Category: Ethnic considerations

Pastor McDonald asks,

“Question — Why did God disperse the nations in the first place (Gen 11)?”

Answer

My understanding to date James is that God disperses the nations in order to finally frustrate man’s corporate effort to ascend to the most high so as to un-god god and en-god man. If Genesis 3 and the casting from the garden was the consequence to the action of sovereign individual(s) to cast off God, Genesis 11 and the dispersion of the nations was the consequence to the action of man, corporately considered, to cast off God.

My understanding is that Genesis 11 is a repeat of the theme of Genesis 3. I.) God commands (Gen. 3 — Do not eat, Gen. 11 — Fill the earth). II.) Man disobeys (Gen. 3 — Adam and Eve eat, Gen. 11 — Man say’s “let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered over the earth.”) III.) God Investigates (Gen. 3:9, 11:7) IV.) God brings judgment (Gen. 3:14f, 11:7f) by dispersion.

Pastor McDonald asks,

Does the Gospel provide any picture of reconciliation or even unification (i.e., Acts 2, 10, Galatians 2)?

Answer,

The Great Commission of Christ indicates that the picture of reconciliation that we are to expect is a reconciliation that confirms unity in diversity among the nations. It is the NationS that are to be made disciples. It is the NationS that are baptized. It is the NationS that are to be taught to all observe all things (Mt. 28:16f)

When we get to the book of Revelation we see the success of the Great Commission as it is the NationS that stream into the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:26) and it is the NationS which find healing from the leaves of the tree(22:2).

Acts 2 seems to indicate not the undoing of Babel but the sanctification of Babel. If Acts 2 had been the undoing of Babel one would expect that each would have heard the Gospel in a unitary language. Instead they each hear in their own tongue indicating a Unity (A Gospel shaped humanity) in diversity (That NationS each hearing the Gospel in their own tongue).

If Acts 10 speaks at all to this issue it would seem to likewise again speak to the idea of unity in diversity. Peter learns that “in every NATION whoever fears God and works righteousness is accepted by God” (cmp. vs. 35-36).

Galatians 2 teaches that all the NationS are saved by Christ alone through faith alone and that people don’t have to become Jews in order to become Christians. Galatians 2 really has very little bearing on the subject whether the Gospel creates uniformity in social order as the Gospel has worldwide success or whether the successful extension of the Gospel creates Unity in diversity in social order as it overcomes the world.

Pastor McDonald asks,

“Although we do have a rich mosaic of culture in the world, what do we do with the portions that are inherently pagan?”

Van Til informed us that since all reality is God’s reality that all inherently pagan cultures have within them capital stolen from a Biblical Worldview in order to cohere. Van Til loved the illustration that men had to sit on God’s lap in order to slap Him in the face. This is true of pagan cultures. Their cultures deny God but before they deny God they must assume God.

Because this is true I don’t know if there is any pagan culture that is “inherently pagan” if by “inherently pagan” one means there is no possibility that the success of the Gospel among that pagan group would not leave some kind of memory of what the culture was before it was visited with Gospel renewal. We must remember that Grace amends nature … grace does not destroy nature.

Now, naturally, such Cultures that are dripping in paganism will probably have more discontinuity with what they were culturally before Gospel renewal but I would still contend there will be enough continuity with what they previously were to be able to identify them as still retaining their unique culture.

On this one might want to read Don Richardson’s “Eternity in their hearts,” and “Peace Child.”

Pastor McDonald asks,

Is there a common Christian culture that transcends racial or tribal boundaries?

Answer,

If the question is whether or not there is a monolithic Christian culture that all tongues, tribes, and peoples, must embrace so that we have a monochromatic uniformity I think then, the answer is clearly “no.” One of the main themes of the book of Galatians is that Gentiles do not need to become cultural and religiously “Jewish” in order to be Christian. Acts 15 and the Jerusalem council likewise seems to suggest that a monolithic Christian culture is not the result of the success of the Gospel.

However, if the question is whether the various Christian cultures will have a point of integration the answer is clearly “yes.” That point of commonality will be the acceptance of all peoples in resting in Christ alone as well as a commonality in the moral rectitude that all will share as all look to God’s Holy law-word to be guided in their walk and informed as to the laws for their social order.

As such the Kingdom of God is a Nation of NationS. We see that clearly in the book of Revelation. We see that in the Abrahamic Promise given to God where the promise is that “In you all the NationS of the earth shall be blessed.” We see that in Isaiah 2 and 60 where they clearly speak of the nations coming to Mt. Zion. In Psalms 2 it is the Kings of the NationS who are required to Kiss the Son. All the way through Scripture we see God dealing with the NationS.

While I am not a Kinist, (in point of fact I’ve been severely insulted by them in the past for my rejection of their doctrines) I do believe that Kinism has put its finger on a significant problem (i.e. — the death of the West & the death of the faith, culture and people who made the West the West) and that problem must be addressed with precision and nuance. It will do no good to just dismiss Kinist arguments by ad-hominem. I will go on the record as saying I do not believe that all Kinists are racists (whatever that word means) and I do not believe Kinism automatically means heresy in every person who takes to themselves that descriptive title. The issues that Kinism raise are tougher nuts to crack then many people believe.

Here are a few starting points. These are not written in stone but just represent a bit of brain storming on my part.

1.) Salvation is by grace alone and people from every tribe tongue and nation will be represented in the New Jerusalem.

2.) Christianity, as a faith and belief system is the only faith and belief system that can build beautiful civilization.

3.) It is possible for varying ethnic groups / races to be Christian and yet have significantly different civilizations. It is not necessary for all Christian civilizations to look the same.

4.) It is a reasonable postulate that the differences that might exist between different Christian civilizations might be accounted for by the God ordained differences between varying peoples.

5.) Just as family lines have particular traits which include both strengths and weaknesses so people groups likewise will have particular traits that are characteristic of those people groups. (i.e. — Irish temper [speaking from experience] … Scottish pugnaciousness [again speaking from experience], Dutch frugality, Italian passion, German precision, etc.) Those traits will reveal themselves in the varying Christian civilizations that those people build.

6.) It is possible for a individual who belongs to one people group to denounce his or her people group and bond with a people group that is not his or her own. This accounts for why many blacks will be referred to as “Uncle Toms” by their own people.

7.) People groups are not to be understood solely as a genetic grouping. People groups also include belief systems. It is the interplay of nurture, nature, and belief that makes people groups, people groups. This is why the subject is so complex and difficult … you just can’t extract any of those three from the other two without involving oneself in significant error.

8.) Just as most family members prefer their family to all other families, so most people groups instinctively and rightly prefer their people group to all other people groups. Even the Apostle Paul reveals this (Romans 9:2f).

9.) While the tribe that Christians should most identify with is the Christian Tribe there can still be diversity of people groupings within this tribe so that a Mongolian Christian, while identifying primarily with the Christian tribe, would, within that tribe, identify most significantly with his or her Mongolian Christian tribe. Trinitarian Christians should have no problem with this since to deny this would be to deny the trinity in favor of a Unitarian God. Think “The One and The Many” here folks.

10.) A civilization composed of various people groups can only work if those various people groups are christian and are committed to a harmony of interests. When set civilizations seek to incorporate various pagan people groups under the umbrella of one civilization chaos is insured since the sin induced conflict of interests will have each people group seeking to be advantaged at the expense of the other people groups.

11.) This does not mean, however that civilizations which are composed of one people group that is pagan will be harmonious. Where pagan people groups compose one civilization it is my conviction that those pagan people groups, not having some other alien people group to despise, will look for some sub-grouping within their own group to be the red-headed step child that will be taken advantage of.

12.) People groups that are pagan will manifests their pagan-ness in their own unique ways. Ugly civilization that comes from pagan Tibetans will be a different ugly civilization that comes from pagan white Europeans.

13.) The only cure for all pagan people groups is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when the Gospel of Jesus Christ covers the world as the water covers the sea it still will not be the case that all cultures and civilizations will be the same or that all the colors will bleed into one.

14.) The death of the West has many factors … the chief of which is unbelief. Further, the primary race and ethnicity that is responsible for the death of the West are the descendants of White Europeans. The white man has torn down his own house by his abandoning of the Christian faith. However, having admitted that doesn’t explain the “how” in which that has happened or the accelerating factors of the last 40 years. In order to understand the “how” and the accelerating factors I believe that we have to look in some of the directions that kinism points us toward.

The position that Christianity should create a singular mono world Christian culture really strikes me as gnostic. It seems to suggest that there is a “Word culture” that doesn’t take to itself the material corporeal expressions of the culture that to which the Word comes. If there is a “Word culture” I would contend that won’t be happened upon until the eschaton arrives. Until them, cultures will vary precisely because God has made peoples to vary. The consequence of this will be a diversity of Christian cultures that are remarkably different, yet having a unity that flows from all being one in Christ.

People who want to build a mono cultural global Christianity seem to fail to appreciate that culture has both a divine and a human component. The divine component in culture, I would submit, is that culture is the outward manifestation of what a people believe about God, god, or the gods. The human component in culture is the result of how that belief system is poured over who and how God has created them to be as a people or race. Can we really believe that a Christian belief system as poured over the Mongolian people will express itself the same in its cultural outworking and manifestation as that same Christian belief system instantiates itself in its cultural outworking as it is poured over occidental people or Xhosa people? Culture has a human and divine component and to suggest that all cultures must look the same, or bleed into one, strikes me as denying the human component that God finds good in search for a kind of unitarian gnostic culture where the distinctness that comes from the human-ness of culture is completely nullified.

Further to insist on one “Word culture” that absorbs all unique ethnic cultural expressions strikes me as the result of a rather Unitarian understanding of God. All the emphasis is on the “One” with no emphasis on “The Many.” If God is genuinely both “One” and “Many” then it clearly suggests that it would be sinful to pursue a Unitarian culture where all the God given ethnic and cultural differences bleed into one.

There is a great deal of talk these days about diversity and the need for the Church in the West to be diverse. However, as I examine much of that talk it strikes me that what is really being said is that there is a need for the Western Church to give up its culturally distinct expression in favor of a cultural Church expression that is non Western. This causes one to ask why non-Western cultural expression of Worship are to be preferred at the price of extinguishing Western cultural expressions of Worship. When all the fog and smoke is removed from the incessant cries for cultural diversity in the Church what often seems to be left, for all to see, is the desire to exterminate Western cultural expression in the Church. If Western man is to stay in the Church then let Western man no longer be Western.

God loves diversity. Scripture clearly teaches that love of diversity will be in the new Jerusalem,

“Revelations 7:9 – After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;”

Note though that the diversity that Scripture speaks of and that God loves is a diversity that is not the result of all colors, cultures, languages, and ethnicities bleeding into one thus yielding a genuine mono-cultural mono-glot new Jerusalem. No, the diversity that Scripture speaks of and that God loves is a diversity that is distinct and polyglot yet in harmony because of the mutual allegiance and union that all peoples share with the great High Priest and King — The Lord Jesus Christ.

One implication of this is that the vision of building a church here on earth that seeks to erase all cultural differences is, at the very least, at variance with what we find in Scripture. One of the main points of the book of Galatians, is after all, that one doesn’t have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. Similarly, it should not be the case that anybody coming into the Church has to completely deny their cultural-ethnic identity in order to become a Christian. One can be a Christian and remain culturally Filipino, or Welsh, or Ndebele, or Syrian, or Sri-Lankan as those cultures have experienced the effects of redemption.

Christianity’s vision of the future outworking of God’s Kingdom parts ways with the pagan view of pagan man’s Utopian Kingdom. In Christianity both the One and the Many are culturally honored, while in pagan man’s Utopian Empire-Kingdom all colors must bleed into one. In Christianity all peoples understandably prefer their own people while still embracing the truth that all Christian cultures together express the Corpus Christi. In pagan man’s Utopian Kingdom one people are always seen as superior over all other peoples with the consequence that the favored people group live off of the groups reckoned inferior. (Currently, in our alleged pursuit of multi-culturalism the people group who are seen as superior are those who have sought to deny their ethnic and cultural rooted-ness in favor of the multi-cultural vision.) In Christianity the Christian faith is insisted upon as the one true faith while in pagan man’s Utopian Empire Kingdom the faith that is embraced is either alleged atheism or a full orbed polytheism where the State serves as the god of the gods. (Both atheism and statist polytheism end up at the same place.)

Currently, there is a great deal of confusion in the Church and culture on this subject. God grant us grace to think clearly about it once again.

Fact: As the census in the previous post revealed, given the opportunity, Negroes were 13 times more likely to own slaves than Whites were. Even if we reduce the percentage somewhat to account for free blacks purchasing their family and being required to continue to hold them as “slaves,” the numbers still de-mythologize the current cultural Marxist racial narrative that is crammed down our throats in this country.

Fact: The vast majority of slaves brought to the US came from the Caribbean, not directly from Africa, though clearly, they came to the Caribbean from Africa.

Fact: Slaves were almost never captured by Whites in Africa, and so we see that the whole ROOTS fantasia was a work of fiction. Slaves were usually the spoils of war of the incessant tribal conflicts in Africa, where, before they became an object of value, the ones the winning side didn’t need were usually killed out of hand, while the others had a short miserable life. After the international trade came into being, these slaves were brought down to the West African coast by their black owners, where they were traded to European, Jewish, and Mulatto (and years earlier Arab) interests for guns, spear points, cloth, rum, beads, etc. They were held in these factories until the trading ships arrived from Europe or Yankee New England with loads of these trade goods, and, after the exchange, they were packed for shipment to the Caribbean Islands. Once in the Caribbean, they were sold and cargoes of sugar cane molasses were taken on board, to be taken back to the home country to make rum. It was called the triangle; molasses, rum and slaves. Slaves coming here were later shipped from there. Over 90% of the slaves who reached the Americas’ mainland ended up in Latin America.

Fact: Slaves purchased in North America were delivered from the hell of working in the Sugar cane fields of Brazil and Cuba where life span expectancies were incredibly reduced as compared to those purchased by Southern Plantation owners. Also, the cruelty and bondage experienced by the slaves in those Sugar cane fields was barbaric. Though the Southern Plantation owners certainly did not intend to do those they purchased any favors the purchase of slaves by Southern Plantation owners certainly served to rescue those purchased slaves from a fate far worse than what they would have experienced in the Sugar Cane fields had they not been purchased by Southern Plantation owners.

Fact: Slaves had better working conditions, shorter hours, more benefits, and a notably longer average lifespan than the factory workers of the time — many of whom were woman and children who worked in Northern wage slave factories — and much better than the average Negro remaining in Africa, then and now. Slavery still exists in Africa, BTW, and is fairly widespread.

Fact: There seems to be no long lines to go back to Africa; instead, it looks like the Africans want to come here to this “racist” country.

Fact: No one is alive today who was involved in slavery in any way, shape or form, so why are people still whining about it?

Fact: there were more Irish slaves, or indentured servants imported in 1600-1700 than African slaves. Indeed, black slaves were so valued by Southern Plantation owners as property that this Irish would often be hired, at miserly wages, to do dangerous, life threatening work that the slave owners did not want their slaves to preform for fear of losing their property value in the case of death. White Irish, in this case were less valued than black slaves.

Fact: A large holder of Slaves were the native American Tribe the Navajo. The Navajo had been in the slave trade LONG before the Africans were brought to our shores.

“1860 census revealed that only 2-percent of white Americans owned slaves at
that time, but that 26-percent of free Negroes owned slaves!

I am utterly mystified that anyone would consider an objectively true fact such as the one above to be race-baiting, and yet that is what some have taken the posting of this statistic to be. I posted this nugget because, I, like many in this thread, am tired of the corporate guilt that Cultural Marxists (i.e. — Liberals) seek to cast upon white people. White people are no more, or no less guilty of race based slavery and/or abuse than any other ethnic group … including Blacks.

Ironically enough, This pseudo corporate guilt is being used, in such a way to enslave white people to the desires of cultural Marxist minorities who are serving the interests of cultural Marxist elites (many of whom are white).

Did Africans have it rough? Absolutely! From their being seized by their fellow Black Africans to their being sold to the middle man entrepreneur Black Africans, to being sold to either Arab, or European Yankee ship owners to being sold to Plantation owners up and down the Western Hemisphere coast Black Africans went through the sorrows of sin visited upon them.

HOWEVER, such hardship upon a people is nothing new. This is not a callous observation. The British visited terrible hardships upon the Irish (potato famine anyone?), the Black African has visited terrible hardship upon the White Rhodesian and is doing so now with the White Boer, the Scots were sorely abused at the hands of the English, the Picts were wiped out by the Celts, the indigenous tribes of Central America were nearly wiped out by Montezuma’s people, (and those oppressed people praised God when Cortez arrived upon the scene), The Japanese treated Chinese and Koreans horrendously during WWII, the Russian Communists slaughtered millions of Ukrainians, The Turks wiped out large portions of the Armenian people, and the American Indians were sorely treated by Americans after those Indian tribes wreaked mayhem and destruction upon one another for centuries in tribal internecine warfare.

This is the effect of sin. The only cure for such sin is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which holds out the promise of saving people from every tribe, tongue and nation so that whole people groups, in their people groups can together join in the praise of the lamb.

The idea that the politics of guilt and pity should be the basis of policy of any one people group over another is ridiculous and is just another different tool for enslavement. Christ has taken away my sin. I will not be loaded w/ false guilt in order to be maneuvered into a position where I concede the future to minority led Cultural Marxists.