I really don’t like how my banging my head against the values of the secular world inspires these blog posts, but then I suppose that’s one of the valid topics of discussion on a platform such as this one.
I was on LinkedIn, which as you might imagine, should be innocuous being business oriented. However. someone with whom I share a Linked in group shared this. It was accompanied by the image at the top, and I’ve been asked to give attribution for it to Dr. Batsheva Guy (a LinkedIn login is required – you can find out more about her at Weebly).
At least in our little corner of the western, post-modern world, there are two kinds of people (well, three actually): Antiracist and Not Racist (and Racist). In fact, from what I’m reading, people who might classify themselves as “Not Racist” might really be considered “Racist” by the “Antiracists.”
As an aside, just looking at the chart above, I don’t fit into any of those “pigeon holes.”
I’ve encountered the concept of Antiracism from a variety of sources, not the least of which is Ibram X. Kendi, author of numerous books on the topic including Antiracist Baby (I kid you not, it’s a real book and it’s not a parody).
The best and most comprehensive summary I’ve found comes from the Smithsonian’s “National Museum of African American History & Culture” called Being Antiracist.
Relative to the Messianic Jewish movement, at least in the past, there have been accusations of a heavy bias toward Jews and Judaism and a “lesser favoring” of the Almighty toward goys (which is pretty much the rest of us). No, I don’t believe the Almighty or Rav Yeshua (Jesus Christ) considers any race to be better or worse than any other, (people in and outside of the faith have their own opinions) but having said that, how to we deal with the concepts of racism, not being racist, and antiracism?
We do know that Israel, the Jewish people (no, the Church isn’t “spiritual Israel”) are considered the apple of the Almighty’s Eye (Zechariah 2:1-9). However, God said he did not choose Israel as his favored people because they were the best, the coolest, the most holy, but rather because they were “stiff-necked” (stubborn) (Exodus 32:9). The idea was if the Almighty could redeem a nation that is so hard to get through to, He can redeem the rest of us.
I’m blowing through a lot of the Bible, but I’m trying to get to a point.
It is true that Jesus himself engaged in discriminatory behavior:
And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely demon-possessed.” But He did not answer her with even a word. And His disciples came up and urged Him, saying, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us!” But He answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” Yet He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And she said, “Yes, Lord; but please help, for even the dogs feed on the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus said to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at once. –Matthew 16:22-28 (NASB)
Yes, he came for “the Lost Sheep of Israel” and not for other peoples, and yes, he did call the Canaanite woman a “dog,” but race or nationality wasn’t his ultimate litmus test; rather it was faith.
And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, begging Him, and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, terribly tormented.” Jesus *said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He was amazed and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be thrown out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment. –Matthew 8:5-13 (NASB)
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we find the famous “Great Commission” where the disciples were commanded to make disciples of all the peoples in all the nations. It’s not like Yeshua’s “long plan” didn’t include the whole world and everyone in it.
I’ve written a lot about how much confusion this introduced into the body of Jewish disciples and how the Apostle Paul was the only one who clearly seized upon this vision, but that’s not the central topic today.
I won’t pretend that in the world of Paul and evangelizing to Romans, Greeks, and the various pagan peoples of the world of that time was easy and without complexities, but in spite of some “problematic” verses involving women and others, the Apostle’s focus was laser-tight. He related the teachings of his master, the Messiah, of Jesus, and he taught his lessons to anyone who would listen. He was very anxious to meet with the Emperor of Rome and to teach him as well.
Although he encouraged slaves to be obedient to their masters (in Rome, slavery was a common institution in that time), Paul considered everyone free and equal as disciples of Messiah (no this didn’t mean he advocated for “One Law” for Jews and Gentiles, but that also isn’t the center of my message today).
He believed anyone and everyone who freely accepted the Word of the Master would enjoy the blessings of the New Covenant including bodily resurrection and a place at the Messiah’s table in the world to come.
While there was racism, division, and strife between the various people groups of the first century of the common era, Paul didn’t preach on antiracism, restitution, or representation. He didn’t suggest as his central lesson that, for example, Romans should be aware of their bias and privileges, listening to their slaves without centering the conversation on their “whiteness,” reading up on white (Roman) supremacy, or speaking out when they heard another Roman saying something racist about a slave.
So, given a Biblical lens, how are we to receive the teachings of Dr. Batsheva Guy, Ibram X. Kendi and a score of similar authorities?
One of the core tenants of Antiracism is that the “oppressor” (anyone white) MUST constantly and completely be thinking about race and racism in every single area of their lives. Antiracism then, becomes “god.”
And like Christians and Jews, the Antiracist is required to pass their understanding of “god” along to their children. I mentioned “Antiracist Baby” above, but Dr. Guy wrote an article called Eight Ways to Raise Antiracist Children as a White Parent.
In Dr. Guy’s example, two white parents adopted two black children. Okay, I get it. You can’t ignore that they’re black and that the white world will probably treat them with a certain amount of adversity. You can’t ignore the questions they’ll ask and you need to be informed on how to answer them, how to protect them, and how to reassure them that they are safe, which is the responsibility of any parent.
However, this particular “lesson” got my attention.
What many parents fail to realize, though, is that we HAVE to talk about racism with our white children. We MUST integrate antiracism education into our everyday lives if we ever have the hope of dismantling white supremacy– after all, we are the oppressors, and it is the oppressors’ job to dismantle systems of oppression. (emph. mine)
Let’s look at this. White parents MUST communicate to their white children that they are the OPPRESSORS. Even if you are a white Antiracist person, you never, ever escape from being an oppressor. That means ALL people of color no matter what, are now and will forever more be OPPRESSED. There is no escape for either group. Antiracism, for the sake of it’s own existence as a movement and a concept absolutely requires those two rigid, eternal categories of people.
Not believers and non-believers, not Jews or Greeks (Gentiles), but oppressors and oppressed.
According to Dictonary.com an oppressor is:
a person or group that exercises authority or power over another in a harsh and burdensome way…
Everyone white is an oppressor. The white children of white parents are oppressors. Thus all white children must be taught in absolute and concrete terms that they are automatically “people who exercise authority or power or over people in a harsh and burdensome way.”
Imagine telling that to your sweet, innocent five-year-old child who up until that moment, didn’t realize they were responsible for oppressing any black, Mexican-American, or indigenous kids in their classroom or who live in their neighborhood (or who are anywhere in the whole world). What would that do to a kid?
I can only imagine Dr. Guy would say I was being harsh or that isn’t how the lesson should be taught, but that’s the real bottom line as I see it. There is never the idea, the possibility that kids could play together, have fun, and become friends, because one will always be an oppressor and the other will always be oppressed. You can never change your title, class, or position in life. Sounds like Antiracism created a caste system, doesn’t it.
In Christianity, it’s a different story. The only “oppressor” is sin and an entity we sometimes call the “Prince of Lies” or the “Adversary.” While human beings are very good at being very bad to each other, if the central message we teach children is that we all belong to God and God loves everyone, then children aren’t asked to take on board the sins and burdens of the world as defined by Antiracist adults.
We don’t teach Christian children that non-Christian kids are bad, wrong, or evil (and any Christian parent who does has well and truly missed the mark). We teach them that believer or not, God loves us and that we share the message of Messiah as a free gift to others. That gift is the doorway leading from slavery to sin and towrd freedom in Messiah. It’s not based on a punitive attitude toward anyone or having to feel bad about ourselves because of “privilege.” We are all equally weak, and equally strong in Messiah, and the only difference is the individual’s choice for or not for the Messiah.
Antiracists wouldn’t see it that way because that ignores their “god,” their central emphasis on race as THE ISSUE in the world. White supremacy and every other form of prejudice and bigotry can and will be defeated by Jesus and the world he is building and indeed, the world to be built upon his return.
…so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. –Philippians 2:10-11 (NASB)
I know that “knee-bending” stuff sounds like slavery, but once we acknowledge that the whole Earth and everyone in it has a King, it is right that we should bow our knee before Him.
None of us has to be lesser and none greater. No oppressors, no oppressed, no telling white kids and black kids they are forever locked into their status because some adult came up with a bright idea and started selling it as “education.”
Yes, Christianity is cast in the role of a “devil” in that the faith is opposed to many of the favored ways of the world. We are the “oppressors” of marginalized and victimized groups. We are accused of vile thoughts and behaviors, and that is part of the burden of being a Christian.
“And you will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved. But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.” –Matthew 10:22-23 (NASB)
Antiracism is only one of the issues with which our faith conflicts. The Bible is replete with instructions to persevere, to remain steadfast, to be ready. It’s not easy. In fact, it would be easier to give in to the ways of the world, and some churches and synagogues have done just that. But then are they like the Antiracists in making something other than the Almighty their “god?”
Morning Meditations 
As I read through this, I found there was no pigeonhole for me as a Torah-adherent Jew. You see, in Genesis the creation of the family of “Adam” doesn’t describe any “races”. There is, in fact an alternative reading of the verse that is traditionally rendered: “Let us make Man in our own image”. A slight variation of the vowel pointings that were added much later than the original text recasts the verse as a preliminary musing by Elohim about the nature of this diverse humanity that He was about to create. Effectively, it envisions that “Man is [to be] made in his [various] images according to [fundamental] resemblances”. Then, only in the following verse do we see that Elohim created the Man in His own image. What this shows us is both the commonality of the spiritual nature and relationship between Elohim and His created humanity, and also the wide diversity of “images”, shapes, sizes, skin colors or shadings, facial features, and more. It does not categorize them as “races”, but as a single family not even distributed into clans or tribes or distinctive cultures – all of which came later, after the tower of Babel incident and its linguistic developments.
In modern Israel, where Jews have been regathered from across the face of virtually the entire globe, we see Jews who share a common heritage and who represent a range of skin-tones (for example) ranging from the palest European shadings to the darkest Ethiopian shadings, with everything in between from Morocco and elsewhere in northern Africa, to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian colorations, to Mediterranean shades, to middle eastern shades, to dark East Indian shades, to east Asian shadings, and more. These are all Jews, of the same people and overall cultural heritage, though they also have subcultural distinctions and characteristics. They are not different “races”, though some would try to mischaracterize them thus in order to foment division rather than unity. But this cultural family displays the spectrum of human variation as a continuum. It reveals the artificiality of racial theorizing and division.
When human desires arise to mistreat or disdain other humans, any excuse will suffice to invent “otherness” to justify the antisocial behavior. The only means to remove the misbehavior is to remove its false justification by emphasizing the true perspective of oneness based on essential equality. Note that “equity” is precisely opposed to equality. Equity is the imputation of value upon a specific object or class of objects, not upon all objects of similar actual or absolute value. Therefore, to deny the divisiveness of race, and the disdain of one race toward another, one must instead deny the existence of any validity to the notion of race. One must focus on individual character and merit and achievement, which are objectively measured and which can be acquired; and one must delegitimize any claim to social value based on natural distinctions that cannot be changed. One must also stand ready to enforce such beneficial standards against any attempts to diminish or destroy them.
Considering that there is only one race of humans, and the artificial division of any of the many colored and physically structured people of the race of human beings is not a ‘race’ but a description of physical variation, I don’t want to be pigeonholed as anti-racist, or racist, or anything in between. You might call me bigoted, as I probably am to some degree, but that has to do with my ever-changing world view, and my personal taste in physical beauty.
Being raised in Southern California in the ‘6os, and of a middle class household, I was never aware of ‘racism’ until the riots about civil rights began. The most beloved child in my class for 10 years of school had very dark skin, but to me, and indeed most of my schoolmates, Jordan was just Jordan. No one ever told us he was ‘negroid’, mostly because in SoCal in the ’60’s, everything to a great degree was live and let live, even skin color.
I agreed with the civil rights movement, because when presented with skin color as a negative issue that deprived people of equal access and treatment, I only saw Jordan, and was appropriately horrified that not everyone in SoCal or elsewhere was seen to be a different shade of normal. I was seven years old. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I met basketball players from other schools that were very dark skinned, and very full of hate for we lighter skinned people over lack of access and equal treatment. Yet I still mostly remember them as being very tall, and threatening, not just darker than my team mostly was.
The hate is what scared me, and not the color, but it remains part of my experience, just as those of a darker color than my Mediterranean shade of brown kin may have only the lighter skinned people they had encountered to shape their ideation of what ideologists call ‘race’. And yet, when I chat with others of darker color than I, and I bring up being Jewish, and discuss the wide range of color Judaism contains, I suddenly become acceptable to them, and able to discuss the foolishness of what is not a race, but a culture and a political ideology with all of us ignoring our shade of skin and different features.
What scares me now is the hate being fomented with all the labels and categories that people use to achieve supremacy in any argument. According to what I hear, anyone who disagrees with another doesn’t consider debating the ideas that are causing the differences in thought and action that are being disputed. It’s a matter of “Agree with me, or I label you”, because those doing the labeling have been taught this is an effective way of shutting opposition down, and silencing opposition. And in these days of the internet and lack of crime control, it does silence opposition.
It is not racism, or anti-racism that is the problem, because anyone who uses those terms is using a large stick to beat others to a pulp over what is a disagreement of what to do and how to do it in any possible difference of ideas.
It is hate we are up against, the hatred of those who refuse to knuckle under to the labels being attached to them when they disagree with the hater.
The church not only isn’t spiritual Israel, it isn’t church. When I was attending synagogue, messianic in the end, the atmosphere was largely to be anti-anti-semitic. For good reason. Clarification: this wasn’t Christianity with a Jewish aesthetic or two. Meanwhile, while church isn’t a replacement Israel… nevertheless, the criticisms and invectives found in the Bible can well apply to The Church or any Christian who fits the shoe (usually with different details).
I grew up non-racist. I didn’t know, until I was almost not a child any longer, that my mom was a racist. It came as a shock. She doesn’t think of herself as racist, but she will one minute sound like an anti-racist and some other moment talk like a racist. I’m not sure what good her anti-racism does when she’s racist. I myself developed some anti-racism because of my experience with her — because I realized there was something latent even in someone who wasn’t violent.
Addendum: I sometimes talk about things according to the literal word used, which can fit for a youngster (as I was referring to myself). However, I was just now looking at your opening graphic (which I didn’t before). I’ve never said (even when a child) anything indicating I don’t “see” color and never have claimed I’m not racist because I have a friend or whatever, and therefore couldn’t possibly be, or thought talking about racism perpetuates it or that joking derisively and so forth is okay so long as I’m not the one who put it out there. I wasn’t “Not Racist” but simply not, or non-racist; it exists (maybe mostly in kids as you’re going to, as you grow up, have to face something you didn’t know was happening if you didn’t know or grapple with it when you have agency if you didn’t when you didn’t but knew). It is because of my faith in G-d that I became anti-racist (as it is necessary). My mom isn’t quite actually anti-racist, more like in denial and not paying attention… nor engaging in self-reflection. Her, basically, only thing that she speaks up about is that she’s not in favor of segregation. It’s better than nothing, I guess. But she will still speak in whispers about people of color. I don’t adhere to grace-only, as faith without works… well:
James 2:17-20 New King James Version (NKJV)
Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
Exodus 22:21
KJV
21 Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
ESV
21 “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
NLT
21 “You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.
MSG
21 “Don’t abuse or take advantage of strangers; you, remember, were once strangers in Egypt.
CSB
21 “You must not exploit a foreign resident or oppress him, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.
Cross References
1. Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19:33; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:14; Deuteronomy 1:16; Deuteronomy 24:17; Ezekiel 22:29
2. Deuteronomy 10:19; Deuteronomy 27:19; Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5
BIBLE EXPOSE : Last Trumpet/Last Warning of God (1Cor. 15:52 at 1Tes. 4:16)Pass it on…
May our living lord God may bless the readers of this letter. Because we have already proclaim our many Bible expose letters to many gentile religions! But were only ignored inspite of the fact that they were all been condemned of an irrevocable accurseness judgment by Jesus Christ in Mt. 25. 31-41. However, Jesus Christ was also bothered of this judgment, that will create problem to his many adventist believers that were only decieve by those gentile false religion which promote international salvation! So, he made a consulation order message by giving them second chance hope, if they will only submit and comply to his Will. But it was written in a hidden message in parable style by A. John in Jn. 5:28-29. So in verse 28, notice the word “for in the coming hour,” (this is a terminology which analogically means to the coming 2nd Advent Covenant Period), “which all in the grave” (analogically refers to those dead in faith believers and “the grave is analogically refers to a false religion), “shall hear his voice” (literally will listen all those dead in faith to Jesus Christ). And in Verse 29, “And shall come forth” (refers to those dead in faith believers to come out of their grave or false gentile religion), “they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life;” (which means to refers to those righteous believers doing good work will resurrect to Eternal Life), “and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” Now its very clear that Jesus is expecting a very fruitful result but be aware after this last message follows the destruction of the world or the end of the world will be apply.
LOVE:New Jerusalem-Holy City