There is Only One Race - The Human Race

Now let me say that I’m very aware that in our culture today, this can feel like a controversial statement, isn’t it? To say there is only one race is to overlook various people groups in our world. Some would say, only people of privilege can say there is only one race… what about the various racial groups? How are we to think about them?

By saying, There is only one race, the human race.....concerns about racism, racial prejudice and privilege immediately bubble to the surface, don’t they? And that’s understandable..... racism is a real problem.... Prejudice towards people who look different than you is a real.... Living with particular sterotypes of people that diminish them in some way is real....

So how do we think about this clear teaching of the Bible that there is only one race, especially in our day when we are very aware of racism and when we seem to be accenting or emphasizing racial distinctions and disparities. How do we become more aware of racism in our own lived experience?

To me it feels like we are talking more about racial distinctiveness than we did even 20 years ago. It feels like reality of racism has gotten worse in the last 5 years, than better.

Racism is still a very real problem. The BLM protests and in our own country the history of residential schools…are just recent examples of significant concerns about historical and ongoing racism.

And yet, according to the Bible there is only one race, the human race.

Let’s consider one of the very first verses in the Biblical story that captures this understanding:

Genesis 1:26 NIV

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Genesis 2:20 NIV

20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

Genesis 6:5 NIV

5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

Psalm 12:1 NIV

1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.

(“sons of Adam”)

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But perhaps one of the clearest verses in the Bible that teaches that all the people of the world have a common ancestry is our text for this morning. Paul is preaching in Athens in a meeting of the Areopagus.... “I see you are very religious....many idols and altars, even one to an unknown god....uses this occasion to talk about the God of the Bible....the one true God:

Acts 17:24–27 NIV

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

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…from one, he made all nations....

The Bible does not distinguish people based on modern day racial categories like: Black, White, Yellow or Brown....distinctions around skin colour. Or African, Indian, Asian, Causaian....which also distinguishes around skin colour and other external features.... the Bible does not know of these distinctions. In the Bible there is only one race, the human race.

What are the Biblical words that describe the diversity of the human race?

Remember Rev. 7:10? “nation, tribe, people, language”..... these words capture the full sense of diversity among the human race.... and none of them have to do, at least not directly, with skin colour, hair texture, shape of face or eyes, or size of lips.

Let’s look at them briefly:

“nations” - ethnos....where we get our word ethnic from.... Groups of people linked by kinship, land, culture, or government; in the Bible, “the nations” especially refers to those who are not Israelite. (Dennis L. Durst, “Nations, the,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).)

Somtimes translated “GENTILES”

“tribe” - tribes employ the idea of descent from a common-named ancestor as a means to link together for political and other purposes clans and families as subunits within the larger tribe (Øystein S. LaBianca, “Tribe,” ed. David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid B. Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), 1332–1333.)

“people” - a more generic category that is used to describe a collection or group of people. Crowd, a group of people that have common cultural or political or collective identity....the people of Jerusalem.

ORIGIN of RACE

The idea of “race” as it is used today is unknown in the Bible. Of course there are differences between people.... culture, religious, tribal, differences in appearance.... but nowhere in the Bible are people categorized according to RACE.

And that of course makes sense, because of the whole idea of race as we think about it today is something that didn’t originate until the 1700’s....

[dawn of modernity....]

A helpful article on “Britannica.com” titled, “The history of the idea of race”

Based on this article its safe to say that there were many contibuting factors that led to the formal categorizing of racial groups within the human race.

new world exploration along with the concepts and ideas of the Roman Catholic church contained in the Doctrine of Discovery

the rise of the modern age, where new scientific discoveries and a growing scientific worldview were affecting all aspects of human life....as scientists were observing and categorizing the natural world....plants, animals, perhaps certain categoies needed to be developed to categorize humans based on their appearance.

But probably nothing contributed more to the development of racial categories that elevated certain segments of people over other segements of people than the need for inexpensive labor.

Historian Philip D. Morgan, “The only effective way to justify slavery was to exclude its victims from the community of man.” Attitudes and beliefs about all Africans began to harden as slavery became more deeply entrenched in the colonies. A focus on the physical differences of Africans expanded as new justifications for slavery were needed, especially during the Revolutionary War period, when the rallying cry of freedom from oppression seemed particularly hypocritical.”

(https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human/Hereditarian-ideology-and-European-constructions-of-race)

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The idea of RACE is purely a social construct, though studies show that many people think it has a genetic basis.

In 2003, Phase 1 of the Human Genome Project (HGP) demonstrated that humans populating the earth today are on average 99.9% identical at the DNA level, there is no genetic basis for race, and there is more genetic variation within a race than between them. (Oxford Academic)

https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/9/1/232/6299389

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So contemporary human genome science has confirmed the ancient Biblical truth that there is only one race, the human race.

And yet we continue to live in a day when so many people want to accentuate racial distinctions.

Segregation at schools...

We at the National Association of Scholars (NAS) recently launched Separate but Equal, Again: Neo-Segregation in American Higher Education, a project examining racial segregation on college campuses such as Columbia University, Yale University, MIT, and others. Surveying 173 schools, we found that 42 percent offer segregated residences, 46 percent offer segregated orientation programs, and 72 percent host segregated graduation ceremonies. We call this “neo-segregation”: the voluntary and institutionally sanctioned segregation of minority students in the post–Brown v. Board era.

(https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/american-colleges-segregated-housing-graduation-ceremonies/)

Preferential treatment....

Kline example

In June 2020, Gordon Klein, a longtime accounting lecturer at UCLA, made the news after a student emailed him asking him to grade black students more leniently in the wake of the “unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.”

Klein’s response was blunt. It stated in part:

Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?

He went on:

Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?

Thanks, G. Klein

Klein’s response enraged students. They organized a petition to remove him that quickly gained nearly 20,000 signatures, resulting in the professor being placed on leave and banned from campus. But the story got national attention, and a counter-petition signed by more than 76,000 people demanded his reinstatement. In less than three weeks, Klein was allowed to return to the classroom.

MLK

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,”

Language of “colourblind”..... has been criticized..... MLK didn’t insist we be colourblind, but colour kind...

Coleman Hughes article

“King didn’t mince words when addressing these movements in a 1960 speech at DePauw University. “Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men,” he said. “God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and in the creation of a society where all men can live together as brothers.”

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In a society where racial separations are often accented and even celebrated, the Bible invites us to compassionately, and respectfully resist those ways of separating and categorizing groups of people.

And even as we may gently push back against contemporary movements that try to separate people in that way, we at the same time must work towards overcoming all forms of racism.

Racism:

prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Talk about my experiences

Colleague at Ford Motor Company (Wayne) - born in Jamaica

My experience in LA and Detroit

My experiene in Uganda (Wera)

Early church was very intentional in selecting its leaders so that they would represent the ethnic diversity of God’s family.

Acts 6:5–6 NIV

5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

(Significance was it was the Greek speaking Hellenistic Jews were complaining that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. Very likely all these deacons were Greek speaking....all seven names are Greek names.)

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Acts 13:1 NIV

1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.

Antioch…one of the first large city centre churhes that was established outside of Jerusalem. Divided into Greek, Syrian, Latin, Jewish, African sectors...

Simon, called Niger....why, because his skin was dark and he was an African

Lucius of Cyrene was a North African

Manaen, very likely was a slave of Herod’s father

Saul of Taursus was from Asian Minor (Turkey)

Barnabas was from Cyprus....

A multicultural leadership team for a multicultural church in a multicultural city.

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(Elders-deacons of our church: Canadian, Dutch born Canadian, Canadian Dutch ancestory, French, German, Korean, Chinese, Singapore, Iranian, Egyptian, Hong Kong)

If there is only one race, the HUMAN RACE, then the church ought to be THE community of people that most visibly and beautifully expresses this truth.

Colossians 3:11 NIV

11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

The church is that gathering of people that most visibly and beautifully expresses the unity of the ONE family of God.

And that unity is made possible through what Christ has done for his people.

Ephesians 2:14–18 NIV

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 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, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

And how did Jesus accomplish this for us? Through his shed blood on the cross.

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Revelation 5:9 NIV

9 And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

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Our response...

Share experiences of when you felt judged, marginalized, or discriminated against, because of your ethnic or cultural background.

Have you ever been the victim of racism?

We also disrespect people when we carry stereotypes of them. What stereotypes do you have of people who look a certain way or who come from different ethnicity or cultures than your own?