“Race Matters” by Alex Shipman
Race Matters
by Alex Shipman
RACE MATTERS! ETHNICITY MATTERS! Well, what do you mean by that, Alex? It matters because it matters to God. Wait a minute, pastor! I thought God was color blind and doesn’t see race. Why would race matter to God when it’s often a source of great division and arguments? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we just stopped talking about it? Race isn’t the problem! The problem is us. It’s what we turn to in order to shape and form our understanding of race: our traditions, our culture biases, our assumptions, our stereotypes, and our social media outlets. Many of us don’t see race and ethnicity through the lens of a Christian worldview. If we did then we would see that any discussion about these terms is really a discussion about people. It’s a discussion about different people learning to love and relate to each other.
On the sixth day of creation, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” He created male and female in his own image. At the end of day, the word says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
Did God make a mistake with His creation of human beings? Are all the different races or ethnicities a result of God’s miscalculation? Did He create one race to be more superior to others? The answers are NO, NO and NO! We’re created by divine design, not by some divine mishap.
Dr. Anthony Bradley said, “When we see people, we don’t see autonomous individuals abstracted from the rest of humanity; instead, we see persons wired for community, interdependent and deeply integrated into its social fabric. Persons are not means to political, economic, or even evangelistic ends. They are not objects of mission or projects to be served. As persons made in God’s image, they were made for the end purpose of living in relation to and in communion with the triune God.”
This means people from all races and ethnicities are equally created in the image of God. All of them are also equal in value, self worth and dignity. But timeless truths aren’t always applied and lived out in reality.
In the Genesis creation account God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the rest of creation. This is known as the creation mandate to exercise dominion. The Lord God gave this mandate before the Fall. The creation mandate was/is good. It was to benefit mankind and the rest of creation. It wasn’t God’s intent for one image bearer to exercise dominion over another image bearer.
But, we live east of Eden now; the fall actually happened. This means the mandate to rule is now under the curse of sin. The mandate itself isn’t sinful; it’s just under the curse. As a result, image bearers will abuse and misuse the mandate to exercise dominion. Their nature is now embed with a sinful desire to rule over other image bearers. People will try and actually exercise dominion over each other and feel justified in doing so. Cain’s murder of his brother, Able, is the first example of one image bearer exercising dominion over another. Cain didn’t value his brother’s life, so he took it. He wasn’t his brothers’ keeper.
Human history is filled with examples of image bearers not being their brothers/sisters’ keeper. Throughout the history of the world, nations and ethnic groups have made claims of superiority over other nations and ethnic groups. These claims and beliefs in some self-crown superiority are lived out in how these nations and ethnic groups treat other people who they deemed are inferior. They seek to rule over them. History shows this to be true. Present day reality proves it to be true. Look at history? Look at present realities! Look at the fall out over the recent presidential election. Don’t let progress make a fool of you. Don’t let a whitewash history deceive you. People are always trying to rule over other people.
It’s easy to see this in the form of murder, abortion, slavery, abuse, sex-trading, racism, classism, oppression, and discrimination. We’re often blinded to it when it comes to indifference, micro-aggressions, biases and discrimination. Its also seen in how one culture believes their cultural way of doing life is the right way and all other cultures must assimilate. The sinful desire to have dominion over others cripples the various ethnicities from understanding and lovingly embracing their differences and diversity. It prevents us from walking in humility before those who are different from us.
While I was in college, I used to think the cure for racism was to achieve a higher understanding of anthropology to the point where race no longer mattered because I would no longer see color. However, I’ve grown to realize that is not a cure for racism but just an extreme reaction to racism. It simply sent me in the opposite direction. The idea of “race doesn’t matter” is just a short cut to peace that seeks to look over and look past our differences without working through them relationally.
You see, both racism and the quest not to see color are both denials of what God created and deemed to be “very good.” Every race of people are created in the image of God. As as result, all of them are equal in worth, value and dignity. The beauty in this is that each race will reflect that image differently, just like males and females reflect His image differently. These differences don’t make one race better or more superior than another one. The differences let us know that there is diversity among God’s image bearers. Diversity isn’t something God added later but it was part of His manifold wisdom from the beginning.
The finished work of Jesus not only reconciled us to God it also reconciled believers from different ethnicities to one another in one body. Jesus hasn’t reconciled us to one another just so we can tolerate each other. He reconciled us together so we can love one another in humility. If the finished work of Christ won’t move you to live humbly before people who are ethnically different than you then nothing in all creation will. Only in Christ can we begin a journey to racial reconciliation; only in Christ can you see that race matters and its diversity is beautiful; only in Christ can you love and embrace the neighbor who is different from you. Only in Christ can the church become more culturally intelligent.
About the Author ~ Alex Shipman
I’m married to the most amazing woman, Wyketa Shipman. We have two wonderful kids who keep us on our toes. I am the senior pastor of The Village Church located in NE Huntsville. My favorite hobbies are cooking, working out, mystery books and watching movies. We’re all broken people trying to navigate our way through a broken world.
Leave a Reply