Racial discrimination, most commonly referred to as just “racism” is one of the hottest issues of the day. While different people have different ideas about the severity of the problem, it is unlikely that there are many who would claim that it doesn’t exist at all. Racial discrimination has existed in one form or another throughout world history and it is unlikely that we will get rid of it anytime soon.
While there are some in the world who justify racial discrimination, that doesn’t make it right. Here in the United States, those people are by far in the minority, although they still do exist. Decades of work towards eliminating racism hasn’t succeeded, although some progress has been made. For the sake of this discussion, I’ll be working from the viewpoint that racism in all forms is wrong and evil. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide just how wrong and evil it is.
Some would say that if God cared about such things, He could eliminate it in a moment. After all, the argument might go, He is all-powerful, so such a thing should be easy for Him. In saying this, they are implying that racism is God’s fault, laying the blame on His doorstep, even though He didn’t create it and never has condoned it.
This sort of argument, about God eliminating problems, doesn’t just exist for racial discrimination, but a whole list of mankind’s ills. People unfamiliar with the scriptures regularly see God’s power as the answer to any and all problems. Believers do so too; but in a much different way.
Taking away racism altogether would require taking away our will. Racism, like anything else, exists because of the evil that is in our hearts. For God to take away that evil would require Him taking away our free will, making us nothing more than living automations. In the process, He would also be eliminating our ability to love and who to decide to love. Since His greatest desire in creating us was to love us and for us to return our love back to Him, that would defeat His purpose in creating us.
The Evil in Men’s Hearts
The truth is that the human heart is naturally filled with evil. We can see that in children. In essence, babies and toddlers are savages. They do what they want, how they want and if they don’t get what they want, they scream, hit and bite. They have to be taught how to behave, as that doesn’t come naturally to them. Some parents are better at teaching their children, “civilizing them,” than others.
Children who are not taught well by their parents tend to treat each other badly. There are countries in the world today, where it is considered “normal” and acceptable for children to break raw eggs in another child’s hair on their birthday, as well as push their face down into their cake. Where is there any rejoicing with the other person for “their day” in any of that?
We see the evil in men’s hearts first displayed in Genesis, chapter 3, when Satan, disguised as a serpent, tempted Eve with the fruit from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Satan was only able to tempt her, because he offered her something that was already in her heart. Scripture doesn’t actually say her motivation, but it was likely either the desire to be more than she already was, to have more knowledge, or to be more like God.
So, Eve ate and gave the fruit to her husband too. It wasn’t actually the fruit which changed them, opening their eyes, but the act of disobeying God. Until they disobeyed, they had no knowledge of what evil was. But once they did disobey, they were intimately familiar with it. The desire to do more evil was birthed in their hearts and has continued down through the generations.
One of the biggest things that the evil in our hearts causes us to do is to seek out differences, so as to separate ourselves from others. This predates anything we can call racism, as it probably started with people who gathered together to form villages. Anyone in the village was part of “us” and anyone outside was “them.”
Once that separation was made, it was easy for those outside the wall to see the village as a place to plunger, getting food and other things they needed. Those living inside the wall quickly realized that those outside were dangerous, a potential enemy. They must be kept outside, to protect the village and the villagers from them.
From there, it’s not much of a step for the people living in the village to start seeing the people outside as being less than themselves. We humans have a universal desire to see ourselves as being better than we are. The problem is, it’s hard to live up to that desire. On the other hand, it’s easy to make someone else out to be worse than we are, making ourselves look better by comparison.
Any difference allows people to separate themselves into different groups, declaring others as being less than themselves. Race is an easy one to do, because the other people look different. But if race isn’t available, people will use language, ethnicity, location, socio-economic status, education, religious beliefs or just about anything else they can find. Many cases of genocide involve two groups of people who are all but indistinguishable to outsiders, but they are different enough that they see and hate the difference.
Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” by Means of Natural Selection, has done more to further the cause of racial discrimination than anything. The theory of evolution naturally tends towards some races being superior to others, a fact not lost on the author. He subtitled his work “Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” referring to the idea that the white race was favored over others.
Doesn’t the Bible Teach Racism?
There are those who have claimed that the Bible teaches racism, referring specifically to the Old Testament Law. In the Law we find that God did, in fact, command the people of Israel not to intermarry with other peoples; but He also gives His reason for that.
And when the Lord your God delivers them (the people of Canaan)over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. – Deuteronomy 7:2-4
While it is clear that God commanded the people of Israel not to intermarry with others in these verses, the key to understanding them is found in verse four. There, God gives His reason for this commandment, something that He doesn’t do for most other commandments. The reason given is that “they will turn your sons away from following me, to serve other gods.” Please note that the people being referred to looked much like the people of Israel; we’re not talking about blacks and whites here, all the people were brown, what people who study races would call “Caucasians,” rather than Negroid or Mongoloid.
That makes it clear that God isn’t concerned about them intermarrying with other “races,” but rather with intermarrying with unbelievers. He has Paul repeat this commandment, in a different form, in the New Testament:
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? – 1 Corinthians 6:14
There’s a huge difference between a prohibition against marrying people of other races or ethnicities and marrying people of different beliefs. We need look no further than the life of King Solomon to see the danger of marrying people of other beliefs. Although Solomon was the “wisest man who ever lived,” he was turned astray from worshiping God by his many wives.
And he (Solomon)1 had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. – 1 Kings 11:3-4
So, just where did all these wives and concubines come from? Most were political marriages. Just as Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, he married royal women of other nations, forming alliances with those nations through the marriage. That was not uncommon in those times, even though God had forbidden it for his people. All of Solomon’s wisdom didn’t stop him from being led into idolatry by his many wives, causing his latter years to be worse than his earlier ones.
The Bible is Against Racism
Even if we accept the idea that the Bible’s admonition against marrying outside the faith isn’t racism, that’s not the same as the Bible coming out against racism. The Bible, or at least the New Testament, teaches that we should ignore race when we come before God, as we are all the same in His eyes.
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. – Galatians 3:26-29
This doesn’t fully eliminate the possibility of racism; as it only refers to those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Nevertheless, we can clearly see from these verses that we are all the same in Christ Jesus. Not only is there no place for racism, but there isn’t any place for sexism or separation by socio-economic class either.
Looking at Biblical history, it is clear that we all came from one common root, Adam and Eve. Going further on in time, we see that all of humanity was killed in the flood, leaving only Noah and his wife, their sons, and their sons’ wives. That makes us all part of the same family. Can racism exist within one family? Would it be acceptable in any family?
It has been supposed that the three branches or “races” of humanity came from Noah’s sons. In this theory, Ham would have produced all black children, Japheth would have produced all white children and Shem would have produced brown children. Any other color variance would come out of intermarrying and interbreeding of these three “races.”
There’s just one problem with this theory. That is, there’s nothing in the Bible to back it up. While many people think this to be true, there is not one single verse stating their skin color. Rather, this theory requires using the evidence of where we find the various skin tones in the world and projecting that on Noah’s sons. That is an attempt to change the Bible, based on what one finds in the world, a totally unacceptable manner of Biblical interpretation.
So, Where Did So Much Variance Come From?
In order to understand the huge variance in skin color found in the world today, one need look no further than genetics. The easiest place to see this is here in the United States, where we have a largely homogenous society. “Black” people in this country range in skin tone from a dark chocolate color to being light-skinned enough to pass as being “white.”
The history of how that came about is a sad sub-chapter in US history. The United States is not, by far, the only country to ever have slaves. But it does have the distinction of being one of only two countries which fought a war to eliminate that slavery. Even so, there were many atrocities which happened in the slave years and following. Amongst those was the raping of slave women by their masters. This produced children which were lighter-skinned than their mothers, but darker-skinned than their fathers, commonly referred to as “mulatto.”
This example shows us what happens when people of different skin-tone have children together. So far, science has identified 378 genes involved as having an effect on skin color. This offers a huge variety of possibilities, more than we fully understand. But on a basic level, we can surmise that two white parents can’t have black children and two black parents can’t have white children, except in the case of an albino (a genetic anomaly). Things start getting interesting though, when middle-toned people have children together.
If we suppose that Adam and Eve were both middle-brown toned people, then it is possible that their children ranged in skin-tone from the lightest light to the darkest dark. Looking at Noah and his family, it is possible that each of the eight people on the ark had different colored skin, covering the gambit. With that being the case, it is likely that they could produce the variety in skin tone we see today.
Just over 100 years after the ark made landfall, we find the Tower of Babel, talked about in Genesis, chapter 11. When God came down to “confuse their language” (Genesis 11:7) the people scattered across the globe (Genesis 11:8). It appears that the people are separated by language, gathering together in groups to settle in different areas. The Bible doesn’t tell us, but it is possible that they also did so by skin color or other distinguishing features. As they intermarried amongst each separate group, the genetic stew contained within that group would result in some commonality of features and looks over time.
Will We Ever Eliminate Racism?
Thinking of racism as a political issue or even a social issue is a mistake; it is a sin issue. It does nothing to glorify God and can in fact steal glory from Him. If we want to eliminate it, we must start by dealing with the hearts of people, as that is where racial discrimination begins. The Bible tells us:
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. – Romans 3:23
Another way to look at that verse is to say that anything which falls short of the glory of God is sin. God loves all people equally, not selecting one “race” over another. If we make those artificial separations and treat each other differently because of them, then we are going against God in doing so. There is no way that we can say that we are glorifying God.
You can’t legislate morality or ethics; those are things that begin in the heart, just like racism does. That’s why the solution to racism doesn’t exist in the halls of Washington, but in the sanctuary of the church. We who call ourselves by the name of Christ can start making a change by eliminating any sense of racism within ourselves. How? By treating all people the same, regardless of who they are, what they look like or where they come from. In other words, following what Jesus called the greatest two commandments.
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40
Love and racism cannot co-exist; one must drive out the other. Which will it be? I can only decide that for myself, just as you can only decide it for yourself. Choose wisely, as the Lord Himself is watching to see which way you’ll go.