Racial Degradations

It’s unanimous.  In light of the disputed shootings of blacks by police, caught on video and debated on social media, combined with the subsequent protests and finally the retributive police assassinations, race relations are worse now than they have been in a long time.  In light of that sharp decline, I thought, “race degradations”.  But just as I thought I might be coining my own clever term for the current lack of ebony and ivory harmony, I came to realize that I wasn’t the first to use those words together.

Flip the two words around and you get: “Degraded Race” which happens to be a term they used a lot in Early America.  Here’s someone editorializing in a local newspaper about the use of the phrase “Degraded Race”:

“Our sensibilities are often offended by the above, too frequent and misapplied phrase.  Nothing is more common than for the minister, the lawyer, the demagogue and the philanthropist, when speaking of colored people, to say, ‘Degraded race’ – ‘Degraded Nation’.  God has made but one race of men, and all Americans within the United Sates both white and colored, constitute one nation.  The degradation of any particular part of whom, is rather relative than real, virtue, in the sight of God, exalts – its absence degrades and debases.  When we maintain a conscience void of offense, toward God and toward man; we call no one ‘master’, save the adorable Jesus.”

That was written in on October 27, 1838.  About 30 years before the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.  And what it shows is that Christians have always had at their fingertips vast spiritual and intellectual resources to combat the insidious evil of racism. 

•  Which is why such abolitionist editorials were written, mostly by Christians. 
• Which is why English and American evangelicals were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement.
• Which is why just 5 years before this little paragraph was printed, William Wilberforce had already seen the enactment of his Emancipation Act into law in England. 

3 days later, after his lifelong struggle against the racist ideology aback of slavery ended, Wilberforce died.  The impulse for his crusade?  In his own words:

"In the Scripture, no national crime is condemned so frequently and few so strongly as oppression and cruelty, and the not using our best endeavors to deliver our fellow-creatures from them." – William Wilberforce

“In the Scripture”.  Scripture and the Gospel it reveals, were his inspiration and impulse.  Yes, there has never been a greater defeater for racism than the Bible.  Say that again, slowly and repeatedly, until like a cleansing shower, the thought washes you clean of these slanders:  “Christians were spurred by the Bible to sustain slavery”, “Christians are encouraged to be racists by the Bible.”

Whatever biblical arguments the slave traders may have used, anyone can see (even then) that they were very bad exegetes (See my blog about the Bible and slavery here).  For they did what bad bible students always do:  Import into the text your own desires and prejudices.  

Of course this is true, since they completely ignored the most obvious truth revealed in the Bible about race, namely that we are all long lost cousins.  Literally!  Not figuratively, not esoterically, not in a Hallmark-gift-card kind of way, but actually and genetically related.

Besides the slavers, early biologists also ignored this.  Many, like Agassiz, maintained that God must have created the races separately many others said they evolved separately.  Some, like Darwin used the term often, “degraded races” and (while himself an abolitionist) thought blacks less evolved.  Meanwhile, the Bible’s narrative boringly remained unchanged by these ‘modern’ sentiments:

Acts 17:26-27 “From one man He has made every nation of men to live all over the earth…”

 The Bible said it first: there is only one race, the Human Race.  It took 60 more years of scientific progress to reveal that the human race is so young, and so related, that outside your immediate family, you are just as likely to find a genetic match for an organ donor in India as in Indiana.  We interbred easily.  We are all – shock! – the same species!

How could you read the bible and miss the implications of the narratives of Adam and Noah?  Namely, the brotherhood of all human beings?  The fundamental equality of our special, Image-Bearing person-hood before God?  The answer is pride and greed, of course.  But let’s not suppose the slavers missed it because it was too obscure, or not repeated or clear enough. 

Right from Israel’s inception the people of God are told to welcome the ethnic outsider because of the golden rule:

 Ex 23:9 “You must not oppress a foreign resident; you yourselves know how it feels to be a foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.”

 And by the time the gospel of Jesus begins to be preached to “every nation under heaven” the multi-ethnic call of racial unity under the grace of Jesus is a veritable trumpet blast in scripture after scripture:

Col 3:11 “Here [in the Church] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”

 Gal 3:28-29 “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

 Eph 2:11-19 “For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. …so that He might create in Himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace.”

Oh, the beauty of this vision!  The Church is the answer to racism, for in the Church, by means of Christ’s sacrifice, he tears down dividing walls of racial hostility.  Your ethnic pride and looks may remain, but your old in-group loyalty dissolves in baptism waters, replaced with your new name. “Here” we are His family.

In Christ, I learn to see a person, not through the lenses of historical divisions, broad abuses against my “kind” or ridiculous physical or ethnic stereotypes, but rather as a potential member of my redeemed family.

In Christ, we learn to judge a man, as MLK instructed, “By the content of her character, not the color of her skin.”  The 1837 Blogger said as much, “virtue, in the sight of God, exalts – its absence degrades and debases”.  Notice degradation is still possible.  But what degrades me, he claims, is not my ethnicity, not the amount of melanin in my skin, nor my cultural baggage – it’s the lack of virtue in my life.

When you look at the recent racial disharmony in America, no one is saying the most obvious thing.  It comes back to a lack of virtue.  Our country is having a crisis of character before it's having a race crisis.  If there are “bad shoots” by policemen, caught on video, and this is proved by due process, what was aback such tragedy?  Maybe fear, maybe lack of good training, but almost certainly, it was a lack of virtue.  A lack of character.  A lack of courage or humility.  Fear.  Or worse, a seething hatred built on prejudice.  What else would cause you to shoot an unarmed man running away from you?

If suspects are increasingly challenging authority, resisting arrest, what’s behind that?  It might be fear of abuse, or the fight or flight instinct, but probably it starts with a lack of virtue.  A lack of humility.  A lack of law abiding goodness or penitent submissiveness when caught.  What else would cause you to fight an officer for his weapon, discharge it in his vehicle, try to run away and then charge him?

With virtue (character content) in mind and not race, it’s good to remember that we don’t waste our time chasing boogeymen, non-specific charges against persons or the culture or groups.  If there’s a racist cop for example, we prove it first, and refuse to justify and let justice run its course.  If there’s an unequally applied law, we name the specific law, and agitate for reform.  Painting with a bigger brush than that (all cops are racist, all laws are racist), is inherently as prejudiced as the very thing we’re fighting.

Maybe more importantly for small people like us, is not about changing national debates.  It’s about showing off our Gospel inclusiveness by engaging in regular conversations across racial lines, asking questions, sharing life, seeking to understand; and about challenging the not so subtle racism of peers and family members, both the “you know how those people are” racism, and the “one race is inherently more racist” racism.

Here’s how this translates for me:  In private relationships, everyone, no matter your race, is a potential brother in my spiritual family and so I’m your friend, automatically.  I may not “get” you, you may not “get” me – I don’t care.  You’re a son of Adam, you bear Imago Dei – you are a holy thing, and virtue exalts you.  And the requirements of virtue are written in hard Stone, not in soft skin or the amount of melanin it contains.

So in a world of increasing racial degradation, I’ve decided that only the absence of virtue degrades, and only in individuals, myself or others – there are no “degraded races” - for the Bible tells me so.

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And another thing....

It's not unusual to finish a sermon and feel like you didn't get to say everything you wanted, or at least feel like you didn't say it right. Last weekend was no exception for me. I preached on the topic of Humility; how it is the antidote to a culture which espouses control and power as the way to happiness.

I tried to convey the insidious, wide-spread nature of control and arrogance in today's world but I didn't feel like I caught it just right; I "topped" the ball; it was just a little "out of tune"; it needed a "little more salt"...

But this morning as I walked to work it hit me - well, ALMOST hit me.

My commute covers 2.5 miles along Grove Street (a busy thoroughfare in Marysville). As I contemplated my failure to convey the danger of self-importance last weekend, I began counting the number of drivers passing me who were texting (or otherwise engaged with a "device"). I was surprised and troubled when the number passed 10. I was really bothered when on at least three occasions, the drivers were weaving well into the bike lanes that I often occupy on the days I don't walk, and two of these incidents happened inside a school zone while elementary school students were arriving for class.

It's worth noting that texting and driving is illegal in Washington State - but these drivers (some of them behind the wheel of mini-vans with kids on board) did not believe the law applied to them.

This is a razor sharp example of the lack of humility we have come to expect as normal in society and the illustration I wish I had used last weekend.

I do not believe for a minute that a person who caused a fatal accident while texting and driving MEANT to do so. In fact, we often rhetorically ask, "What were they THINKING!?"

The fact is, they were probably not thinking at all, or at least something like:

"I'm a really good driver - this law is for people who can't drive"
"Just this once."
"It could never happen to me."
'I'll be extra careful."
"I can handle it."

The irony: These are exactly the same thoughts of the people who didn't kill anyone on Grove Street this morning.

Exactly.
The.
Same.

Exact same thought process. Exact same behavior. Just no fatalities today. Why the different outcomes? I don't know - but it wasn't a difference in the arrogance of the drivers.

The neglectful death of another human being begins with hubris like this. This "the rules don't apply to me" thinking has lead to everything from grocery stores having to pay someone to return lazy patron's shopping carts, to children dying of neglect and abuse at the hands of petulant parents.

Humility reminds us that we are not immune. We are unique, and God has a unique purpose for each of us - but we are in fact not "special" and in charge of creating our own destiny. You can't be anything you want to be (including a better driver than you actually are) and you are not in control...

...ask the bicyclist in the hospital.