Why Race Exists And It’s Good: A Biblical Understanding Of Race

If there is one thing that the liberals are great at, it’s changing the definitions of words. Years ago the liberals were championing equality while conservatives were rebutting with equity. Then the liberals started championing equity while the conservatives touted equality. A whole host of words have had their meanings bastardized including but not limited to: abuse, trauma, oppressed, victim, fascist, Nazi, nationalist, capitalism, freedom, liberty. And a whole host of words have been invented to support a liberal cause including: homophobia, transphobia, cisgender, latinx, and racism. Many Christians do not realize that the word race has been aborted from its original definition in common usage today.

The Critical Race Theorists argue that race is a social construct invented by Europeans to justify the Atlantic Slave Trade. However, many conservatives today will adopt the premise of race being a social construct to divide human beings. The saying “there is only one race, the human race.” is a post WWII mentality that attempts to hold up the perceived ideals of Martin Luther King Jr. Yet in responding to a bad argument, these people have created a bad argument.

Definition Of Race

The 1828 Webster dictionary defines race to mean:

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. Thus all mankind are called the race of Adam; the Israelites are of the race of Abraham and Jacob. Thus we speak of a race of kings, the race of Clovis or Charlemagne; a race of nobles, etc.

Being written with a Biblical worldview, the definition incorporates a biblical framework citing the examples of Adam, Abraham, and Jacob. While all of mankind is one race under Adam, and Christians a new race under Christ, the idea that there is only one race is an incomplete usage of the word that renders it meaningless, which is the point of the sentiment. Yet race is synonymous with a biblical understanding of nation. As the aforementioned definition cites the Israelites as a race descended from Jacob and Abraham, the Bible similarly names nations after their stock. Majority of the nations, and places, mentioned in the Old Testament are named after patriarchs. So while there is more to a nation that merely the common ancestry, the word race is synonymous with an emphasis on this component of what it means to have a nationality.

The Bible and Race

The faithful translations of the Bible over the years translate race according to it historic usage in the English language.

¹⁹ It was he who took shrewd advantage of our race and mistreated our fathers so that they would expose their infants and they would not survive.

Acts 7:19 NASB1995

Older translations such as the King James and the 1599 use kindred. However the annotations, chapter headings of the 1599 denote the “race of Saul” for 1 Chronicles 8.

1 The sons of Benjamin. 33 And race of Saul.

The English Standard Version and the Christian Standard Bible (surprisingly), use race in Acts 7:19. Newer translations such as the NASB2020, the Legacy Standard Bible (2021) joined the New International Version have generally changed with the times in not translating this word to mean as race opting for either family or people. Although race and kindred are the best, these are all faithful translations. The context of Acts 7:19 is specific to a common stock, so to argue that the only common stock is Adam is both artificial and a deviation from a biblical worldview.

As every tongue tribe and nation will praise God, there’s something more eternal about nations than even marriage.

So What’s Driving Disagreement?

Although there is some boomercon convention that argue one race, human race, it appears that the main driver of this comes from the MacArthur bros. In response to the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, Grace To You published this:

Darwin believed that every ethnic group descended from different primates­—and that some of these groups were more “favored” than others. The idea that mankind should be divided into various “races” only took root with the advent of Darwin’s evolutionary theory in the mid-nineteenth century.

That divisive worldview has no place among God’s people. Neither does the current sanctimonious quest for racial diversity within the church which ignores the reality of mankind’s common parentage—that God “made from one man every nation [ethnicity] of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26, emphasis added). In other words, we are all Adam’s children.

There is only one race. One. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is not speaking biblically.

This seems to be the marching orders for the MacArthur bros. Indeed, the etymology cited here is completely false as the word “race” has an etymology meaning common ancestry dating back to the 1560’s (forty years after William Tyndale’s version which subsequent early modern translations used.) As also mentioned Darrell Harrison and Cameron Buettel are boldly wrong on speaking biblically as well.

Thus, this camp will argue that race does not exist, those in interracial marriages will say that they are not married to someone of a different race, even. Yet, they believe that you can be racist.

Yet the different weights and measures persist. Virgil Walker will declare that Jesse Jackson was a pimp to tricked the “black community” and needs to “be banished from the minds of black people.” Yet when Stephen Wolfe speaks to a white audience, Walker accuses him of nazism.

Wolfe uses similar language of “blood and soil,” (blood and place) when describing his ethnic group as those with a genetic connection and those who have been on the land. You see, nationalism has consistently embraced ethnonationalism, which favors one group, known as “our people,” over others. This form of ethnonationalism can be seen in history as ethnic German nationalism and has justified its actions against people they deemed “undesirable” or “inferior.”

Does Wolfe recognize the problems that his Volksgeist movement presents? As he initiates dialogue with those who have questions, he often disarms his opponents by acknowledging that he will be accused of being a fascist, chauvinist, xenophobe, or racist. All of this is done to prevent the interviewer from attributing these notions to him when he presents them to you.

He goes on to write:

While there’s nothing wrong with writing a book for Western white men, I am curious as to who Wolfe is signaling as he uses a quote from a book titled, Which Way Western Man? written by White Nationalist William Gayley Simpson.

So Virgil Walker can use inflammatory rhetoric to speak to the concerns of black Americans yet when Stephen Wolfe uses a meme to talk to white Americans it’s a red flag for him, along with speaking about a nation as a people and a place which is part of a complete understanding as to what a nation is, because the Nazis did the same thing.

It appears as though the one constant with the “rules” regarding race is it’s a violation if you talk about white people positively as a bloc. This is what Stephen Wolfe learned when he said, “White evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.”

And this, I believe is the trap that the liberals have set. Critical Race Theory is an academic issue that manifested itself on the street level. But the way that it manifested itself was distinctly anti-white. And though it held the bigotry of low expectations for blacks, whites stood to be the sufferers to Critical Race Theory the most. Many on the right have been confined to parameters that they will not argue that Critical Race Theory is anti-white because political correctness dictates that white people categorically do not exist as a race unless they are evil oppressors, and that any talk otherwise is white supremacy.

Be not afraid of the world which cannot destroy the soul. Christians must return to speaking biblically about race. Race exists and it’s good.