Racism: The Ineradicable Sin?
For
today’s radical Left, which now has virtually uncontested control of
the Democratic Party, racism is the universal and unforgiveable sin. It
is also considered a sin that so permeates society that it is
ineradicable except by a societal revolution -- one that completely
rearranges what is deemed an inherently oppressive hierarchy continually
contaminated by microaggressions passed down from tyrannical generation
to generation.
It’s
well to recall that every age has had a version of a universal and
unforgiveable sin, a mark of Cain signifying an ineradicable stain
condemning the offending race, ethnicity or class to perpetual
ostracization from the rest of society.
For
the thirteenth-century poet Dante, the worst sin was betrayal.
Betrayers who like the biblical Cain betrayed and slew those closest to
them, were consigned to the Ninth Circle of Hell, where they were
eternally frozen in ice up to their necks. Julius Caesar’s assassin
Brutus lived in that circle, remorsefully and eternally -- yet
ineffectively -- shedding tears of ice.
J.
Robert Nash notes that for many living in England’s Victorian era, “The
morality of the family, no matter what the class, was passionately
clung to. To abandon the abiding concept of marriage and the family was
to commit the unforgivable sin, the unpardonable betrayal.” Those who
broke the code were consigned to the status of outcasts, made eternal
wanderers like Cain.
In
modern times, the inequities of wealth and the classes seen as
wrongfully possessing too much occupied the minds of communists, who
sought to rearrange social hierarchy by redistribution of goods and
status.
It
is also well to remember that numbers of Christians in the American
South believed the mark of Cain and the curse of Ham rested on blacks in
perpetuity. While the biblical story of Cain never mentions race, even
some of the earliest church fathers
believed Cain’s skin turned black after he murdered his brother Abel.
Later theologians would perpetrate the idea that the descendants of
Noah’s son Ham were perpetually doomed to be servants of others. This is
to say nothing of the distortion of the New Testament admonitions to
Roman slaves to obey their masters.
An
entire theological edifice was erected to support the odious system of
chattel slavery that once characterized the South. The idea that God
intended blacks to remain subject to their owners, most but not all of
whom were white, continued to be fixed in the minds and actions of many
who considered themselves to be Christians. Thankfully, today virtually
none who call themselves Christians continue to believe in the malignant
dogmas that supported slavery.
The
pernicious idea that a particular race or class of people bears the
mark of Cain and so is inherently inferior and deserving of lower status
than others has always been an inclination of the human race. That
tendency has certainly not been confined to America, but historically
has been and is found in all cultures and among all races. Every empire
in history has deemed certain peoples as inferior beings who should be
conquered.
The
use of a single pejorative lens through which to view certain races and
classes and through which to interpret all of humanity and its history
always results in societal distortions and sometimes unmitigated
disaster.
The Stalinist era considered the kulak class
of Russia inherently wicked because of their supposedly undeserved
prosperity and evil desire to keep what they had worked for. Millions of
them starved to death when the Soviet government condemned them as a
class, seizing their grain and livestock while collectivizing their
land.
Though the genocide of Armenian Christians
has never been acknowledged by the government of Turkey, hundreds of
thousands were driven out of their homes into the wilderness, there to
die exposure and starvation. Many were tortured; some were even
crucified.
As most know, the targeting of Jews as an inherently evil race resulted in the near-extermination of European and Slavic Jewry.
Knowledge
of the awful results when a particular class, ethnicity or race is
deemed as leprous to society and therefore worthy of being diminished,
set aside or even killed is a reason why any idea the white race alone
is inherently and irretrievably -- in fact, almost genetically --
disposed to the evils of racism should be regarded with deep, deep
suspicion.
The
current trends in academia -- or what passes for academia -- in which
whites are lectured about “white privilege;” where the separation of
nonwhites into aggrieved groups which close the door to participation by
whites; where whites’ contributions to literature and history are
increasingly disdained; and where colonialism is viewed as a purely
white phenomenon, are purely toxic and smack of deliberate racism. Every
race has been guilty of colonization and oppression, not just white
Europeans. It’s well to recall the history of empires. Mongols, for
instance, destroyed Kievan Rus and killed or enslaved Russian whites.
Add
the media’s and Hollywood’s endless virtue signaling of their own
sinlessness while eternally questing for microaggressions committed by
whites -- all the while busily revising or openly destroying the memory
of the past, and it is difficult if not impossible not to see the onus
of the mark of Cain now is being stamped on whites by radicalized fringe
groups.
It
is now only too common to write and speak of white people as inherently
guilty of racism -- born to it, so to speak. Such a theory is a new and
revisionist theological version of the older and more accurate
theological doctrine of original sin, which essentially acknowledges the
truth that every human being ever born, regardless of race or class,
will do wrong things. The doctrine of original sin notes that every
human being bears a verisimilitude of the Mark of Cain, which mark is
often characterized by anger and hatred toward one’s fellow human being.
Anger and resentment of the “other” is, as Christ pointed out, an
indicator of murderous intent, be it killing outright or by degrees.
Singling
out the white race as now bearing the mark of Cain will not rectify the
sin of racism. Making whites bear eternal guilt and punishment for past
and current offenses will not heal wounds and certainly will not
expurgate the sins of the past -- which sins do need to be remembered,
repented of and rejected.
What
will be achieved is the corruption of the legal principle that every
person is responsible for the sins he or she commits and that no one is
to be held accountable for the sins of one’s predecessors.
What
will be achieved is a caste system characterized by race, some of which
are considered untouchable because of the color of their skin; some of
which are considered intrinsically more wicked than others; some of
which must pay reparations for the sins of the fathers from generation
to generation.
What
will be achieved is a rigid stratification and hierarchical order that
undoes the great, ongoing, and heroic effort of America to give every
person a chance to make of one’s self whatever one can. The permeability
of the American classes will be vitiated, and a new version of
apartheid will rise, accompanied by all the inequities inherent in such
an abhorrent social system.
Benjamin
Disraeli, once prime minister of England, noted in his novel Sybil what
he saw as the three successive great influences in England: “…The
influence of races in our early ages, of the Church in our middle, and
of parties in our modern destiny are three great moving and modifying
powers.”
Though
he did not mean “race” in quite the same way as we moderns, it is fair
to say that for the better part of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, the Church’s and political parties’ social modifying powers
have given way to ideologies based on race, class, and ethnicity. Who
among us can forget the odium of Nazi ideology based on hatred of
so-called “inferior” races and peoples?
Such
ideologies have been and are characterized by the untenable idea that
one race (or class) is superior to another, and that one race or class
deserves to be considered inherently unequal by reason of birth into
their particular race or social class. The horrific results of such
ideologies are recorded and incontestable history. Tens of millions have
died because it was thought such tainted races and classes deserved to
die.
A
deliberate remembrance of the Jewish and Christian belief in the origin
of mankind and its status as created in the image of God is the remedy
to racism, not matter what form it takes.
As
Dutch theologian and stateman Abraham Kuyper put it in his lectures on
the influence of Calvinism on politics in the Western world, “Man is
created by man, and by virtue of his birth he is organically united with
the whole human race. Together we form one humanity. All the human race
is from one blood.”
Martin
Luther King, Jr. would echo Kuyper’s words in speech after speech. He
would lose his life because of his bold proclamation of the universality
of humanity and his reminder that all derive their value from their
Creator. How often did King reprise the Hebrew prophet Malachi’s cry,
“Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?”
It
is past time to recover the idea that every human being has his or her
origin from the Creator. It is past time to recall that every one of us
is inevitably sinful yet has access to redemption. It is past time to
put aside the pernicious ideologies based on race and class -- whatever
form they take.
It
is past time to take on the responsibility for one another Cain
rejected when he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” in response to God’s
question, “Where is your brother Abel?”
We are one another’s keepers.
today’s radical Left, which now has virtually uncontested control of
the Democratic Party, racism is the universal and unforgiveable sin. It
is also considered a sin that so permeates society that it is
ineradicable except by a societal revolution -- one that completely
rearranges what is deemed an inherently oppressive hierarchy continually
contaminated by microaggressions passed down from tyrannical generation
to generation.
It’s
well to recall that every age has had a version of a universal and
unforgiveable sin, a mark of Cain signifying an ineradicable stain
condemning the offending race, ethnicity or class to perpetual
ostracization from the rest of society.
For
the thirteenth-century poet Dante, the worst sin was betrayal.
Betrayers who like the biblical Cain betrayed and slew those closest to
them, were consigned to the Ninth Circle of Hell, where they were
eternally frozen in ice up to their necks. Julius Caesar’s assassin
Brutus lived in that circle, remorsefully and eternally -- yet
ineffectively -- shedding tears of ice.
J.
Robert Nash notes that for many living in England’s Victorian era, “The
morality of the family, no matter what the class, was passionately
clung to. To abandon the abiding concept of marriage and the family was
to commit the unforgivable sin, the unpardonable betrayal.” Those who
broke the code were consigned to the status of outcasts, made eternal
wanderers like Cain.
In
modern times, the inequities of wealth and the classes seen as
wrongfully possessing too much occupied the minds of communists, who
sought to rearrange social hierarchy by redistribution of goods and
status.
It
is also well to remember that numbers of Christians in the American
South believed the mark of Cain and the curse of Ham rested on blacks in
perpetuity. While the biblical story of Cain never mentions race, even
some of the earliest church fathers
believed Cain’s skin turned black after he murdered his brother Abel.
Later theologians would perpetrate the idea that the descendants of
Noah’s son Ham were perpetually doomed to be servants of others. This is
to say nothing of the distortion of the New Testament admonitions to
Roman slaves to obey their masters.
An
entire theological edifice was erected to support the odious system of
chattel slavery that once characterized the South. The idea that God
intended blacks to remain subject to their owners, most but not all of
whom were white, continued to be fixed in the minds and actions of many
who considered themselves to be Christians. Thankfully, today virtually
none who call themselves Christians continue to believe in the malignant
dogmas that supported slavery.
The
pernicious idea that a particular race or class of people bears the
mark of Cain and so is inherently inferior and deserving of lower status
than others has always been an inclination of the human race. That
tendency has certainly not been confined to America, but historically
has been and is found in all cultures and among all races. Every empire
in history has deemed certain peoples as inferior beings who should be
conquered.
The
use of a single pejorative lens through which to view certain races and
classes and through which to interpret all of humanity and its history
always results in societal distortions and sometimes unmitigated
disaster.
The Stalinist era considered the kulak class
of Russia inherently wicked because of their supposedly undeserved
prosperity and evil desire to keep what they had worked for. Millions of
them starved to death when the Soviet government condemned them as a
class, seizing their grain and livestock while collectivizing their
land.
Though the genocide of Armenian Christians
has never been acknowledged by the government of Turkey, hundreds of
thousands were driven out of their homes into the wilderness, there to
die exposure and starvation. Many were tortured; some were even
crucified.
As most know, the targeting of Jews as an inherently evil race resulted in the near-extermination of European and Slavic Jewry.
Knowledge
of the awful results when a particular class, ethnicity or race is
deemed as leprous to society and therefore worthy of being diminished,
set aside or even killed is a reason why any idea the white race alone
is inherently and irretrievably -- in fact, almost genetically --
disposed to the evils of racism should be regarded with deep, deep
suspicion.
The
current trends in academia -- or what passes for academia -- in which
whites are lectured about “white privilege;” where the separation of
nonwhites into aggrieved groups which close the door to participation by
whites; where whites’ contributions to literature and history are
increasingly disdained; and where colonialism is viewed as a purely
white phenomenon, are purely toxic and smack of deliberate racism. Every
race has been guilty of colonization and oppression, not just white
Europeans. It’s well to recall the history of empires. Mongols, for
instance, destroyed Kievan Rus and killed or enslaved Russian whites.
Add
the media’s and Hollywood’s endless virtue signaling of their own
sinlessness while eternally questing for microaggressions committed by
whites -- all the while busily revising or openly destroying the memory
of the past, and it is difficult if not impossible not to see the onus
of the mark of Cain now is being stamped on whites by radicalized fringe
groups.
It
is now only too common to write and speak of white people as inherently
guilty of racism -- born to it, so to speak. Such a theory is a new and
revisionist theological version of the older and more accurate
theological doctrine of original sin, which essentially acknowledges the
truth that every human being ever born, regardless of race or class,
will do wrong things. The doctrine of original sin notes that every
human being bears a verisimilitude of the Mark of Cain, which mark is
often characterized by anger and hatred toward one’s fellow human being.
Anger and resentment of the “other” is, as Christ pointed out, an
indicator of murderous intent, be it killing outright or by degrees.
Singling
out the white race as now bearing the mark of Cain will not rectify the
sin of racism. Making whites bear eternal guilt and punishment for past
and current offenses will not heal wounds and certainly will not
expurgate the sins of the past -- which sins do need to be remembered,
repented of and rejected.
What
will be achieved is the corruption of the legal principle that every
person is responsible for the sins he or she commits and that no one is
to be held accountable for the sins of one’s predecessors.
What
will be achieved is a caste system characterized by race, some of which
are considered untouchable because of the color of their skin; some of
which are considered intrinsically more wicked than others; some of
which must pay reparations for the sins of the fathers from generation
to generation.
What
will be achieved is a rigid stratification and hierarchical order that
undoes the great, ongoing, and heroic effort of America to give every
person a chance to make of one’s self whatever one can. The permeability
of the American classes will be vitiated, and a new version of
apartheid will rise, accompanied by all the inequities inherent in such
an abhorrent social system.
Benjamin
Disraeli, once prime minister of England, noted in his novel Sybil what
he saw as the three successive great influences in England: “…The
influence of races in our early ages, of the Church in our middle, and
of parties in our modern destiny are three great moving and modifying
powers.”
Though
he did not mean “race” in quite the same way as we moderns, it is fair
to say that for the better part of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, the Church’s and political parties’ social modifying powers
have given way to ideologies based on race, class, and ethnicity. Who
among us can forget the odium of Nazi ideology based on hatred of
so-called “inferior” races and peoples?
Such
ideologies have been and are characterized by the untenable idea that
one race (or class) is superior to another, and that one race or class
deserves to be considered inherently unequal by reason of birth into
their particular race or social class. The horrific results of such
ideologies are recorded and incontestable history. Tens of millions have
died because it was thought such tainted races and classes deserved to
die.
A
deliberate remembrance of the Jewish and Christian belief in the origin
of mankind and its status as created in the image of God is the remedy
to racism, not matter what form it takes.
As
Dutch theologian and stateman Abraham Kuyper put it in his lectures on
the influence of Calvinism on politics in the Western world, “Man is
created by man, and by virtue of his birth he is organically united with
the whole human race. Together we form one humanity. All the human race
is from one blood.”
Martin
Luther King, Jr. would echo Kuyper’s words in speech after speech. He
would lose his life because of his bold proclamation of the universality
of humanity and his reminder that all derive their value from their
Creator. How often did King reprise the Hebrew prophet Malachi’s cry,
“Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?”
It
is past time to recover the idea that every human being has his or her
origin from the Creator. It is past time to recall that every one of us
is inevitably sinful yet has access to redemption. It is past time to
put aside the pernicious ideologies based on race and class -- whatever
form they take.
It
is past time to take on the responsibility for one another Cain
rejected when he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” in response to God’s
question, “Where is your brother Abel?”
We are one another’s keepers.
