships among peoples."
This is how the Apartheid regime operated. It is very similar to other regimes who used the very language God gifted them with, in order to confuse the people and make them believe that oppression and injustice is part of God's plan.
Every time a group of people suppresses another group, it also abuses the narrative of being the 'chosen people'.
Mouw mentions this as another way in which 'racial separation' is defended using Biblical grounds:
"Many national and ethnic groups tend to identify themselves with the "chosen people" of the Old Testament. The New England Puritans identified themselves as chosen, and the conviction still flavours many popular celebrations of "Americanism". This notion also shapes the thinking of the English, the Scots, the Dutch, and other national and ethnic groups. [...] South Africa's Afrikaners viewed themselves as God's chosen people, sent into the wilderness to build the commonwealth of Zion. To them, the dark-skinned inhabitants of that land were an accursed people - the "Canaanites" - whose destiny it was to serve the white community as "your hewers of wood and your drawers of water."
Suffice to say, whoever believes that God's plan was for ethnicities to live separated from each other, has failed to read the beginning and the rest of the Bible. If we all come from one human being, then there is absolutely no reason to discriminate against any other human being, for we all are indeed descended from one and the same.
Whether you want to believe it or not, the Church has played a major role in creating divisions among people and setting one race at the top to rule over the rest. Far too often, the Church has been silent on the issue of racial injustice. Another sad chapter was the role the Catholic church played in Germany's Third Reich and how the persecution of the Jewish people reached its gruesome pinnacle. Let us just remind ourselves: This was white people oppressing and intentionally eradicating 'white' people.
After all, Cain, another white dude, killed his white brother, Abel. And thus the story continues...
The Middle
There is one movie, in particular, that really shook me to the core and made me question my own thinking on white people's distorted view of race. That movie was American History X. The way George Floyd was killed reminded me of the most gut-wrenching and sickening scene in that film. It is that image of one man treating another man with such disdain that simply haunts you. Why are we still treating other people like they haven't been made in the image of God, but rather like pigs ready to be taken to the slaughterhouse. (Although I'm sure that pigs receive better treatment than most humans.)Remember Jesus? Yes, Jesus the Christ. The son of man. The Messiah who came to reign. That same Jesus was beaten, humiliated and crucified. He sustained the worst and most gruesome death, so that you and I can partake in the kingdom He came to set up. He died for you, so that you can be a light unto others and share the Good News of His rule and love. He was lifted up on a cross, to lift you 'from the pit of despair, out of the miry clay', and to receive eternal life.
Jesus...the "white" saviour...surrendered Himself, so that the forces of evil would be destroyed for good.
And what do we do? What have we done since His atoning death? He told us to make disciples of ALL nations.
The death and resurrection of Jesus can be described as the climax of the Bible narrative.
Writing to the Galatians, Paul states:
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28)
If we are all children of God, then we all hold the same value in His eyes. And therefore, each person should hold the same value in our eyes. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbours - even the ones we might care for the least, our own Samaritans, so to speak. (Luke 10:25-37)
We were called to build God's kingdom - together! At the same time, we were called to serve one another. These two ideas go hand in hand, because the kingdom we're building does not conform to the worldly standards.
As a student, I came across a deeply enlightening documentary about slavery called '500 Years Later'. The film attempts to explain why people of African descent are still facing socio-economic injustices around the globe until this day and how their collective consciousness is still shackled to the past.
If we believe as Christians, that the Biblical narrative is one of freedom, then how can it be that our brothers and sisters in Christ are still not allowed to experience the full extent of that freedom?
We must all sit down in silence and reflect on our own white privilege and then stand up to raise our voices to change the narrative we've perpetuated and have been a part of for too long. Racism was nailed to the cross, but its blood still runs in our veins. There can be no question about it: we're guilty. We must repent and seek forgiveness. The only future worth fighting for is one where we, as the complete body of Christ, live together in harmony. The rainbow of God's covenantal promise is made up of more than one colour!
The End
If you're white and you believe the white race is superior in terms of intellect, then that surely means you can read and you use reason as a form of thought. In that case, it would be reasonable to read the conclusions that genetic scientists came up with, on how there are no genetic differences between a white or a black person. (And this other article on Reshaping the Race Debate in the 21st century)
Richard Mouw goes on to write that,
"[...] we must care "at the very least" about the church because the Christian community ought to function as a model of, a pointer to, what life will be like in the Eternal City of God. The church must be, here and now, a place into which the peoples of the earth are being gathered for new life."
The Biblical narrative ends with the glorious City of God, where every tribe and nation will join together. But the road to that future is still very long and filled with many more bumps along the way.
Mouw makes a point to those who might think that he holds a certain bias. He says that the examples he has cited in his discussion "give the impression that I think that racial prejudice and ethnocentrism are problems only for white people - an impression that it would be wrong not to correct. Certain Asian Christian groups have great difficulty accepting persons from other Asian cultures into their fellowship. The church on the African continent has had to struggle regularly with deeply ingrained patterns of tribalism. [...] Wherever human beings are victimised by false pride and prejudices rooted in convictions about racial or tribal "superiority", we are witnessing the ravages of sin.
The Church must respond to these ravages of sin.
How?
I believe by actively encouraging and developing a church community that represents the structure of the Holy City here on earth - a 'multinational corporation (or body)' with Jesus as King.
Some might argue that the true measure of a great story is the end. And the Bible tells the greatest End-Story of all: the Return of the King (Revelation 19)
But for this moment in time, we are confronted with the horrors of the mess we've created - that is to say, the seeds of systemic racism, which we have sown. I'd like to end this article, by quoting Richard Mouw one last time, because he managed to sum up the problem beautifully back in 2002:
"In North America persons of colour have systematically suffered under the yoke of racism, and the black family has been under sustained attack. Blacks have been treated as "subhuman" or "inferior" entities, as economic commodities to be bought and sold. Many factors - overt and covert, blatant and subtle - have combined to wage war on the black person's sense of self-worth. Under such difficult conditions the black spirit has often provided us with examples of amazing courage and resilience. Spiritual riches have been mined from the depths of physical and cultural deprivation. Oppressed black peoples, as victims of oppression, have significant gifts that they will carry into the Heavenly City.
But there can be no doubt that, under the conditions described - and these are only general inequities, not specific injustices - blacks have been severely restricted in developing their own "glory and honour". Because of this, we must view the "black pride" movements of a renewed sense of dignity and self-worth. A theology that pays special attention to particularities of African-American history can be a healthy effort to articulate an understanding of the gospel that is free from the "white" interests and priorities and illusions that have for so long shaped, in both obvious and subtle ways, the thinking, life, and witness of the Christian community."
In that spirit, it is time for a new narrative, where we listen and help those with no voices to sit at the table and tell the world their story. That is what the writers of the Bible did. And that is what we must do.
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