Category: Ethnic considerations

Scary Kinism Defined & Examples Given — Pt. I

In this series planned for six entries, I am going to take something written by Mr. Mickey Henry on defining and giving examples of Kinism in action and provide some extra commentary.

  • Kinism recognizes that a basic harmony exists between the mind and the body, the spirit, and the flesh. 

    This is merely the Kinist recognizing that men have a modified unichotomous nature where though we can make distinctions between body and soul and the spirit and the flesh that the divorcing of mind from body and spirit from flesh is an unnatural occurrence. Men are at one and the same time an embodied soul and a soulful body. This means that kinists believe that racial and ethnic distinctions that are found in corporeal bodies mean distinctions in incorporeal souls. Because there is a basic harmony that exists between the mind and the body, the spirit, and the flesh, Kinists believe that that harmony of interests should be recognized and provided for in the social order. Quite clearly, while all men are ontologically equal, equal before God’s law, and equal in having a sinful nature, not all men are the same as seen in the differences that God has ordained for us in our corporeal existences.

  • That conversion often happens, but that the ordinary means by which the Church militant extends itself is through covenantal succession from Christian parents to
    covenant children.     

    Kinists have the family at the center of their thinking. We believe in God’s covenantal faithfulness and that God is normatively pleased to call us to Himself in our generations.  Kinists believe that it is the family and not the individual that is the primary building block for social order. This puts kinists at severe odds with all those who hold to the enlightenment project that championed what is called the social contract theory, based as it is on the sovereign individual.

  • That men are not born blank slates but inherit physical and mental characteristics, predilections, weaknesses, and strengths from their biological parents. That neither nature nor nurture is deterministic of behavior, but that both are highly influential. 

    The modern tendency is to absolutize nurture so as to believe that man is merely the sum of his experiences undergone in his environment. Kinists do not believe this understanding and believe instead that nature (genetics) has a role to play as well. Kinists are neither Skinnerians who believe if we could control a man’s environment we could make a man in the fashion we desired nor are Kinists genetic absolutists believing that man is merely the sum of his genes and no more. Kinists do not believe that if we could control all the genetic information we could make a man in the fashion we desired.  Kinists, instead believe that by God’s sovereign appointment nurture and nature perform a dance in every human being so that in the end it is God alone who are making the people He desires.

    Kinists also assert that as well as nurture and nature that what a man thinketh in His heart (believes) is formative for what kind of a man that a man will be. As such we see a supernatural element in what constitutes man that not even the combination of nurture and nature can fully explain.

  • That race is Biblically defined as common patrilineal descent. That, in consequence, race is the sum total of all the attributes a man inherits from his ancestors that he holds in common with his relatives, both near and distant.

    The word race comes from the Latin “radix” and “radius” having the same original. According to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary the word “race” in this sense means;

    1. The lineage of a family, or continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock. A race is the series of descendants indefinitely.

    Clearly, substantially different physical and mental characteristics, predilections, weaknesses, and strengths as coming from different original biological parents yield different races.

    Abraham Kuyper was getting at this point when he wrote;

    “The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them, and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

    Now, this is not something special for the Javanese but stems from a general rule. The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood, and soul, and they do not always remain the same, but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application, and confession must be different, as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races, countries, and traditions cannot be blind to the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”……

    Abraham Kuyper:
    Common Grace (1902–1905)

McAtee Contra Lusk’s Gnosticism

I am examing this article. I want people to be able to access it so they don’t have to take my word for what the article says. Secondly, I will not be looking at the entire article and so people can access this link to make sure I’m not taking matters out of context.

https://pastor.trinity-pres.net/blog/14-culture/93-is-the-bible-color-blind?fbclid=IwAR14TDcKvxtuBGP9lEaA4O7_itrPWlv76GO0rFPuJfOQyaaX1P7QO_nKSqE

The author of this piece is Rev. Rich Lusk. Lusk was a significant player in the Federal Vision imbroglio. Federal Vision was rife with contradictions. I mention that because I believe there is a consistency in the embrace of contradiction in what we see below.

Rev. Lusk (hereafter RL) begins,

I think you’d be hard-pressed to discover the fact of varying levels of melanin just from the Scriptures.

BLMc

Lusk presupposes here that race is merely a matter of skin color as if race can be reduced to melanin levels. Of course, race is never less than melanin levels but it is always more than melanin levels. If race were only about melanin levels then people of different races could provide bone marrow transplants for one another. If race were only about melanin levels then forensic scientists would not be able to determine race based on skeletal evidence. If race were only about melanin levels violent crime rates would be universally the same across varying races. If race were only about melanin levels that Pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t develop drugs that are race-specific in their effect.

Second, right out of the gate RL is reducing knowledge to whatever is explicitly said in Scripture. This is an extreme form of Biblicism that even Gordon Clark would condemn. I am convinced that is a nonstarter. One could just as easily say I think you’d be hard-pressed to discover how babies were made just from consulting the Scripture, therefore it is not important to know how babies are made.

RL writes

Yes, Scripture acknowledges different ethnicities, tribes, languages, etc., but it is (oddly, to modern sensibilities) totally silent about the relation of ethnicity to skin color. In fact, it is almost totally silent on skin color altogether. This is really astounding when you think about how much we focus on skin color in the modern world.  Jeremiah 13:23 mentions the Ethiopian’s skin, but only in passing.

BLMc

Actually, Jeremiah 13:23 unsays everything that Lusk says in the above paragraph.

23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

Here we learn that an ethnic people (Ethiopians) are black. We also learn therefore that Scripture most certainly is NOT totally silent on the relation of ethnicity to race. Jeremiah obviously notices the difference or else he would not have used this illustration. Note something else here that will apply to what RL says elsewhere and that is that obviously non-black people could not be part of the ethnic Ethiopians or else Jeremiah’s illustration would not work. If ethnic Ethiopians included 20% white people those whom Jeremiah was addressing might have said … “Umm, wait a minute.”

The fact that this is mentioned  “in passing” is just RL’s opinion. Probably an opinion born of the necessity to wave away this passage as significant.

RL writes,

If we are biblical, shouldn’t we imitate this total lack of emphasis? The Scripture acknowledges the existence of different people groups and nations (more on this below), but never ties this to skin color, so why should we? Biblically, language, culture, and ultimately faith determine the identity of a people, not melanin.  Biblically, a person’s identity is never defined by his melanin any more than it is defined by other incidental physical features.

BLMc

Hmmm … what of

“Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire:”

Lamentations 4:7

Clearly, the Scripture is emphasizing race here.

As noted above with ethnic Ethiopians as married to their blackness Scripture does tie ethnicity to race.

I think RL is hanging on a weak branch to say the ancients were unfamiliar or uninterested with race — and that as something more than melanin.

RL  

“Biblically, language, culture, and ultimately faith determine the identity of a people, not melanin.”

BLMc

And of course, culture has nothing to do with genes does it Rich? It is these kinds of statements that lead people like me to conclude that people who make these statements are functional Gnostics. Culture is defined as the outward manifestations of a people’s inward belief. However, there is no inward belief without a people, and those people while more than their genetic heritage are never less than their genetic heritage. To reduce people to language, culture, and faith is to deny the corporeal that comes with the handing down of our genetic inheritance from our ancestors. Does not that have no impact on who we are as a people? How can such thinking not be Gnostic?

RL,

Perhaps there is one exception in Numbers 12 when Moses marries a Cushite (Ethiopian) woman….

BLMc

Both Calvin and Matthew Henry as well as many other reputed scholars do not believe that the woman in relation to Moses in the passage cited above is anybody but Mirriam.  In other words, Moses did not marry a black woman.

RL,

But the Scriptures are full of marriages between people of different ethnic groups (e.g., Ruth and Boaz), different melanin levels, etc. Scripture does not require us to marry people of the same skin color any more than it requires us to marry people of the same eye or hair color. The only real issue in Scripture is faithfulness to the Lord. What modern people call race is a non-factor in marriage.

BLMc

First, Scripture is NOT full of marriage between people of different ethnic groups. There may be some but to say it is full of such examples is a complete exaggeration. Even Ruth is disputed as to whether she was a Moabitess or an Israelite who lived in the former territory of Moab and so a Moabitess. Much the same way one might refer to a Puerto Rican living in New York City as a “New Yorker.”

Scripture may not explicitly forbid us from inter-racial marriages but neither does it explicitly forbid us from doing any number of unwise things.

Next, sans Lusk, race should be a factor in marriage. If RL took the time to look at the stats he would see that divorce levels for inter-racial marriages are higher than divorce rates for intra-racial marriages.  In 2002, the Center for Disease Control published statistics about divorce rates that showed interracial marriages were more likely to end in divorce than same-ethnic marriages — 41 percent versus 31 percent. So, we see that RL is just in error when he says that “race is a non-factor in marriage.”

RL,

All that to say: our modern obsession with race is just that – a distinctly modern obsession. It has nothing to do with the Bible or godliness at all, and therefore cannot serve a biblical agenda for missions, ministry, etc.

BLMc

Modern obsession? I’m not sure what RL is calling modern but I suspect he is wrong even here. As far back as the 185o’s Americans were what Lusk calls obsessed with race as evidence by the Lincoln Douglas debate,

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

Abraham Lincoln

But maybe Lusk lump’s Lincoln’s obsession as a modern obsession with our putative modern obsession. Then there are Rudyard Kipling’s various poems on this theme. The point is, I hardly think this is a modern obsession.

All of Lusk’s opining is based on the assumption that all peoples are the same and since they are all the same (a Gnostic assumption if there ever was one) then mixing and matching is not a problem. Jesus did not assume what Lusk assumes as seen in his dealing with the Syro-Phoenician woman. Neither the Holy Spirit nor St. Paul shared Lusk’s assumption. If they had they would not have written what they had written about Cretans.

This is not to deny that all men can come to Christ. The ground at the cross is level for all peoples. All are commanded to repent. All those repentant will be received by Christ. This is to affirm that grace does not destroy nature and conversion does not make different people groups all the same. As such, strong Christian marriages ought to seek out not only the harmony of faith but also the harmony of backgrounds in totality.

RL writes,

Indeed, if our mission and ministry work are concerned about melanin, it’s a sign we are being shaped by some agenda other than the Bible’s. (Perhaps this agenda comes from Charles Darwin? The full title of his most famous work is The Origin of the Species By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The modern obsession with race is as much a legacy of the racist implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution as any other factor.)

BLMc

Lusk writes a diatribe against those he ends up accusing as being Darwinists (it’s OK… I think him Gnostic) while going on and on about “melanin” and yet suggests that his imagined opponents are the ones obsessed by race. Irony much Rich?

Let us say again… Rich has reduced the issue of race to melanin. Those of us who think Rich is nuts believe that race is about much much more than melanin.

RL

I am not claiming the Bible requires us to be “color blind” in every sense. In some ways, it is appropriate to be “color blind” while in other ways it is appropriate to be “color conscious.”

BLMc

Now, Lusk goes all contradiction on us, trying to have it both ways.

RL,

We do not need to blind ourselves to the fact that the human race is a veritable kaleidoscope. We do not have to ignore biological and cultural differences between us in our relationships.

BLMc

Earlier, it’s just about melanin levels. Now the human race is a veritable kaleidoscope with biological differences. Does Rich only mean here we do not have to ignore the different melanin levels that biology creates? Why should melanin alone create cultural differences Rich? Maybe the cultural differences have something to do with race that goes deeper than just the melanin differences?

End Part I

Three More Facts Regarding the Noble Savage

Fact — Indians were not egalitarian. Indian females were routinely bought and sold as “wives.” Indian females performed all physical labor. including wood gathering, slaughtering of animals, packing up the Teepees for migration, primitive gardening, and food storage. Indian females were packhorses when needed carrying huge loads. In this context, Female Indians became mothers as young as 13 and were responsible for child-rearing. Rarely did Indian females live past 35 years of age.

Fact — American Indians were members of a stone-age culture with no written languages, no written law, no use of the wheel, and no domesticated animals until the Spanish introduced to them horses and sheep. They practiced agriculture w/o the use of a simple wooden plow and until the Spanish introduced wool and the loom in the American Southwest no Indian tribes produced cloth, not even the Navaho and Hopi.
Fact — Most American Indian tribes were exceedingly immoral, buying and swapping wives like so many beads at the slightest whim. Venereal disease was rampant.

A Small Glossary — CRT, White Fragility, Equity, White Privilege, Systemic Racism

Britannica: “Critical race theory (CRT) , is an intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially Africa Americans.”

This statement makes the White race guilty for the black race’s general failures as to academic excellence, standard of living equality, job equality, salary equality, and social acceptance as equals in majority White societies. It views all these failures as being the result of the socially constructed White man oppressing and keeping the socially constructed black man down.

Equity teaches the only way to right this historic wrong is for the socially constructed white man to give up this previous sinful privilege and accept a current matching discrimination against him from the socially constructed black man to make up for the putative historic discrimination that the socially constructed black man faced in previous years. Equity holds that the socially constructed white man must be kept down until the socially constructed man can catch up. Equity needs to be distinguished from the idea of equality. Equity does not believe in equality except as equality is defined in light of equity. Equality, politically speaking, means everyone gets a seat at the table. Equity teaches that whites should not get a seat at the table since they putatively have had so many seats at the table in the past. Political equality itself, with all its set-asides, quotas, and score enhancements was always a mistake. Equity, however, is a bridge beyond equality. If you are a white person and you vote for someone touting equity you are either a moron or a self-hater because equity explicitly teaches that you, as a socially constructed white man, will never be given the opportunities to advance because your ancestors had the good life and now it is a person of colors turn. So, even if they are less qualified than you are, they will be given the job, the placement, the position until at some unspecific time in the future all peoples are at the same level of accomplishment.

White fragility happens when biological white men and women say this whole scam is monkey fecal matter. The disagreement by White people is listed by those who champion CRT  as White Fragility. White people are “fragile” because they can’t handle the truth and so object. The scam here is clear. If you agree with CRT then that proves CRT is right. If you disagree with CRT then your white fragility proves CRT is right. Heads I win. Tails you lose. It’s a gamed theory.

 

White privilege in this worldview is the systemic advantage that has accrued to white people simply because they are white. The theory goes that because you were born socially constructed white you automatically had advantages that were not fair because other non-white people didn’t have those advantages and so were disadvantaged. For example, a white person may have grown up in a family that loved and nurtured them. Whereas a black person may have grown up in a family that treated him badly. That White person because of that has white privilege that isn’t fair to the black person. Plus, keep in mind in that example, that it was because of systemic racism that the socially constructed black person’s family was less than what it might have otherwise been.

Systemic racism posits that a social order can be racist even if no individual in that social order is racist. As such the socially constructed white people groups can be racist even if no socially constructed white individual is. This means that the whole social order of countries predominantly built by whites works so as to disadvantage and discriminate against people of color. Critical Race theory works to expose that advantage and offers solutions such as societal-wide “Equity” in order to offset that prior advantage.

Notice in all of this that equality/equity is arrived at, at the price of Liberty. Liberty and equality/equity can never exist together. One always cancels out the other. If there is a regime of equity people will not be free to pursue what they want and become what they want. This is because equality/equity will limit and circumscribe that ability. Similarly, liberty means that people will not be equal or have equity because liberty presupposes that people are not equal and will advance or not upon the basis of merit and drive. Two realities not allowed in an equality/equity social order.

A Few Facts About The Sainted Noble Savage

Fact — As a general rule, all captive males captured during internecine tribal warfare among American Indians were tortured for days until they died. Celebrations were planned around such events with entire villages gathered to watch and possibly participate in the ritual torture of captives.

Fact — The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice on a vast scale. Tens of thousands of people among their tribal enemies were ritually killed and turned into dinner. Solid evidence exists that this same etiquette was practiced by the Carib Indians, the Maya Indians, and the Inca Indians.

Fact — Land was “owned” collectively by a given tribe, but only as long as they controlled it through the killing of the other aboriginals who wandered onto their territory. Possession of land was 10/10ths of the law. Ownership thus was constantly in flux as one tribe drove out another.

Fact — The Sioux (or Lakota) claim that the Black Hills was stolen from them by the White man in the 1870’s. What the ignorant liberals don’t tell you is that the Sioux stole that land from the Blackfeet and the Arapahoe in the 1770s when they (Sioux) left Minnesota. In the same way, the Shawnee claim White people took Ohio and Indiana from them in the first decades of the 1800s. What you don’t know is that the Shawnee took it first from the Fox and the Sauk tribes. Just so the Comanche dispossessed the Apache from West Texas while the Apache chased away the Ute and Navaho in Southern New Mexico and Arizona. Just so the Assiniboine and the Nez Perce slaughtered the Shoshone in Montana and Idaho. Ownership of the land was a literal bloody mess.

Fact — When the first white men showed up in N. America in the 17th century there were at that time approximately 1 million Indians in America which averages out to 1 human being for every 3 square miles. Even the number of 1 million is disputed, some scholars arguing for a much lower number.

Fact — American Indians never owned the N. American land. They merely occupied it being largely a wandering nomadic people.

Fact — American Indians were what Thomas Jefferson referred to them as in the Declaration of Independence, to wit, “savages.” Most if not all the tribes of North America lived in a constant state of intermittent warfare among their neighboring Indian tribal “Brothers.” Starvation, raids for scarce food, and large-scale conflicts for revenge were commonplace.

Fact — American Indians glorified the values of violence and cruel warfare. Scalping and torture were a routine part of North American Indian culture as were burning their captives alive, slow disembowelment, and impalement through the anus. There was nothing noble about these savages.