Racial Tensions in a "Post-Christian" World

Many social scientists, postmodern progressive academic elitists, and many politicians claim we live in a “post-Christian” world. We Christians know that Christ promised to “be with us always, even unto the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

It doesn’t really surprise us; these people have been trying to undo religion in America since the 1960s, but in the debate over the issues of racism, each of the two approaches – Christian and post-Christian – hold important positions, and each are nearly antithetical to each other.

The problem is that the progressive side want the national conversation to be about the historical slavery and oppression; this side absolutely wants to perpetuate racial division because it is where they believe their power base is.

Why would a group of people – typically Democratic – want to keep racial tensions high and feed the beast of hatred and enmity? It defies rationality.

The reason is promulgated from both the postmodern philosophy permeating our entire culture today, and progressivism as a resurrected political scheme in which Big Government is considered the only agency large enough to force compliance with the postmodern playbook.

Thus, according to postmodernism, which elements include: relativism, secularization, deliberate irrationality, subjective emotionalism, reductionism, and narcissism, race must be used to co-opt the status quo or our current cultural imperative and our representative republican government.

This is the same reason that abortion is used, along with LGBT rights over religious rights, same-sex marriage verses traditional marriage, and the educational system is corrupted by progressive ideology.

How do Christians view race? They view it in a reasoned way, using biology, genetics, anthropology, and archeology, along with a view from scripture.

The life sciences reveal to us that homo sapiens is a single race without any significant differences in genetic structure. What we see in different people are environmental differences in skin color, hair texture, eye shape, etc., adapted over time within distinct physical habitats.  Anthropologists tell us that another difference among people is ethnicity – that collection of social and cultural elements that make up distinct categories of homo sapiens.

Our Christian reasoning informs us that we are all created by God – equally – in His image, and we are therefore the imago Dei, ordained with all human dignity received from Him.

Therefore, race should not be a big deal, nor any deal at all – listen to the biologists and geneticists.

With this background, what can we do about the ersatz “race” problem?

First, we need to abandon focus on racial differences, which are really only ethnic differences, and engage routine equality in our treatment of one another. Postmodern progressive academic elitists call this “colorblindness” and label it simply another form of racism. However, how do we defeat “racism” without treating everyone equally and having our society’s legal structure treat everyone as equally as possible? We hear that the justice system is tilted against Blacks and that White Privilege abounds. A higher percentage of Black people are arrested and incarcerated. To be fair and reasonable, we must ask the question: Is this percentage simply happenstance, ethnic bias run amok, or are there other reasons for this percentage. If we look at the figures, there are many more Whites arrested and incarcerated; thus, so much for White Privilege. Of course, almost 77% of the population is White according to the 2016 US Census, so more white everything is going to happen.

Let’s look at some other ways “racial” tension is kept at a high rate. Whenever we mark our racial or ethnic origin on a government form, especially for statistical purposes, we perpetuate the differences and therefore the problem. When we force programs that operate on ethnic distinctions – like Affirmative Action – we perpetuate racial divide. When ethnic-prejudice groups like the KKK, the Black Panthers, Pan-Asian Students, Chicano Por Las Causas, the American Nazi Party, or Black Lives Matter, exist, ethnic differences are trumpted. When the news media selectively reports on a Black person killed by White police officers, but never report the other way around, i.e. when a Black police officer is forced to kill a White person, or Black one, then ethnic differences overflow into “racial” hatred, and violence abounds. To even mention “race”, even as a fact that does not really exist, fosters what postmodern progressive call “racism”.

We Christians know that if we are created imago Dei, we all equally derive our human dignity from God and we are obligated to “love one another” (John 13:34).

The fallen history of Christians does not invalidate the glory of God or the promises of Christ.

But we do not need to give into our sinful natures; that’s what Free Will is all about. When we meet any person we will always – naturally – note our differences, it’s human nature, but as the Second Greatest Commandment states, we should treat the Other, whatever Other, as a true child of God.