Doug Wilson (DW) writes;
Uniquely Sinful?
But I still need to pick up on something Bret says at the end of that previous quote. I believe that the temptations to animosity and vainglory are universally human because all humans are fallen, bent, and sinful, and this is one of the common areas where it is on display. I don’t believe that whites or blacks or Jews have an inside corner on this sin. Not at all.
Bret responds,
Who could ever deny this observation? However, allow me to contend that if ethnic animosity and vainglory can be besetting sins for all peoples so it can be the case that that an opposite sin — yet equally heinous sin — can be embraced by a people. Let us call that opposite sin “Suicidal altruism.” This sin would be the sin of accepting and carrying false guilt piled on a people via various enemy cultural outlets. It is the sin whereby a people find virtue in embracing false guilt and owning the all the wrongs done in the world to the point of becoming the world’s spittoon.
Maybe an example will suffice. I remember some years ago reading a story of a WOKE young woman who went to Haiti. Once there all she could see was the white man’s oppressions. She wrote about it freely. One evening she was raped by a gang of Haitians and her response was to blame her rape on the white man who had oppressed those poor Haitian rapists to the point that they felt they needed to get revenge by raping a white woman. Voila… Suicidal altruism.
I’m all for tamping down and rebuking the sin of ethnic animosity and vaingloriousness. Will DW join me in tamping down and rebuking the sin of suicidal altruism?
DW writes,
Again, the sins associated with all this are ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory. The former is something we here in Moscow hate with the heat of a thousand suns. The latter is something we hate with the heat of 25 suns. The former diabolical and filled with spite and envy. The latter is filled with the bumfuzzledness of human blundering and stupidity, which on a good day can be somewhat endearing. Kind of like watching a Dufflepud Superiority Rally, where there is so much cringy fremdschamen material on display that one does not know where to look, and it is so bad that a sort of splendor creeps into it. So on the more entertaining days, I simply disapprove with the heat of a tanning booth set at medium high down at the Summer Solstice Tanning Salon.
Bret responds,
I suppose it is easier to have all this hatred for ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory when one lives in Whiteaho (Idaho) where the ethnic breakdown is White 82.9 %, Hispanic 11.9%, Black 0,6%, Asian 1.3%, Mixed 2.0%, Other 1.2%. This is not to excuse ethnic animosity and ethnic vainglory where it exists. It is to say it is easier to have white hot sun hatred for those sins when those sins are not going to be a danger of falling into because the opportunity for them to come into play just doesn’t exist as much because of demographics.
DW writes,
Yes. All of these (various races of) kinists are skinists. In my world, nobody gets a free pass to sin because they are sinning on behalf of a certain color swatch they got at Benjamin Moore. But they are skinists because this is a common human failing. Every ethnic group tends to think that they are the center of the world, and are regularly astonished at any form of cosmopolitanism. And there are two basic forms of cosmopolitanism. There is the form brought about by merchants, harbors, international traffic, supply chains, and foreign exchange students. This can be benign, but it often drifts into the supercilious attitude currently on display with our globalist elites, noses in the air, jetting off to Davos to save the planet again. That’s one kind. The other kind is a gospel cosmopolitanism, the kind established by missionaries, church planters, and Bible societies.
Bret responds,
1.) Keep in mind that we have not established, DW’s protestations to the contrary, that Kinism = skinism. Doug is just wrong here equating his skinism with the kinists — regardless of their race.
2.) I’ve read Roland Allen who is perhaps one of the greatest 20th century Missionaries and I can promise you that Roland Allen didn’t advocate gospel cosmopolitanism.
3.) Perhaps I need more of a definition from DW on just exactly what “Gospel Cosmopolitanism” is in his world. However, in my world I can’t imagine more of a contradiction occurring then what occurs when those two words are slammed together.
DW writes,
A biblical doctrine of sin and depravity would protect us from a lot of this foolishness. When I read of certain atrocious passages in the Talmud (and there are some), I don’t think of the unique perfidy of Jews. Rather I take it as just one more entry in Paul’s Romans 2 argument that the Jews are lost sinners, just like everybody else. When I read of the appalling treatment that Americans applied to certain Indian tribes, I don’t blame whiteness, or America, or the Founders. I reflect on the fact that Americans are descended from Adam, and have behaved exactly like that on more than a few occasions. When I think of the African kings who enslaved other Africans and took them down to the coast in order to sell them off to the slavers, I don’t attribute this to the blackness of their skin, but rather to the blackness of their hearts.
BLM writes,
1.) One has to concede immediately that all sin comes from our sin nature and that regardless of race. However, that is not to say that particular sins can’t be attached to particular peoples as St. Paul notes in the book of Titus. Sure, the sins of the Cretans were because they, like non-Cretans, were sons of Adam. However, that the Cretans were sons of Adam along with non-Cretans didn’t mean that they had a unique flora to their sin set.
2.) If DW can read the Talmud without at least wondering about the unique perfidy of the Jews then something is wrong. Has DW read John’s Gospel?
3.) Does DW ever read about the appalling treatment by the Indians upon those of European descent. All of this comes across as just more WOKE-ianity.
Allow me to emphasize again that I hold that white people apart from Christ are dead in their trespasses and sins. I hold we have the problem with WOKE-ianity precisely because the white people of the West are apostate, having abandoned the God who has been so generous to the in blessing them. I hold that if White people continue on the trajectory they are on Sodom will seem like a vacation paradise. I affirm that white people are not made of better dirt than non-white people.
I go out of my way to affirm all this so DW won’t call me a skinist or accuse me of having ethnic animosity or ethnic vainglory.