Race & Christianity & The West

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/jetbrane?v=wall&story_fbid=117193671635972

If you can access the thread above you can read an ongoing conversation on race, Christianity & the West.

The thread was kicked off by my comment that,

“The issue of race is and always has been a red herring. Even when there were problems that needed addressed that was never the concern of many of the people who were bitching & carping about race. The concern was (and is) to use race as a wedge issue to overthrow Western civilization in favor of humanistic Utopian arrangements – arrangements that, ironically enough, lead to far more oppression tyranny & bondage then the worst slavery that the West has ever known. Down w/ the race pimps.”

I posted this comment immediately after reading the below article by Dr. Thomas Sowell which confirms much of what I have learned about the issues of Race in the West through my own independent studies.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/27/filtering_history_105321.html

It reveals how explosive the issue of race remains when such a simple statement in the blockquote above can cause people to come unglued. Let’s examine sentence by sentence that blockquote comment.

Sentence #1 — The issue of race is a red herring.

Red herring is defined as any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue. The issue of race is and always has been a red herring because the main issue that race is diverting from has been the desire of humanists to overthrow Christian culture in order to establish egalitarian Utopian social orders. (Which I say in the third sentence.)

Sentence #2a – 3 — I concede that there have been racial problems that needed addressed. There was no attempt to suggest that racial grievances were completely imaginary.

Sentence #2b – 3 — I insisted that many people who were fanning the flames of racial problems that needed to be addressed were more concerned with other issues besides the racial problems. Were I to elaborate on that I would say humanists were using minorities to achieve a egalitarian Nirvana that would mean more misery for all races if achieved, or alternately humanists were using minorities in order to keep themselves in power or to enrich themselves.

Sentence #4 — I insisted that we should suppress those who fan the flames of race in order to enrich themselves.

Now, for the life of me, I am absolutely floored that any of this would be in the slightest controversial.

However it was. Indeed, it was so controversial that it was suggested that my comments displayed a incredible lack of intelligence.

The following is the latest objection to what I have written.

“As someone who generally agrees with your point, I think you need to consider the delivery of the truth to the audience from the hearer’s (Andy’s) perspective.”

The problem Ricardo is that it is Andy’s perspective that is all messed up. The fact that he can go all alarmist over four such non-controversial sentences indicates that the very thing that needs to be hammered is the thing that you say I need to consider. It is precisely because I am considering it that I am hammering it.

“One of things I think important in the discussion of cultures and civilization is to have the attitude that Joshua had in Joshua 5:13-15. The issue isn’t whether Western Civilization (WC) or any of the African cultures is better, but whether does that culture or civilization reverence the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and his Law-Word throughout every aspect of the culture.”

I agree completely w/ the Joshua passage. The issue isn’t whether or not God is on our side but whether we are on God’s side. But I’m not sure you can use the passage to suggest that cultures can’t be adjudicated as “better or worse.”

Clearly Western culture is better than African cultures only because Western culture was informed in a significant degree by Christianity while African cultures on a large scales have not been. (Remember culture is defined as theology made incarnate.) Now obviously this is not to say that Western civilization has been perfect. It manifestly has not been. However, it is to say that Western Civilization, built largely by Christian people who, in God’s mysterious providence and due only to his sovereign choice, were White, has been superior to cultures built in Africa, the Orient, South America, and any number of other locations you would like to mention. Now, the superiority of Western culture lies not in the melanin level in the people who were saved by grace alone, but it lay in the Christianity that animated the people who were saved by grace alone. It is only God who causes one man to differ from another, and why he does it for one man and not another, or for one people and not another is a mystery that remains locked in His providence.

To deny that Christianity builds superior cultures as compared to other cultures is to deny that Christianity is a superior religion when compared to other religions which is to deny that Jesus Christ is a superior God to all the competing gods. The whole idea that all cultures are equal is a treasonous denial of Jesus Christ.

Now this superiority is a superiority unto mission and service. Christian cultures are to be a servant and a beacon to the nations bringing the peoples Jesus Christ in all of His saving offices with the prayerful hope that God will grant Reformation to other inferior cultures that they may know Jesus Christ and experience the culture of life that only Christianity can bring.

Now, what is happening today is that Western civilization is doing all it can to strip it of its Christian influence. Part of the means by which that is happening is by the work of the white Christ haters in introducing race as a wedge issue. The white Christ haters fan the animosities of minorities in order to overturn the hateful remains of the Christian social order. The white men who are Christ haters convince minorities that Biblical Christianity accounts for their misery when in point of fact what accounts for their misery is God’s cursing upon them as a people for having refusing to pledge allegiance, as a people, to the Lord Christ. What accounts for their misery is that God has turned them over to their sins (Romans 1). This cursing of God and this turning over to sins is the same thing that is happening now to the euro-Americans as they seek to flush their Christian influence. If the West goes down, the result will not be life for those white men who are Christ haters w/ their Utopian dreams and their minority shock troops and their pervert shock troops who are currently being manipulated by the white Christ haters as the instrumental means in the tearing of the West down but it will be death for all.

The way that men, regardless of their ethnicity or race will be blessed, is for them to turn to Jesus Christ and Kiss the Son. Only when that is done will peoples who bow to Christ build cultures of life, beauty and goodness.

“In light of this I judge WC in its epochs. The Kingdom of God is much bigger than WC, nor is it a given that WC will always be an expression of Christian civilization.”

I agree 100% that the Kingdom of God is much bigger then Western Civilization. Indeed, it is so big that having encompassed the whole world it will encompass the whole world.

“WC does not automatically command my allegiance, only Christ’s Kingdom does — and at any particular time a culture may not be under its influence, or may be an ally or enemy of that kingdom. In my judgment WC is today a committed enemy and many of its representative cultures and nation-states are full participants in the attempted suppression, corruption, and overthrow of Christ’s Kingdom in the earth.”

I agree again. Western Civilization is largely anti-Christ. However, the only place that you can still find a remnant of Christian culture on a civilizational level is in the West. The West is seeking to destroy the Kingdom of God but only in the West can you yet find the memory of Christian culture and so the means to destroy the elements of the West that is anti-Christ. Part of what it means to destroy the elements of anti-Christ in the West is to destroy political correctness and multiculturalism that informs the narrative and worldview of so many minorities today.

“That being said I think your original statement was overly broad. Any discussion about what folks today call “race” isn’t always “bitching and carping”, nor evaluating the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its impact on millions of Africans over generations by the various laws and mores of WC always about the “overthrow Western civilization in favor of humanistic Utopian arrangements”.

I think you are wrong about my original statement being overly broad but having already examined that original statement above I will not repeat myself.

How can anybody deny the awfulness of those matters you mention? Nobody denies it. What is denied is that the pulling down of the West that many minorities are pursuing will lead to deeds visited upon them that will make those deeds you mention look like nothing in comparison. If the white men who are Christ haters are successful in erasing all the memories of what made Western Civilization what it was in its best expression the people who will suffer the most will be the minorities that are being used by the white men who are Christ haters to pull the what remains of the West down.

Secondly, you did not read what I wrote. I didn’t say that any discussion on race was always about bitching and carping. I said,

“Even when there were problems that needed addressed that was never the concern of many of the people who were bitching & carping about race.”

Finally, I really think you need to re-read that Sowell piece I linked.

“In my series on Slavery and the Civil War on YouTube I attempt to use a theonomic philosophy of history to evaluate these subjects with a challenge to the class to see the Great Commission (especially that part about discipling the nations in the Word of God) to bring the healing that America desperately needs for the glory of God and the restoration of Christ’s rule in our land. I contend that only when the people of the today’s WC are willing to pray as Daniel did in Daniel 9 will we see change for God’s glory.”

Sounds good. I will try to look up your lectures and listen to them.

Perhaps Andy (and our fellow brothers and sisters who grew up in another culture) would more easily receive the truth you’re trying to communicate if you become a little more acquainted with our world and speak with that understanding close at hand.”

That sounds suspiciously like those, “Its a Black thing … You wouldn’t understand,” T-shirts that were all the rage 10 years ago.

1.) Having lived in this world for 50 years and having made a habit of continually studying it from as many different angles as one can possibly do in 50 short years I would say that, on the whole, I understand it — both the version that is kept from the children and the version that is being made into a movie — as well as the elites and those who the elites are feeding their dog food account of World History.

2.) It is precisely because I’ve looked behind the curtain where the great Oz is sitting that I don’t buy what is sold as “being rightly acquainted” with the subject matter. It’s all BS Ricardo. The other world of which you speak and which you intimate that you live in is a world that is pinioned on the smoke and mirrors of Political correctness, and Marxist multiculturalism. The people who live in that world will only be set free from it when they are wiling to embrace that it is all BS and turn their back on it.

3.) It is curious that I have to ask why you would assume that I am not acquainted w/ your world. How do you know whether or not I’ve spent time in Zimbabwe doing Mission work? How do you know whether or not I’ve spent time doing inner city missions? How do you know whether or not my wife spent time in the Ivory Coast doing missions work. How do you know whether or not my Dad worked for Martin Luther King? How do you know whether or not Spike Lee is my cousin? You know virtually nothing about me, so for you to assume that I am not acquainted w/ your world is a HUGE presumption. It may be the case (and I assure you that it is) that I am very familiar w/ it and have simply rejected it for being the poison that it is.

4.) It is my concern for Black folks that has me speaking as I am speaking. Only a foul hatred would countenance the current narrative that informs most of the Black community’s worldview. (I say most because the black community consistently votes in the 90 percentile upwards for candidates who espouse various expressions of cultural Marxism.

A cynic would look at your assumption that I am not familiar w/ your world as just a means to cavalierly dismiss my arguments because I’m not “black enough,” to have an opinion. (Whatever that means.)

Along w/ Andy, you’re one of the good guys Ricardo, but even the good guys can get things wrong.

Now, why do I spend so much time on such an issue. I do so because I am convinced that Gospel will not successfully go forward until the anti-Biblical Christianity narrative of the Cultural Marxists is strangled to death. The Cultural Marxists find their greatest success in resisting or bastardizing Christianity by pointing at Christian influenced Western civilization and preaching that Christian influenced Western civilization is the reason that the minority community has been kept down. It is just not true that Christian civilization keeps minorities down, and it is also not true that Cultural Marxists civilizations will lift minorities up. This lie needs to be ended.