In the Beginning: Christ is Supreme
“How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations
You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.” Isaiah 14:12-14
The archangel Lucifer wanted to be supreme. Because of his arrogance, he was kicked out of heaven forever. The fall of Satan was the entrance of darkness into God’s universe. Sin did not begin with Adam; it was continued through him. We have to get a grasp of this to understand the insidious roots of pride in our human nature. That pride is the cause of the hatred and destruction we are witnessing today.
In order to gain a deeper understanding of white supremacy, we have to look at history. One of the books that has been a great help to me is, The History of White People, by renowned historian Nell Irvin Painter. She writes that: “…race is an idea, not a fact, and its questions demand answers from the conceptual rather than the factual realm. (Introduction)” Race was created by fallible human beings to account for their differences. Painter delves into deep detail about this creation. In the 1700s, German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, had a theory that humans could be divided into five groups. Within the five groups was the category of Caucasian, a people that came from the area of Caucasus. He believed these people were the first humans (the first humans migrated from Africa) and that they were the most beautiful people on earth, inherently superior to all others. That thinking infiltrated the minds of Europeans and so the seed of supremacy began to grow and spread in the institutions of colonization, slavery, apartheid, genocide, Jim Crow, and other evils that pitted man against his fellow man. Yet, as a true anthropologist, Blumenbach also believed that all people were one and the same species. Scientists today have proven that we are biologically and genetically the same. There is no superior “race”.
Though Satan has wreaked havoc in God’s creation, God was not without remedy to bring His creation back together. In Ephesians 2:14-16, the body of Jesus on the Cross is the place where God destroyed the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile and brought peace: “ For He Himself is our peace, Who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.” The hostility that separated Jew and Gentile is put to death in the body of Christ. Hatred has been defeated by love. There is no supremacy but Christ’s supremacy: “ For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.” Colossians 1:16-18. None can claim the place that Christ holds. No one.
