The Creation of Race
“In the beginning, God…” Genesis 1:1
“God is Love” 1 John 4:8
In the beginning God created human beings to live in perfect unity. But Adam and Eve decided to reject God and go their own way. They were driven from the Garden to live in a now fallen world. Death was the first great separation. It was the beginning of centuries of human beings devising ways to separate from God and one another.
The truth is, we were all born at war with God. The Bible says in Romans 3 that “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away and they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” From these dark minds the idea of race came into being. Race is the artificial separation of human beings into categories that justify the enslavement and destruction of fellow human beings.
Within each racial category were characteristics allegedly inherent in DNA. Full of arrogance and pride, men decided that only one of these races was superior to all the others. The white race decided the fate of the all black and brown skinned people by casting them in the place of subordinates. This paradigm persists in our day.
I’d like to think that believers in God were immune from the disease of racism, but I would be thinking naively. I experienced racism in the first church I went to. They did not believe in interracial couples (I was the only Black woman in the congregation) and that belief affected my friendship with the young man who brought me to church. Using the Bible, they showed me in Genesis 1 that God created everything “after its kind”, so that meant He didn’t want the races (which never existed in His loving mind) to be together. They twisted the words of God to fit their racist narrative.
Love and bigotry cannot coexist. We are to be proponents of unconditional love, not purveyors of prejudice. I challenge us to be free of the lies we have been taught about those who are different and be carriers of love and healing.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
