These are my thoughts and observations on racism from a Christian perspective.
The End of Racism
2009
This is part of a letter I wrote to a Rabbi. How will God put an end to racism? According to the N.T., Jesus has already solved that problem in Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11; Rom. 10:12; and Eph. 2:14-17. Rodney King once asked the eternal question “Why can’t we all get along?” Putting cultural and personal differences aside that separate us, what is left to unify us together on common ground? If the Spirit of our righteous God, whom we desire to emulate, dwelled in each and every one of us, then His presence in us would be where we all have the same oneness (or one sameness). The color of my skin may be different than yours, you may like the color blue and I may not like it, but the Spirit of God, the Rauch Ha Kodesh, is the same common denominator in everyone who has received Him. And if we all would walk in His Spirit, I’m sure we would all get along.
Who Do You Serve?
11-19-13 Have you ever seen the blessing of slavery? It’s almost like martyrdom, only the Christian martyrs were so because they intentionally set out to glorify God in their suffering, where a slave didn’t volunteer to be so. Yet because of their suffering and treatment of injustice, I see the true nature of man exposed. In bewilderment of seeing how the potential in man can be so evil towards another, I ask myself if I would rather have been the suffering slave or the slave owner who was wicked, senseless and morally deprived.
We all have a sense of what is good and evil. In the days of black and white television, in a western movie the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. You can see the general characteristics of good and evil in all cultures, the oppressor and the oppressed.
God has chosen to expose our fallen nature in mysterious ways. He did so even with Jesus. If He was the Lamb of God, a sacrifice to take away our sin, why didn’t He just come down from heaven and say “OK, here I am, just lay Me on the altar and sacrifice Me as you have done many times with the lambs before to atone for your sins, and it will be done! All of your sins will be removed permanently!”
No, He chose a much more dramatic, personal way to get us to see the dark depravity of our fallen human nature, which we all are enslaved to no matter how good you think you are (Rom. 3:21-26). The crucifixion of Jesus exposed two natures: The wicked nature of the Evil One that is full of pride and self-righteousness and wanted to eliminate God from the face of the earth, and the holy nature of God who offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, demonstrating the greatest love ever known to man. Who is your master? (Rom. 6:20-22)
From Death to Life
4-23-20
It’s not just a matter of being good or bad, it’s about acknowledging we have taken on a sinful nature of death that needs to be replaced with Christ’s nature of life. Our fallen condition will not allow us to be unified, it’s a rebellious self-willed, self-centered, self-sufficient independent nature, and it’s dead, it brings death, not life.
George Floyd
6-2-20 The way a police officer unjustly mistreated George Floyd which resulted in his death is comparable to a modern day lynching. The officer held him hand-cuffed face down on the ground by applying pressure on his neck with his knee (which is what they are trained to do), with his hands in his pocket for a long period of time. As it appears, George was compliant the whole time, saying he could not breathe; he was not resisting the officer.
It is understandable that people, especially the black community, would be outraged. This has resulted in peaceful protests and destructive acts of violence. A Christian will demonstrate peacefully, knowing that God will serve justice. Non-Christians will tend to act destructively, because, how else are they to release their anger? It has to be released somehow.
Good People and Bad People
6-10-20
There will always be bad people; even good people can be bad sometimes. Unfortunately, if you are considered a minority in the area in which you happen to be, and the bad people of your ethnic race become notorious for their bad conduct, people who are not of that ethnic race will resort to the conclusion that it is because they are different from them culturally even though we are all Americans, and will naively stereotype all people of that ethnic race to be suspect. It is delinquent reasoning to categorize peoples conduct by race. This will give them a false sense of superiority and view cultural differences as diversity and not uniqueness.
Some people are sincere but naturally are trapped into this impersonal view of ethnic race other than their own. They can be motivated by fear, such as when the American Japanese were gathered into labor camps because we could not trust them after imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor during WWII. And some people use ethnic race as an opportunity to exercise diversity and unrest because they are purely evil and always will be. In other words – you can’t moralize the devil, and unfortunately, on this side of heaven, justice is not always served.
The Promised Land
6-14-20
We are moral beings with the capacity to know right from wrong, and not everyone wants to do what is right. The slaves in Egypt were freed by God. They appreciated that freedom but most of them did not appreciate Him. The ones that did appreciate God went on to live and followed Him. The others made idols of gold and were slain for their rebellion. So Biblically speaking, there is more to life than freedom and there is more to freedom than life.
The truth is, not everyone wants to worship God. They prefer autonomy and will disturb the peace when necessary in order to stay that way. This is why, I believe, many people have not taken advantage of the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream. Many doors of opportunity were opened for those who are oppressed by racism, and they flourished, while many used it as an excuse to be passive and take advantage of the situation by playing the victim.
There are people who are racist and always will be. So being victimized by it is a legitimate concern. The trick is to recognize the evil motives of genuine racists and put them in their place. But realize that there are “racists” who are ignorant; they have merely been subject to the stereotypes of how people are publicly perceived. They are mostly exploited by the media which uses its power to make it look like all people are a certain way, and there are those who for some reason are not capable of thinking for themselves, they follow the herd mentality of thinking and believing according to the racial culture they were raised in, handed down from past generations, when in truth they desire peace and equality. Jesus would say, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” My grandmother (who was born in 1901 and was not well educated), for no reason, was fearful of “colored” people. When she spent her last years in a nursing home in her 90’s, she had the opportunity to know them personally through the staff workers. I would then hear her talk about how “that nice ‘colored’ person…”
So there were Israelites who did not want to worship God, but wanted to take advantage of His freedom, and there are Black people who were free but did not want to take advantage of their freedom, why? Maybe it’s because deep in their heart they have no incentive to make something out of life, because they inherently know that “The American Dream” is pointless. The world is in a fallen condition and cannot be improved permanently. They do not realize that this world is not their home; they need a true Shepherd to lead them to the real Promised Land, the place where the Egyptian slaves who became free Israelites were not willing to go.
The Core of Racism
6-16-20
Do other countries have issues with racism like America? In what context? Who is racist against who in India, China, Russia, Mexico, or Australia?
In America, it’s mainly the Blacks who are oppressed by the Whites. The Whites came to America uninvited. Because they were modernly civilized, they were able to overcome the Native Indians who were primitively “uncivilized.” If they were the only natives in the land at one time, notice how the different tribes were not all unified in peace. These new
Americans, because they were civilized, and were searching for a land where they could be free from oppression, were able to establish a community of productivity and peace. Anyone opposed to this were considered outlaws, and if the outlaws were of a different race, that could be looked upon today as racism in their eyes, an easy excuse for them to get away with not wanting to conform to unifying livelihood.
If America consisted of all white people, life would still look the same as it does today with the riots and protests, only it would not be in the name of racism, but instead, segregated by the good and the evil, the peacemakers and the disturbers, unifiers and partisans, productive and unproductive, the givers and the takers etc.
If Black people were not in America because of slavery, they would be here because of immigration, with a completely different attitude. Would an African Black person have ever thought “life is not good here in Africa, I think I’ll go to America for a better life?” Their way of life may not have been all peaceful, but it was their unique culture that became disrupted when civilized Europeans came and took advantage of their primitive “uncivilized” culture.
In America, is racism only between Blacks and Whites? In Africa the dominant race is Black, yet they were oppressed because they were not “civilized” like the Whites. Whites and Blacks are successful in America because they earned it. Since the beginning of history there were/are always good people and bad people. Not all Israelites were good, and not all non-Israelites were evil (Rahab, Ruth). During WWII not all Germans were Evil, and not all Jews were good (they betrayed their fellow Jews by joining the Nazi’s as a survival tactic). During the time of Black history in America, there were even Black slave owners.
Now, because of advanced technology, social media can provide us with a biased, unrealistic view of reality. One person’s view can make it seem like everyone has the same view, and mislead those who do not know how to think for themselves. Now, a Black person who is bent on corruption can use his skin color as an excuse to exploit those who are ignorant when a White police officer abuses his power and dishonors the good officers by blatantly murdering a black man for the entire world to see. A corrupt person would do this and it should be protested, and racism should be addressed and corrected among those of the law enforcement who practice it. But not all officers are racist and Blacks are not the only ones who are mistreated this way.
Good Black people will protest peacefully. Bad Black people will take advantage of the situation and promote hatred and separation by pitting one race against another instead of good people against those who are bad, demanding from White people unrealistic, unedifying demands of retribution, and so-called fairness and justice just because they are Black, not because they earned it. But any race, even Whites, can make these demands, not just Black people.
The truth is, there are thugs out there who will always make life hard for you, whether it’s your self-image or your financial status or educational degree, we are always faced with resistance, and it is up to us to be willing to overcome opposition, to overcome evil with good. This is not a perfect world, and as long as Satan is around instigating our self-sufficient fallen nature, we will always be challenged to be responsible to do the right thing.
Racism is just a pitiful, lame excuse to act out one’s self-imposed superiority over another person and using the difference in one’s skin color, the superficial outward appearance, to endorse one’s evil agenda of defining self-worth.
Unity in Diversity
6-18-20
What separates races? Why do we use our ethnic race as an excuse to divide ourselves from one another, causing disunity? What if there were only one ethnic race in existence, what excuse then would we have to cause disunity? If we were discontent or guilty, we would blame it on our physical differences – “it’s their fault because they are old, or young, or skinny, or tall, or blue eyed, or have long hair, etc.”
People who are racist use it as a sad, pathetic, juvenile, degenerate excuse to blame others for the sheer sick pleasure of exercising pride; they are weak and inferior people who can
only find their self-worth by thinking they are superior to others by focusing on outward physical appearances. This is characteristic of our fallen nature (1 Sam. 16:7), which is a mirror of the devil’s nature. The devil enjoys taking advantage of God’s intended purpose of seeing unity in diversity (which can only be acknowledged by looking at our inward sameness, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us) by keeping our focus on the vain, superficial outward physical appearances. Inside our various skin colors and ethnicity we are all the same. The best antidote for diversity is to go by the golden rule: love others as yourself, treat others as you would like to be treated (Mark 12:30-31); that way you have no legitimate excuse to cause division among others, especially when it comes to blaming others. If we can accept our imperfections in light of our fallen nature, we can be forgiving of others as we would like to be forgiven.
The Answer to Racism
6-23-20
Why would God create people of various races if He knew it would cause division and opportunity to take advantage of one another? God’s kingdom is not of this world. The world has become under rulership of the Evil One. All things of God are good. The Evil One uses what was meant for good and uses it for evil.
Although racism is evil, God can use it for good to show humanity how pathetic, degenerate, vain and juvenile it is to judge someone by the color of their skin, because it is, isn’t it? Deep inside we know we are all the same, and we all have the same potential to be good or evil, productive or unproductive, to be a contributor or non-contributor to society.
This is what many people do not know – regardless if you are good or bad, you can never be right in God’s eyes. In order for Him to approve of you and accept you as His child, you have to become righteous. How do you do that? By faith, by believing the righteous act of Christ’s atonement for our sins, making us justified before God our judge. But it is Christ who is righteous; this was His righteous act, not ours.
The righteousness of God in the form of the Holy Spirit can dwell inside of you if you invite Him in, making you righteous, not because of your good works that would give you glory, but because of His finished work on the cross that gives Him all the glory. The desire to
receive glory for yourself is rebellion towards God, which caused us to fall in this sinful condition that required the salvation in the form of our Savior’s death in the first place. Because Jesus was sinless, He was able to be raised from the grave, conquering death, now making the Holy Spirit available to us if we ask.
The evil instigators are using race as an excuse to cause discord in the world, and always will. If we all recognize our sameness – Christ in us, Christians will not participate in racism. They will recognize this as a spiritual war and know that defeating the enemy is accomplished through spiritual weapons: by becoming filled with the Holy Spirit which will change their behavior, by increasing their authority by knowing who is Boss when they pray for their city, and by living throughout the rest of their lives as a light in a dark world.
The Spiritual Side of Slavery
7-27-20
I certainly would not want to be a salve against my own will. We can count on God to punish all injustice in His own time, but for now there is one perceivable benefit for the existence of slavery, and that is to see it as a visual interpretation of the spiritual reality of what all of humanity is in bondage to in our fallen condition. We are all salves to sin (John 8:34; Rom 6:6, 16).
The Prince of Peace
9-1-20
As long as we view the world through the eyes of our fallen nature, we will see it through the eyes of racial ethnicity. The world looks at the outward, so skin color is an obvious difference between you and anyone else. Since the fallen nature is all about self-preservation, self-edification, self-glory, self-defense, etc., how can we achieve our ultimate goal of unity and equality? You can’t moralize the devil. Jesus is called the “Prince of Peace,” God looks at the inward man. There are many people who practice this wisdom of God and can appreciate our different ethnic backgrounds in wonderment of God’s creative creation, but as
long as Satan is the ruler of this world, we can never experience lasting unity. As a certain race will single themselves out for equality and justice, at the same time they are causing disunity from the rest of the world, where they exclude people of other ethnics who also have the same issues with the world.
Is. 9:6 For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Eph. 2:14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation,
Jn. 14:27 Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Racism, Slaves to Sin
9-23-20
Picture this scene of a slave owner whipping the back of his slave relentlessly. What kind of, dare I even consider to call him a “person” but rather a “beast,” would be so audacious as to perform an act that has no apparent effect on their moral conscience, that they would treat another human being as being so inferior to them that they would whip them to the point of near death as if they were mere cattle?
The reaction to this scene from the perspective of natural man is revealed today the same way as it was throughout history. It has never really been able to be resolved, and therefore, it has culminated into the radical retaliation and emotional explosion that we are seeing in recent times.
But what does this scene look like from the perspective of our moral God? The slave owner has reached the epitome of the fallen nature of man, living according to his own self-made standards. The fallen nature is anti-God, so in most cases it is motivated by pride, exaltation of the “self” to greatness and superiority at the cost of evil actions towards others in order to achieve this status. But look how pathetic this is for a slave owner; he has the opportunity to exercise his puny sense of superiority by taking advantage of the vulnerable and
powerless. He is so bent on achieving this false sense of greatness that his moral conscience has become so hardened to the point of treating another human being with heinous, unmerciful, physical abuse, not only keeping them bound in iron chains, but mental and emotional chains. You could definitely say this treatment is characteristic of the devil who is vain with self-serving pride. The chances of this slave owner coming to his senses and repent are slim but not impossible.
The slave will naturally react to this unjust treatment according to his own understanding, which in many ways is in vain, if your motive is to think you can moralize the devil. Doesn’t history testify of this? After all that Martin Luther King and his followers sacrificed for equality, racism, as they call it, still exists today. The failure in accomplishing unity for all people is in our failure to understand the nature of man from a spiritual perspective. You can make as many laws as you like to enforce equality, but you cannot change the heart of man. Only God can do that. From a victimized point of view, a slave may be bound by iron chains; but Christ is the key to unlocking the chains that keep them mentally and emotionally bound if they can recognize that they are free in the Holy Spirit. What the slave owner does not realize is that he is a slave himself, subject to his task master Satan, until he repents and chooses the Lord to be his master. In our fallen condition, it is inevitable that all people, even slaves, are capable of being as degenerate as the slave owner as long as we live according to our flesh, our fallen nature which cannot be improved as history testifies. The only solution for genuine unity is to become one in the Lord Jesus Christ, His living spirit in us transforming our lives into His likeness.
The Word of Life
3-10-21 We are all slaves regardless of our skin color, social or economic status. When the Israelites were enslaved to the Egyptians for four hundred years, what was their key to freedom? God’s divine intervention. In the process of that delivery there was a lot of supernatural phenomenon going on. Yet once the Israelites became physically free from their bondage to the Egyptians, God had to do a great work in their hearts to set them free from Satan and spiritual adultery – love of self more than God. The Israelites who were now physically free were put to death if they chose to reject God (Exod. 32:21-23, 27, 33; 32:21-23; 33:5; 34:12-15; Num. 11:1-3; 14:29-38; Deut. 1:35-37; 4:3-4; 28:62-63). We should not take the revelatory knowledge of God and that of our rebellious fallen nature for granted. The world is not a playground; it is a battlefield and cost the Lord God the sacrifice of His own Son in order to redeem us, to show us that this world is not our home.
Psalm 107:10-11 describes spiritual bondage. Those who were bound in affliction because they rebelled against the words of God can repent. How did He deliver them? Verse 20, He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.
Psalm 107:10-20 Those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
Bound in affliction and irons—
11 Because they rebelled against the words of God,
And despised the counsel of the Most High,
12 Therefore He brought down their heart with labor;
They fell down, and there was none to help.
13 Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He saved them out of their distresses.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
And broke their chains in pieces.
15 Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
16 For He has broken the gates of bronze,
And cut the bars of iron in two.
17 Fools, because of their transgression,
And because of their iniquities, were afflicted.
18 Their soul abhorred all manner of food,
And they drew near to the gates of death.
19 Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He saved them out of their distresses.
20 He sent His word and healed them,
And delivered them from their destructions.
Other Resources
A Mom’s Research (Part 3): Who Are the Real Racists? By Jean Chen
www.theepochtimes.com/a-moms-research-part-3-who-are-the-real-racists_3731981.html
Are the Riots Really About George Floyd? – Burgess Owens on Marxism, Racism/ American Thought Leaders
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOLUEk9cozY
One Race United in Christ – How Justification Destroys Ethnic Division by Julius King
www.desiringgod.org/articles/one-race-united-in-christ
Here is a commentary about the slavery of legalism described in the Bible and how Christians are free:
The Early Pauline Letters by Daniel J. Lewis
Letter to the Churches in Galatia
Christian Freedom (5:1)
For some time now, Paul’s argumentation has focused on the slavery and bondage of legalism and law. He has used a literary technique which might be described as “chaining,” that is, a stringing together of various metaphors and arguments all of which have the common theme of slavery. As such, he traces this slavery in the following way:
1. Scripture (Torah) declares the whole world to be a prisoner of sin (3:22).
2. The law held us as prisoners (we were condemned) before faith came (3:23).
3. The law was a slave-custodian under whose temporary charge we were placed so that we might come to Christ (3:24).
4. Even sons are like slaves until they reach the age of transition determined by the father, and the time of transition, spiritually speaking, was the advent of Christ (4:1-2, 4-5).
5. When we were at the level of immature children, we were slaves to the stoicheia, the basic principles of the world (4:3).
6. Prior to Christian conversion, the Galatians had been slaves to pagan gods(4:8).
7. Now they are being urged to submit to the slavery of Jewish legalism (4:9-10).
8. To do so would be to identify with the slave-wife and slave-child of Abraham, both of which represent the slavery of Jewish legalism (4:22-25).
9. However, just as in the story of Abraham’s family, the slave-wife and slave-son must go; they cannot be heirs together with the free-wife and free-son (4:30-31).
This extensive commentary on the slavery of legalism reaches a crescendo with Paul’s emphatic declaration: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!” Paul gives both an assertion and an exhortation– both a fact and a demand. The assertion is that Christians are truly free, liberated from all the former bondages, categories and legalisms that enslaved them. To be free in Christ means to be liberated from the power of sin, the despair of condemning law, the prejudices of racism, classism and sexism, the bondage of theological immaturity, the demands of social impositions, and the futility of pagan religion. The exhortation– the imperative demand– is that the Galatians must dig in their heels tenaciously to protect this freedom, not allowing themselves to be snared again by the yoke of legalism, regardless of what sort it is. If believers are free in Christ, they must not revert back to slavery!
www.troychapel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/34-Galatians-1-And-2-Thessalonians.pdf