How did we get to the place in America where the Southern Poverty Law Center, which funds and foments the very hate groups it supposedly exist to fight, became the gold standard for defining and designating a hate group? How did we get to the place in America where the guilty verdict of a black teen, Karmelo Anthony, who fatally stabbed a white teen, Austin Metcalf, is protested on the grounds that it was a justifiable homicide, simply because of the color of the skin pigmentation of the killer and the killed? On and on we could go with questions like these, but the answer to them all is the same. Race has become an idol in America that everyone is expected to either exalt above everything or else end up being excoriated everywhere as a racist.
Many present-day Americans have turned their race into their idol. It is always first and foremost in their minds. It comes before everything else, including truth and justice. Regardless of everything else, these people who bow before their colored idols insist that the overriding determining factor in everything should be the color of one's skin pigmentation.
If any member of their race is arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for a crime, police brutality spawned by bigotry and prejudiced jurisprudence administered by judges with racist motives is always to blame. There is simply no possibility of a crime being committed by anyone of their color. Instead, every time anyone of their color is taken into custody by a cop or convicted by a court it is immediately chalked up to our country’s irredeemable institutional racism.
Undoubtedly, modern-day America has fallen prey to many ills that have proven terminal to our country. One of them is certainly “white guilt.” White guilt is the belief that white Americans must ever bear the inescapable guilt of our forefathers’ crimes against people of color. The past atrocities of slavery and segregation must now be perpetually paid for by white Americans, despite the fact that present-day white Americans had nothing to do with the perpetration of these crimes and that our country has long since repented of them and made great strides to rectify them. Still, nothing can resolve white Americans from our forefathers’ guilt nor cleanse our “racist” hearts of the evil of inbred “bigotry.”
All of this is predicated on the assumption of America’s irremediable institutional racism. Ironically, such an assumption is based on the classic definition of prejudice. The word prejudice is defined as a preconceived idea about someone on the basis of their race. Institutional racism is therefore a classic example of prejudice, since it is the preconceived idea that every white person is a racist because all white people are inherent racists. Granted, there may be no evidence of racism in a white person’s life and the white person may believe himself/herself to be free of prejudice; nevertheless, the evil of bigotry is ever crouching at the door of every Anglo heart.
Interestingly, many of the racial demagogues, who repeatedly call upon our populace to prostrate itself before their propped up colored idol, masquerade as men of the cloth. However, in their case, the cloth is made out of whole cloth and used to conceal their idolatrous race baiting. They continuously attempt to incite one race against another for no other reason than to promote themselves and to make personal profit. What makes their crime even more egregious is the fact that they perpetrate it under the guise of being ministers of Christ.
It seems to me that if these race baiters were really Gospel preachers they would be preaching what the Gospel teaches. For instance, they would not be inciting resentfulness between the races, but instructing forgiveness between the races. They would teach that we should forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us (Matthew 6:12; Ephesians 4:32). Furthermore, they would teach that our forgiveness of those who have wronged us, not the guilt of those who have wronged us, should be perpetual (Matthew 18:21-22). How can these race baiters claim to preach a message that has redemption at its heart when all they ever do is incite resentfulness and sow discord among the races?
In the famous “Love Chapter” of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul teaches us that love “thinks no evil” and “believes all things.” The Amplified Bible translates “thinks no evil” as “takes no account of the evil done to it.” It also translates “believes all things” as “believes the best of every person.” According to the Bible, if we really cared about one another in this country, we would stop taking account of past wrongs done to us and stop ascribing to each other ulterior and sinister motives.
Of course, one has to understand that the love Paul is speaking of in 1 Corinthians 13 is the new kind of love that Jesus brought into the world. It is God’s love. It is not “eros” or self-love—I love myself. It is not “philos” or brotherly love—I’ll love you if you love me. It is “agape” or unconditional love—I’ll love you no matter what.
This love is only received when the Holy Spirit deposits it in our hearts (Romans 5:5). The Holy Spirit does so when we place our faith in Christ for salvation. Until we turn from our sin to trust the Savior for our salvation our hearts will be void of the love of God. In other words, until we come to know Christ, we’ll know nothing of this kind of love, which explains why this Christ-rejecting world’s universally touted tolerance keeps breeding more and more intolerance among the races. Apart from Christ, we will never be able to really care for one another, and the animosity between ethnicities will continue to escalate to monstrous proportions.
One of the signs Jesus predicted would precede His Second Coming was that “nation [will] rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matthew 24:7). The Greek word for “nation” is “ethos,” which is the Greek word we get our English word “ethnic” from. The Orthodox Jewish Bible translates Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:7 in a most poignant way: “For there will be an intifada of ethnic group against ethnic group.” Are we not seeing this sign clearly displayed in our society today, as well as throughout our world? Furthermore, can anyone deny that our Christ-rejecting world’s attempts at eradicating this ongoing problem have done nothing but exacerbate it?
If our country continues to idolize race rather than return to Christ, the “intifada” between our races will only continue to increase and intensify. By embracing race as our idol rather than Christ as our Redeemer, we are not only driving ourselves farther and farther apart, but dooming ourselves and our representative republic as well.