The article below was sent to me by one of my non-caucasian friends who lives in another country who is a kinist. (Yes, I have many kinist friends who are not white. That’s a secret we racists try not to let others know.) [That’s a joke for the humor impaired].
In this article, Perry Koshy looks at what the Image of God means in its fullest ramifications. Now, remember this man would be considered “black” were he to move to America. So, don’t get mad at white people for what my “black” friend and brother has to say.
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The Image of God does not exist in a vacuum but within the context of the social order created by the Lord, as expressed in the family, church, and nation.
As seen continually throughout Scripture, God’s covenant with individual men is never contracted in the isolation of their personal relationship but rather in terms of their family and nation.
How God covenants with man reveals the essential nature of the Imago Dei. And what we see is that the Image of God in man does not exist without both immediate and extended kindred and blood-tie ramifications.
The current evangelical focus on the individual aspect of the Image of God above all else and without reference to the familial and ethnic links intrinsic to God’s Image is ultimately to dehumanize all men.
The evangelical church’s break with the numerous Divine laws governing man’s relationship and responsibilities with his kindred, both immediately familial and ethnically, is to declare a fundamental change in the once-for-all-created Image of God in mankind. A change in God’s law, as opposed to the fulfillment of foreshadowing ceremonies in Christ, is to suggest an essential shift not only in God’s character but in man himself as a reflection of God. But Scripture declares the very opposite. God’s Law is unchanging and therefore the structure of Christian social order remains the same.
A man’s personal relationship with God is predicated upon and subsists only within his relationship with his kindred and nation.
The example of Achan in the book of Joshua aptly drives home this point. Achan’s personal sin, with his family’s complicity, had national consequences.
The commonality amongst all three abstract institutions was the grounding in a shared blood and kinship.
Apostatized Western Christianity seeks to divorce individual men from the institutional continuum of God’s Image as expressed in their particular families and nations (i.e. ethnicity) and make them interchangeable among families and nations by insisting that race is merely an artificial construct.
This is a rebellion against the specificity and distinction of the Imago Dei as expressed amongst the diverse kindreds and races of mankind. If God is displeased at hybrids among animals, how much more is He displeased at the casual dismissal and uncoupling from the distinctions among races He sovereignly ordained?
To insist that the elect are redeemed in such a way as to remove all boundaries of race and kindred in terms of marital union and migration patterns is to remove them from the responsibility of operating in terms of their own family and race. And as we have seen, the only covenant God enacts with men is one in which their own family and nation are included in their responsibility. This renders men impotent in their service to the Lord because they have thrown off the yoke of the only social structure in which it is ordained to serve Him! Having erased the continuum of identity from man to nation, individuals are left meaningless. To transcend ethnic and familial identity is to transcend the specificity of being human but such a thing is impossible. The life of men is not lived in the absolutized abstraction of generalities but in the clear delineation of blood ties.
Moreover, and this is amply proven in the terrifying dysfunction of both Western families and nations, to misunderstand the identity-defining nature of family and nation is to misunderstand the nature of the individual – for all three form an unbreakable circle of God-ordained existence.
And if the Church does not properly understand mankind and the Biblical social order that defines God’s Image, the Church is incapable of preaching an effectual salvation.
What the Church fails to grasp is that salvation to an individual is the budding establishment of God’s covenant with that person’s specific family and people group. This is the model set forth by Adamic, Noahic, and Abrahamic covenants and is reaffirmed continuously throughout Scripture.
To allow intermarriage amongst distinct races or ethnic groups is to disrupt the blood ties that form the basis for God’s covenant and social order in which an individual operates. It is the denial and rejection of the Lord’s sovereign bonds of kindred identity and creates confusion between the different races covenantal relationships artificially joined together.
Interracial marriage is guilty of the sin of presumption. It presumes that individuals, coming from distinct nations differing greatly in the specifics of God’s unique relationship with each people, will receive God’s blessing as they draw together two separate histories and identities, families, and nations into a union of unlike realities.
As a closing note, to address those who would point to exceptions:
The success of some mixed-race marriages and individuals no more proves the general wisdom of such exceptions anymore than surviving cancer proves the goodness of having it in the first place.
Men and women may very well find happiness in new partners after divorce but that hardly makes divorce something to be sought out as a normal practice. Even when there is legitimate cause and the innocent spouse is able to restore a godly order in his or her life, there are still real consequences attendant to the sin/crime that caused it.
Interracial marriages are much the same. Success is possible but there are still inescapable realities to the loss of kindred and racial identity that the offspring will suffer, not to mention a host of other variables.
Excellent! …. Just excellent!