Until now, and following the despicable killing of George Floyd, I’ve purposely held off stepping into the Black Lives Matter (BLM) debate. Opinions are so polarised and for many supporters of BLM, a white European male cannot possibly understand the injustice felt by black people. I decided to reach for my keyboard only after being asked by a number of people for comments on the issue, coupled with a concern about the division that is occurring in the church over it. For Christians, this is a time for cool heads and mature discussion, believing always that our unity and hope is in Christ alone. Here my focus is particularly on worldview matters, things that with so much passion around, we are prone to miss. Let me throw out a bunch of scattered thoughts.
(1) Racism is real
I was raised in inner-city Manchester and attended a school where only ten percent of us were white. Racial tensions and the accompanying violence were a way of life in my neighbourhood and classrooms. I remember travelling on a bus one day. As two white men disembarked, they turned to the driver, a black man, and yelled, ‘You black bastard’. I have never forgotten that moment, the feeling of compassion for the driver but even more, the embarrassment of being a fellow white to those racist men. I am glad that in time I was able to live in Africa and for a season devote my life to teaching some of the poorest people in the world, all of whom were black.
We live in a fallen world and racism is one of the consequences of sin. The temptation that Adam and Eve succumbed to at the beginning was to be as God, deciding good and evil. Sin is rebellion against our Creator, but that rebellion is driven by pride, the desire for an inflated position, for a god-like status. If that is true, it is no surprise that we competitively jostle for power with one another, that we separate from one another, and that we put others down to boost our own egos. If there is something we can seize hold of to etch out our importance relative to another, too often we take it. It might be the brand of car we drive, the size of our house, the mobile phone we possess, our intelligence, our nationality, our gender, our class or our race. This process is one of the main dynamics of sin; we define ourselves positively in relation to others whom we decide are inferior. This explains much of the reason for racism and the pain that comes in its wake. During these days it would be helpful for us who are white believers, to take time to listen to the stories of our non-white Christian brothers and sisters. It is part of the compassion and humility that should accompany the gospel.
(2) Let’s speak out about racism and abortion and LGBTQ
One of the elders of my church in Liverpool made the comment last night that Christians cannot remain silent on the BLM issue. I agree with him; we need to formulate a careful Biblical response. What follows is not a suggestion that the church should say less about this issue, just a check about our motivation for doing so at the present time. What concerns me is the contrast with other issues that the church has been much slower to speak out about. Opposing racism is easy because it attracts the applause of the media and wins us friends in the world. But the question we need to ask is, will we also speak out against abortion and the LGBTQ agenda with the same conviction, even when it draws the wrath of our society? My point is that the evangelical church in this land needs to be very careful that our calling to be prophetic isn’t blunted by a desire to be flattered on the one hand or by fear on the other. We need to settle it in our hearts that our motivation for speaking out on any issue is driven by Biblical faithfulness and saying what is true, never by a desire to make friends or avoid enemies in the world. If virtue signalling sets the agenda for the church of Jesus Christ, we are in deep trouble.
(3) An image of God has been slain
To state the obvious, the horrific killing of George Floyd was a despicable act and has aroused understandable anger. For the perpetrator(s), the full force of the law must be brought to bear, and due punishment imposed. Minnesota is one of the states in America where the death penalty can’t be applied for murder, but whether or not one believes in it or not, the reason for its imposition – by God – after Noah’s flood is full of significance:
Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed;
For in the image of God
He made man.
Genesis 9:6
After Noah emerges from the ark, God promises never again to control human evil by means of a flood (He introduces the rainbow as a symbol of that promise), instead the death penalty is to be used: ‘By man his blood shall be shed’. This can hardly be a call for tit for tat vengeance imposed by a wronged individual or family, but it is a call for the death penalty to be imposed by a society in its pursuit of justice. But what concerns me here is the reason given for the death penalty: the person murdered is an image of God.
The implications of this are huge and not given enough thought. While conceding that George Floyd’s death may well have had a racial motive and that historically skin colour has been used as a reason to establish a hierarchy of human value, in the Biblical worldview Floyd’s value comes from being created as an image of God, not from his skin colour. And what incredible value it confers: he was made to image the Eternal God. That’s breath taking! For that reason, if murder is proven – according to Genesis 9 – the severest response ought to be required for those who killed him, the death penalty. Interestingly contemporary opponents of the death penalty invariably suggest that state execution diminishes the value of life. This text argues that the exact opposite is true, the death penalty is a statement of the value of life i.e. if you kill someone, the act is so serious that only by the death of the perpetrator can we make a statement big enough about the seriousness of slaying an image of God. All other responses diminish the greatness of human life. Obviously, Floyd’s murderers will not face capital punishment but nevertheless this commentary is helpful in giving us an insight into how God values human life and how seriously He considers the taking of a life.
(4) This is Darwinism after all
In secular societies like the United Kingdom and the United States, when we ask what prevailing theory explains how we got here, it is the one given by Charles Darwin in his book, On the Origin of Species (1859). Virtually every child in every school is fed Darwinian evolution as a matter of fact not theory. Admittedly, some of the best minds in the world are questioning whether or not Darwin was correct – many of them not Christian (Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noj4phMT9OE) – but nevertheless, to question Darwin still takes a great act of bravery. But what is Darwinism? It is the survival of the fittest: the idea that strong creatures survive directly at the expense of the weak. Here is my point: if this is a Darwinian world, why all the fuss about Floyd’s death? If white people with their privilege control the world, being black means he is part of the weak crowd and can expect to be eliminated. Moreover, we can go even further, if all we are is an accidental collection of molecules, programmed to survive, occurring in an accidental universe, black lives don’t matter, white lives don’t matter, no lives matter. Why call for justice when justice is impossible to define? In a world where there is no truth, only power – as the postmodernists would have us believe – every version of justice will be different anyway. Adolf Hitler’s version will be different to Mother Teresa’s, and who can say which is correct? This point is worth making because it reveals the folly of the secular worldview and the inevitable inconsistences that follow in its wake. Thankfully, we don’t take Darwinism to its logical conclusions on race and we do value black lives, but only because our Christian memory lingers on (for now at least).
(5) The all-wicked West?
Who can doubt that white people have oppressed black people through much of history? The slave trade was a terrible episode in our history and colonialism resulted in much bloodshed. But I do think that when the West is singled out as being the worst culprit for oppression of others, we need to ask some hard questions. Sometimes it takes living in another nation to realise the massive benefits of life in the United Kingdom or the United States. Just the ability to protest – about racism or anything for that matter – is far from normal in this world. Try protesting in an Islamic nation, or in China or Russia or in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Or try getting a fair trial. Try finding a government in these lands that cares about its people rather than itself. Moreover, when we call Britain a racist society we need to ask, compared to what and compared to where? In recent years the Chinese Government has incarcerated a suspected million Uighurs for ‘re-education’ (Cf. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45812419). Human rights are irrelevant for the Chinese Communist Party as is the rule of law. Where are the protests outside the Chinese Embassy? As attempts are made to remove the statue of Winston Churchill from Parliament Square, we need to remember that although he was a committed Colonialist (who wasn’t in those days?), he did lead this nation in the defeat of arguably the greatest racist ever, Adolf Hitler. Going further back in history, Britain abolished slavery in her Empire in 1807 and thousands of Royal Navy sailors died enforcing the law. Do we celebrate them?
This brings us to the crux issue, the Black Lives Matter movement. Although everyone who believes the gospel must affirm that black lives matter, embracing the Black Lives Matter ideology – in the entirety of its aims – is quite another thing. Just a cursory read of the Black Lives Matter website (https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/) reveals that the leaders of the movement have an agenda far bigger than perhaps many of the protestors on the streets realise. It is their stated aim to abolish the free market economy; they strongly support gender fluidity and seek to eradicate any assumption that heterosexuality is the default assumption for human sexuality. Freedom of conscience and expression are irrelevant to the revolution they seek. One thing you can be sure of, they are not friendly towards Bible-believing Christians! What they demand is nothing less than classical Marxism with a contemporary spin – no longer the class struggle but the victim struggle. As a indicator of their intolerance towards others, it is interesting to see how, in some American cities, Jewish shops and synagogues have been targeted by BLM protestors, the very people who arguably are the most victimised group in history. (https://www.melaniephillips.com/america-revolutionary-society/). The testimony of history is that every Marxist utopian dream ends in a nightmare. One wonders how many more millions have to die before we learn our lesson.
(6) That the church may be one
Jesus prayed to His Father in John 17 for the church to be one. One big concern about what is occurring in the church with its divisions over BLM is there is a threat to that oneness. Identity politics insists that the way we understand the world will always be dependent upon our race or sexuality or culture. If the church believes that, collective unity in Christ will be impossible and in the end we will be left with separate black and white churches. The BLM movement suggests that black and white people will always read the world differently and so have differing views of justice and truth. We must reject this will all our strength. Justice and truth have their origin in the immutable God who has revealed himself in his word to all people regardless of race or culture. Moreover, the weightiness of the Gospel must be sufficient to overcome the differences between us. Since sending out the first draft of this post, my friend Bill Tonge wrote a response. He makes a very helpful comment about the difference wisdom of Christ and the wisdom of the world:
“A further consideration is what is the Spirit, through the Word, saying to the churches. There are many winds of doctrine lashing the church just at the moment; one feels slightly storm tossed and dizzy. I am deeply convinced that Christ in all His fullness presented to us in the Word, is the answer to racism, to gender politicking, to every storm blowing. It is in knowing Him, his teaching once for all delivered to the saints through the apostolic testimony of the New Testament that only true and conclusive answers can be found. We need to remain centred in the person and work of Christ. I fear not holding the Head, many will be led astray by the winds of doctrine blowing around the globe. Not paying attention to the foundation that has already been laid and somehow thinking we must utilise the wisdom of the world, the unhinged wisdom of men, is a very dangerous precedent.”
(7) Christianity is our only hope
Finally, a word to my black brothers and sisters in the church. It is very easy to get swept up in the hope that the Black Lives Matter movement promises, a world without racism and discrimination. But here we all need to be incredibly careful; while recognising that racial injustice may be diminished by the BLM in some ways, only in Christianity is there real hope for a better world. The secularist’s diagnosis of any problem will always be inadequate, as will any solution it proposes, since it begins with a false foundation. It is good to remind ourselves that even when we are thinking about truth, justice, and human dignity, we’re thinking Christianly. None of these virtues emerges from secularism, especially in its Marxist form. Truth doesn’t emerge from a world where only molecules exist, and justice and dignity don’t arise out of natural selection. They are collectively meaningless in fact. Unlike Darwinism where the fit survive, in the true story of the world, the fittest (Christ) sacrifices Himself for the survival of the weakest. Only in that story is there hope for change in this life and the promise of perfect justice in a new heavens and new earth in the next. Christianity is the revolution; we don’t need to join another one.
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/otto-yamamoto/15305646874/
First published on Challenging Thinking on 2020-06-19. Reproduced here in the CWT essay archive without style or semantic changes.