At present, I read or listen almost daily to something on the topic of racial justice. By God’s grace, I was confronted about a year ago by a Black sister. She pointed out that the present crisis of racial injustice warranted an “all hands on deck” type of focus among Christians. Furthermore, because White Evangelicals have historically failed so continually on this issue, we should all be working on it and teaching on it. I have taken that exhortation seriously. Therefore, I will take the next several posts to look at passages from the Bible which relate to these issues.
I am a teacher of the Scriptures and of theology. As you know, my specialty is the group of passages directly addressing the roles of women and men. As a teacher, I expect a fairly stern judgement on my teaching content, when I come before my heavenly Father (James 3:1-2, Matthew 5:19). So I try hard to get it right when I teach, and when I am unsure of something, I do my best to clearly teach that there are differences of opinion about interpreting some hard passages.
James 2 also teaches us that if we break one (small) part of the Law, we are guilty of breaking the whole Law. Regarding the issue of racial injustice, if we White Evangelicals are right about commandments regarding sexuality and gender roles and the humanity of the unborn, but complicit in or participating in racism, we have broken the whole Law. This is no small omission.
I had already begun writing this post when someone at church mentioned an interview Tim Keller did with Carey Nieuwhof in the spring. I was planning to write about the divide I see in Bible preaching churches between those that teach for social justice but discard historic Christian teaching about gender, sexuality and abortion, and those who persist in teaching on gender, sexuality and abortion, but say social justice is not a part of the Gospel, or not a part of the mission of the Church. Then Keller came along and said much of what I was thinking. This is a transcript of part of his interview (and the transcriber may have made some errors, but the meaning comes through). If you would like to read the whole interview, you can find it here.
Tim Keller: “Well, the political polarization, yes. Okay. Here’s where I would go. The political polarization that’s happening now is a major challenge for churches, because here’s my reading of the Bible. My reading of the Bible says that Christians ought to be sold out for racial justice, that all races are equal on the image of God. They should be deeply concerned about the poor, and the marginalized. They should be pro-life, and they should believe at least for Christians that sex should only be between a man and woman in marriage. Now, those four things. The early church was marked by them, we know that. Two of those look very conservative, two of those look very liberal, and so, right now what’s happening is since those four things are never combined in any political party, they’re not combined in any other institution other than Catholic social teaching, and biblical Christianity.
And so, what happens is there’s enormous pressure, enormous pressure everywhere in the country for churches to major in two of them, and get quiet about two of them. Here in New York, huge pressure for the churches in New York City to talk about racial justice, and caring about the poor everybody applauds, but if you say we’re pro-life, or we think sex should be only between a man and woman in marriage is the people are going to pick at you. I would say in the middle of Alabama, if an evangelical pastor starts to preach about all four of those things, a lot of the people are going to get nervous about the racial justice and poverty things, so that sounds kind of liberal, that sounds kind of like, “Wait a minute, what are you doing here?” And so, I don’t know anywhere where it seems to me that there’s a kind of red evangelicalism, and a blue evangelicalism, and almost everywhere I see people like play up two of those, and play down two of those, or even actually stop believing in two of those. And, that’s because these are packaged deals. The political parties say you can’t have them together, you have to in other words to be a Democrat, or be a Republican for example, be Fox News or MSNBC. You just can’t keep those things together, and so, that is to me the biggest challenge for Christian leaders. How do you be committed to the whole range? So, that’s the early church, it’s biblical.”
As a teacher of the Bible, I want to distinguish between our biblical teaching and practice, and our participation in our country’s democracy. The Scriptures circumscribe the teaching and practice of the Church. Moreover, they teach us that our primary identity is as a citizen of heaven (Philiipians 3:20). The Constitution and laws of our country circumscribe our obligations as citizens, and the Scriptures also teach us to submit to our governing authorities (Romans 13:1). Our heavenly citizenship does not mean that we don’t seek to vote and influence our governing authorities according to God’s truth which aims not only for God’s glory but the flourishing of humanity. But we live in a pluralistic society, not a Christian one, and therefore we cannot expect our democratic government to enforce all biblical teaching. Because our political parties are not Christian, neither they, nor their candidates, will perfectly represent a biblical perspective. What is required of us as believers is to pray and vote with as much accordance to biblical values as possible.
I’ve quoted Keller now two posts in a row. I find him helpful and reasonable and observant of our culture. Picking up on the ideas from my last post, that we have an inflated view of ourselves as humans and a deflated view of God, I believe many Northeastern churches are feeling enormous pressure to measure up with the agreed upon tolerance and progressive thinking which is predicated upon fair treatment of all humans in our pluralistic society regardless of race, creed, gender, sexuality, etc. I support equal treatment of all humans in my country whole-heartedly and yet I have a responsibility to continue to teach the Bible faithfully. I believe I must teach it all, not just the culturally accepted parts. This is part of what it means for all Christians to humble themselves and exalt Him – to believe that God knows better than we do how we should live as His people, the creatures He made.
God’s judgment is the judgment that ultimately matters, not how other people perceive us. Our treatment and obedience to God’s Word is not a political issue, to be modified or followed based on our preferred voting patterns. It is an expression of our fear of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:6 says “So keep the commands of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and fearing him.” John 14:15 says, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.” I think that means all of them.
On this blog I have taken great care to write what my long biblical study on men and women has yielded. I care about obedience to God in men’s and women’s roles because I believe God knows how He made us and how we can thrive. I also find in the Scriptures strong support for the sanctity of all human life. One way I apply that is in concern for the protection of the unborn. Those represent two typical concerns of my evangelical tradition. However, I also, like Keller, believe the Bible clearly teaches that Christians should be “sold out” for racial justice, and that we are all equals in God’s eyes irrespective of race. So just as we have spent a lot of time on men and women, and what the Scriptures say about them, I also want to write about the other two things the early church got right, race and social justice. My next few posts will be on these topics.