Category: Christian

A Critique of a Critique of Critical Race Theory: How We Navigate in the World While not of the World

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I am borrowing extensively from a fellow blogger today who wrote:

Critical Race Theory (Part 8): My Grand Conclusion! What I’ve Learned in My Reading of CRT and What I Feel the Proper Christian/Gospel Response Should Be

Posted on  by joelando11@yahoo.com

“Earlier this summer, before I decided to take the time to read the three books I have covered in this series on critical race theory, I didn’t feel I really knew enough about it to say anything about it. I had heard a few talking heads on cable news decry it as Marxist and racist in and of itself, but didn’t really know much more than that. After a few people wrote to me and asked me what my view of CRT was and if I’d ever write a few posts on it, though, that is when I decided to read up on it and try to distill what I had learned about it in a short blog series.”

I quote from the 8th blog article in a series written by my blogging friend, Joel Edmond Anderson. He finds much to criticize in CRT, but it comes with some caveats. I believe many of my evangelical brothers and sisters would support his critique, which focuses largely on political, ideological and philosophical points (and, truthfully, not much Scripture, though I know him to be a man of Scripture).

My past concerns about the critics of CRT I echo here: our baseline should be the Word of God, not political, ideological and philosophical standards. If we devolve into non-biblical standards, we loose our saltiness. We lose our distinctiveness as children of God, citizens of the kingdom of God and aliens and strangers in the world.

Because of the unique position of believers in relation to the world – in the world but not of the world – Christians have often staked out claims against injustice, including the abolition movement, while other people ignored the plight of the oppressed. I believe this is (partially) what it means to be salt and light.

Setting captives free was an essential component of the work of Jesus in the world, but it was only a component of his work. Preaching good news to the poor (the first of the things Jesus announced he came to do) is part and parcel of his purpose in the world. (Luke 4:17-20)

Neglect or rejection of the Gospel (the good news) is a chief complaint of critics of the proponents of CRT. Captives are not truly set free without it. Yet, those who would preach the good news cannot ignore the setting of the captives free. Jesus focused on both, and so should we. Thus, I agree with this first caveat of Anderson:

“I think it has to be clearly emphasized that criticism of CRT isn’t a denial of racism in America or a refusal to try to address clear problems in America that stem from our racist past.”

Anderson goes on to state:

“Rather, disagreeing with CRT means disagreeing with the claim that the American free market system and constitutional law is inherently racist and that Marxist principles and a Marxist system is what is needed to eradicate racism for good.”

I don’t disagree with him on the point that the American free market system and constitutional law is not inherently racist, or that Marxist principles are a poor substitute for a governmental system that has elevated more people out of poverty and oppression than other system of law in history. At the same time, I am not going to die on that hill. Calvary is where I will take my stand.

The Gospel spreads and the kingdom of God thrives under any system of government, no matter how good or bad, precisely because it is not of this world. The kingdom of God cannot be equated with any system of human government. It transcends them all.

Anderson goes on to criticize CRT, but he comes back to this, which I think we MUST confront, especially in the body of Christ, who came to breach good news and set the oppressed free:

“[T]he reason we even have CRT, and the reason why we have growing calls for Socialism and Marxism, is because, quite frankly, there still is racial healing to be done and there still are issues of racial injustice to be addressed—and too often those instances have been ignored. America has indeed come a long way in healing racial injustices, but America has still nevertheless failed in certain areas—that is undeniable.”

CRT developed as a critique of an American system that has expressly addressed a history of racism with laws that have produced the promised outcomes of equality and fairness and justice for which people have hoped. It developed as a legal tool to address latent racism – racism that lies below the surface and continues on despite laws that prohibit overt racial behavior.

CRT was not proposed as a Marxist ideal designed to achieve Marxist outcomes. It was an attempt to get at pernicious racial disparities that persist despite laws that expressly outlaw it. Thus, I agree with Anderson when he says:

“I believe [CRT proponents] they have a genuine concern for injustice, and they want to address it.”

People are not our enemies. We can’t forget that, even people who advocate systems we don’t believe in. Even if we count them as enemies, Jesus clearly said we should love them. We in the body of Christ need to take that imperative seriously.

We may might fight against principalities and thoughts which hold people captive, but the people who hold them and and who are influenced by them are not (should not be) our enemies. They are the ones for whom Jesus was willing to leave the 99. They are in the field that is ripe unto harvest.

Again, I don’t personally disagree with his assertion:

“The problem is that they honestly think all that is needed is the implementation of a ‘better system’—the Marxist system. But that is simply detached from historical reality. It reflects the naïve wishful thinking of an ideology that has failed miserably, time and time again.”

But these are secondary matters in relation to the kingdom of God, which is not of this world. The Gospel goes forward in communist China and Russia and in theocratic Iran. The Gospel is not deterred by the systems of human government. It thrives despite them. Sometimes it thrives because of them, as people yearn for the eternity that God put in their hearts.

The Kingdom of God is always contrary to the kingdoms of this world, even free market, constitutional, and democratic kingdoms.

I wholeheartedly agree with Anderson when he says:

“CRT certainly highlights the clear racists policies of America’s past, and it sometimes points out clear instances of racial injustice still around today.”

We should not deny these things. Of all people, followers of Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life, should not ignore the truth of the injustice that survives in our world. Not that we can eradicate injustice in a fallen world. Injustice in a fallen world is inevitable, but we should not be any part of it. We should resist and stand against it.

For this reason, alone, we dare not ignore injustice, even when the majority of the people who seem to be fighting it are advocating systems of government that tend contrary to our political views.

For this reason, therefore, I suggest that we have more in common with fighters of injustice than members of our own political tribe who stand opposed because we serve a God whose throne is built on a foundation of justice and righteousness.

The nuance of that awkward position may seem difficult to navigate, but we should be accustomed to awkward positions – being in the world, but not of the world. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways ore not our ways. We can trust Him to lead us through it.

The 2020 Census and the Breaking Down of the Dividing Walls of Hostility

Fundamentally, Christians should align with Christ, and nothing else.

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The 2020 Census reveals a story of changing demographics in the United States. It should hardly come as a surprise that the story is diversity. “Over the past 10 years, people who identified as Hispanic, Asian or more than one race accounted for larger shares of the population….”[1]

I suspect we could say the same thing about many a decennial census over the history of the United States. During the history of this country, from one census to another, we can trace the movements of people, including the Spaniards and Portuguese, the English and French, the German, the Irish, the Italian, the African, the Chinese, the Poles, and on and on.

I grew up learning that the United Stated of America is a melting pot. The news of the 2020 Decennial Census is simply the continuation of the same story that is America. It is an uniquely American story, though rhetoric in the 21st Century might suggest otherwise.

The new census may reveal a plot twist of sorts, though: a “pivotal moment”. Whereas the American story of the past was primarily an European story, the plot is tending toward greater diversity. The population of “people of color” are increasingly “younger and growing more rapidly” then their traditional American counterparts with Eurocentric origins.

The population growth since 2010 “was made up entirely of people who identified as Hispanic, Asian, Black or more than one race”. We can speculate on the reasons for this major shift, but the fact remains that people of color are increasingly making up a larger percent of the population, and that trend will surely continue.

My thoughts, as always, turn to the impact on the Body of Christ and how the Church is responding… and should respond… to the times. These times are a changing, crooned Bob Dylan in my youth….. But then, they are always a changing.

Continue reading “The 2020 Census and the Breaking Down of the Dividing Walls of Hostility” →

Can a Tiger Change Its Stripes? A Tale of Scorpions and Frogs

A scorpion stings. That’s what they do. That is their nature.

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Joel Furches recently posted the following on social media:

“The Aesop’s Fable I have come to most appreciate over the years is ‘The Frog and the Scorpion’. If you’re not familiar, it’s about a scorpion who asks a frog to swim him across the water. The frog doesn’t want to, because he’s afraid of getting stung. The scorpion points out that if he stings the frog, they will both drown. So the frog swims him, the scorpion stings the frog, and they both drown. Why? Because it is the nature of scorpions to sting.

“The moral: things act out of their nature, even at the expense of their self-interest. Or as my dad used to say, ‘a person will never do something that person wouldn’t do.’ Which, I suppose, could be rephrased, ‘A person’s always going to do what that person does.’ (My dad would say ‘peoples are peoples’)” 

A more modern version of this idea is the tiger that can’t change its stripes or the leopard that can’t change its spots. The fable or adage stands for the proposition that people don’t change their essential nature or character.

We shouldn’t expect people to be anything other than who they really are. Despite what the scorpions tells you, the scorpion IS going to sting you. That’s what they do. That’s who they are.

Fables are meant to teach life lessons. They are meant to pass on wisdom to help us avoid having to learn it the hard way – from experience. (Though it seems most of us need firsthand experience to learn wisdom, and even then we don’t always get it.)

Still, these fables are helpful in allowing us to crystallize those hard learned lessons into memorable, graphic illustrations that we can hold onto and pass on – if only people would listen. Right?

But what is the lesson? Don’t trust people? Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice shame on me!

Fables teach us something about human nature, but fables don’t give us specific guidance tailored to our own dilemmas. We still need wisdom to apply the lessons we learn (however we learn them) in our particular circumstances. “A word to the wise” requires wisdom for its application in our own lives.

Aesop may have been a very wise man (if there really was an Aesop), and Aesop’s fables carry with them the ring of truth, but truth is often more complicated than we like to think it is. Just when you think you understand the laws of physics, quantum mechanics comes along and turns everything inside out.

The fable of the Frog and Scorpion is something we identify with, but Scripture provides a different angle. Scripture provides guidance to deal with the scorpions in our lives.

Continue reading “Can a Tiger Change Its Stripes? A Tale of Scorpions and Frogs” →

The End of Stubborn Piety, and a New Beginning.

“[R]ising anxiety, suicide, and deaths of despair speak to a profound national disorder….”

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Donald Trump with Jerry Falwell, Jr. at Liberty University in Virginia

I just read Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why? By staff writer for the Atlantic, Derek Thompson. I find The Atlantic to be full of insightful articles, even when I don’t wholeheartedly agree with them. This article is no exception.

Thompson recalls those enlightened 19th century pundits who predicted the death of God and advances in “scientific discovery and modernity” that would lead to widespread atheism. Thompson is a skeptic, himself. While Europe has largely gone the way the pundits predicted, The United States has resisted that prognostication – at least until recently.

Thompson blames “America’s unique synthesis of wealth and worship” and “stubbornly pious Americans” for the United States not going with the flow of the Enlightenment ascent of man from the superstitious dark ages into the light of science and reason.

While the rest of the western world has been drifting away from religious affiliation, and religion altogether, the United States seemed impervious to those forces working on the rest of the western world – until recently. Things began to change in the United States in the 1990’s, and that trend continues.

The article borrows heavily from Christian Smith, a sociology and religion professor at the University of Notre Dame, for figures and figurings of the reasons why. The shift is clear, though, and the statistics bear it out, that religious affiliation and interest in religion in the United States is waning and going the way of the rest of the western world.

“According to Smith, America’s nonreligious lurch has mostly been the result of three historical events: the association of the Republican Party with the Christian right, the end of the Cold War, and 9/11.” Smith goes on to provide some explanation for how these “events” have triggered the change. He says,

“The marriage between the religious and political right …. disgusted liberal Democrats, especially those with weak connections to the Church. It also shocked the conscience of moderates, who preferred a wide berth between their faith and their politics.”

Thompson’s article got me thinking. He is right about the trend away from religion in the United States. We don’t need data to tell us that. The “nones” are increasing while the committed believers are decreasing. That these observations come from “outside the camp” doesn’t make them false.

Thompson’s explanations for the reasons why this is may be more of a mixed bag. He (naturally) views the changes through a naturalistic lens. He may be right about some of the cause and effect, but he (naturally) isn’t likely to see the more spiritual side of those things.

I “grew up” spiritually during the mid to late 80’s when the marriage between religion and the political right was consummated. I fell out of step with it, and lost track of it, when I went to law school in 1988. Apparently the honeymoon went well.

I count myself (even today) as an evangelical (though I search for a different label). My spiritual upbringing included the experience of the courting of the religious right of the Republican Party. (Or was it the other way around?)   

Law school, however, challenged even my most sacrosanct connections, and the cares and concerns of fatherhood and providing for a growing family distracted me from other relationships. It was all I could do to hold onto God during this time, and the truth is that He mostly held onto me.

Perhaps, that was a blessing in disguise, as I didn’t grow into the religio-politico affiliation that seems to characterize a large segment of the evangelical church today. I am a more distant observer of that relationship today, so I think I have some objectivity left.

I agree (partially) with Thompson’s assessment that the congruence of the religious right and the political right changed the political landscape. It also changed the religious landscape. Perhaps, more than we might care to acknowledge.

Continue reading “The End of Stubborn Piety, and a New Beginning.” →

The Perfect Imperfection of the Mosaic Law and the New Covenant

The Mosaic Law is not a universal moral code applicable to all people at all times.

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If you read through the Torah, you will find verses that seem morally repugnant to our modern sensibilities. For instance, the death penalty applies to conduct that seem to us like minor offenses. Israelites were allowed to keep slaves. The Mosaic Law is also clearly paternalistic in our modern view, subjecting women to second class citizenship.

This is just a start. Skeptics like to point out these things in criticism of the Bible. They claim that Scripture is full of immoral ideas.

Christians try to find explanations that soften the criticism, claiming that we need to understand the cultural context and what was actually meant. Skeptics claim Christians twist the plain meaning of the text to avoid obvious conclusions. So it goes.

Could it be that both skeptics and defenders of the biblical text are right? That is the position that is taken in the video by Inspiring Philosophy: The Imperfect Mosaic Law.

We have to admit that the Torah contains some instructions that are morally distasteful, if not repugnant, by modern standards. We could try to explain them away. We could claim that our modern morality is wrong. We could reject the Bible and concede to the skeptics that it was written by Ancient Near Eastern men, there is no God, and the Bible is unreliable as a moral code.

Most of these options assume that the Mosaic Law is/was meant to be a perfect and universal statement of God’s moral code. Perhaps, though the Torah was never meant to be a perfect, universal moral law. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be applied to all people in all times.

It seems that believers and non-believers, alike, assume we must apply every word of the Bible to modern life, and it stands or falls on its instruction to us today. Believers hold on as skeptics try to pry away our faith from clenched fists that we hold to the Bible.

Maybe, however, it ain’t so. The video describes some subtle and some not-so-subtle clues that support the view that Ancient Near East morality contained in the Bible was never meant to be a timeless measure of the conduct for mankind. One such clue is the way Jesus viewed and applied the Law.

In Matthew 19, for instance, the Pharisees tried to trick Jesus with a question on divorce. They referenced the Law of Moses, which allowed men to divorce and send their wives away, and they asked Jesus who would be a man’s wife in heaven if he divorced and remarried many times. Jesus responded, to their chagrin, that Moses allowed men to divorce their wives only because of the hardness of their hearts, adding, “but from the beginning it was not so”. (Matt. 19:8)

Jesus seems to be saying, here, that God instructed the people in the Mosaic Law on divorce, not with a timeless moral truism, but with a temporary “law” intended to accommodate their existing, cultural, and social condition.

Jesus seems to be suggesting that this aspect of the Mosaic Law was a kind of “compromise” between God and Israel. God apparently softened and calibrated the provisions of the Law to accommodate the cultural norms, attitudes, and expectations of the people at the time.

Perhaps, the people were not open to what God intended from the beginning, so God revised the terms for them. Perhaps, the instruction on divorce was a “step in the right direction”, but only a step toward the actual ideal.

We don’t know exactly. We might be tempted to think that this was the only accommodation because this is the only time Jesus is recorded to have said anything like this. As it turns out, however, most of the Mosaic Law was provisional, and it was replaced by a New Covenant. Jesus shifted the grand paradigm completely!

I have often thought that the Bible demonstrates a kind of progression in the relationship between God and man. I don’t mean this in the sense of a formal doctrine. Whatever we might call it, Scripture is the narrative of a growing, unfolding revelation of God to people.

Scripture has an arc to it. From the creation of the world, to Adam and Eve, to Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, the first Temple, and the second Temple and forward to Jesus and beyond, Scripture has a progression. There is a “sweep” to Scripture that is, perhaps, just as (or more) important to recognize as any particular passages.

Thus, I believe the video is correct that the Mosaic Law is not meant as a legislative moral code to be applied to all people at all times. The Law was given to a particular people in a particular time, but it fits into the progression of revelation of God to man.

At different places and times, building on prior connections, the Bible is the narrative of God working with people to reveal Himself in ways that they can understand and in ways that they are able (or willing) to receive. He is always working with people to preserve that narrative for future generations who will stand on the shoulders of prior generations with the benefit of hindsight and cumulative revelation.

And this is key: God is doing these things while protecting the character of free agency that He gave to people He created in His image. His overarching purposes require that we be allowed to engage Him and participate in this progression on our own accord using the agency He gave us.

As I have often speculated, this is because God is love, and God desires a reciprocal, loving relationship with us. Love does not coerce. Love does not demand or impose itself uninvited. Love requires freedom both ways in the relationship.

Some of the passages that are most repulsive to us may be nothing more than the Ancient Near perspective of people through whom God was revealing Himself. These passages are colored by the limited understanding of the people at the time and the limits of God’s revelation to them bounded by that understanding.

The descriptions of God’s wrath, jealousy and harsh dealings, are the descriptions of people who lived in a harsh world filled with arbitrary and capricious gods. That’s how they saw the world.

God was distinguishing Himself to these people in the midst of the world as they knew it, and He could only take them so far in their understanding. They way they described what God was doing was true to their understanding, but it was also limited by it.

God engaged with these people in the context of covenant relationship. The relationship came first. The revelation that the God of the “heavens and the earth” desired a two-way relationship with them most have been mind-blowing.

One key to God’s character in this relationship is His faithfulness to the promises He makes. No matter how wicked, evil, and determined the people are to walk in their own ways, God never abandons them. Though he warns them and even metes out judgment on them, God is always ready and quick to receive them back if/when they turn back to Him. Always.

The way Jesus viewed the Mosaic Law is instructive and provides key information about the covenant relationship between God and man. We tend to read the Mosaic Law like a prescriptive code laying down universal rules for all time and all people, but that isn’t the way Jesus seemed to view it.

Continue reading “The Perfect Imperfection of the Mosaic Law and the New Covenant” →