One of the books I bought at GA this year was Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology. It is the manuscripts from the Together for the Gospel conference of the same name. I started it back in September, but other projects have been distracting me from reading it quickly.
The other day I read Thabiti Anyabwile’s Bearing the Image. He didn’t really spend time examining the nature of the image of God in which we were made. He focused on our unity in Adam, in Christ, in the church and in glory. But what he really focused upon was the issue of race. Or should I say the pseudo-issue.
In our culture we make much of the issue of race. Everything seems to be about race these days (yes, an overstatement). But Thabiti makes an important point- in the Bible there is only one race. We are all descended from Adam, through Noah. Obviously secular people will deny this. But Christians often neglect this. We end up confusing race with ethnicity and culture.
We are quick to notice the obvious distinctions between groups of people. You can immediately tell a white person from an Asian from a black person. It would be erroneous to think that all Asian people are the same. There are ethnic and cultural differences between people of the same skin color. And there can be cultural similarities between people of different skin colors.
We tend to accentuate the differences while neglecting the one big common denominator: Noah. We are of the same race, not different races. We are all from the human race, despite our differences in color, history and culture. We may be ethnically different, but we are certainly of the same race.
“One way that race and ethnicity differ is that ethnicity is not rooted in biology as race theory historically has been.”
The point he makes is that our differences are not rooted in biology, our genes. Clearly, there are some pre-dispositions to different diseases and disorders. But our musical preferences are rooted in ethnicity and culture, not race/biology. How we speak or act is rooted in ethnicity and culture, not race/biology.
What some erroneously do, however, is make it about race/biology. Southern slave owners did this. And many today do this to inflame ethnic differences. They turn an assessment on a cultural or ethnic issue into one of biology where you dare not tread. To criticize country music is not the same as attacking white people. Caucasians are not gentically pre-disposed to like country music (or I missed that gene). It is fair to applaud the true, good and beautiful found there, and to criticize the false, evil and ugly there.
“It becomes volatile because most people experience a critique of culture and values as a comment against them, against their person. If we root culture, worldview, and ideas in biology, race instantaneously becomes ad hominem.”
Racists do this- making it all about biology. They can’t separate ethnicity and culture from their views of race. So they attack people groups instead of cultural expressions and values. The perceive an attack on them when it is merely an attack on cultural expressions. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing grapples with some of this, and confuses some of this.
“If ‘race as biology’ is something that we assume to be real and that cannot change, then any comment on things deeply or meaningfully associated with race explodes in personal offense and animus.”
Sadly, we see this extending beyond “race” issues. I missed the major headlines declaring the discovery of the “gay gene”. There is no proof, thus far, that homosexuality is genetic (though there may be a disposition toward it). In fact the American College of Pediatricians recently released a statement rejecting the notion that people are born gay, and warning of the dangers of acting like they are.
However, we see this false assumption being played out in public discourse now. Recently White House adviser Valerie Jarrett called homosexuality a lifestyle choice (which she was NOT condemning). Gay rights bloggers went nuts over this ‘obnoxious phrase’. They acted, and spoke, as if she were instructed by those crazy right wing religious zealots. Her thinking, is apparently dangerous. She apologized for offending people, and bowed before the notion of “born gay” despite the caution of the medical and scientific community the secularists typically pay homage to.
Some have turned homosexuality into a biological issue which radically alters the dynamics of the discussion. A discussion of values is now perceived as an attack on persons (never mind they attack others in their outrage).
If you are “born gay” or “born straight” you are fated by genetics to a particular sexual orientation. There is now no morality in how one uses their sexuality (or if there is, it is murky). But ironically, they also lack choice and “free will”, some of the ideological cornerstones of the progressive movement. They must also deny that not all genes are good genes. But that is a different topic.
When we make too much of biology, we make too little of people’s decisions, choices and actions. When we make too much of biology, we lump people together unjustly. When we make too much of biology, we find offense far too quickly. In other words, we become utterly irrational.
As Thabiti notes, this undermines the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. We begin to resist what God does in reconciling ethnic groups or in forgiving people caught in various cultural sins. Ultimately we find the gospel undermined because biology is more important, more powerful than the gospel. His chapter in the book was quite thought provoking for me. Sadly, I’ve seen little about it in the blogosphere (I could be looking in all the wrong places).
Cavman Considers 
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