Q&A - Origin of Race
May 2, 2021 Sunday Evening Study

When I was at Azusa, I took a speech class. Now I naturally took to this class - I was a drama nerd, and I was generally pretty good at doing oral presentations - hence my job today. Throughout the semester we had to do several different types of speeches, including a persuasive speech. This speech was meant to convince the audience of something - the more far-fetched the better. My speech - it made my professor say the words “There’s one of you in every class.”

I talked about racism and descrimination. And I spoke about a movie that exemplified the perfect utopia we would share if we were able to abandon racism and prejudice. The Ewoks in Return of the Jedi were a perfect example of a utopian society. They practiced full equality despite the color of their fur or its consistency. They worked together for common purposes, each according to his or her strength. They worshipped the same God (C3PO) and they protected each other, raising their children in community. All things considered, it is a perfect example for us as humans who have gone so wrong on many of those things. 

Question: Are there really different races? How do we account for racial differences if we are all of one blood?

Discussion - what is race? What does it even mean?

When was racism as we know it today officially a thing?

Darwin - The Beginning of “Racism”

Prior to the 1800s, race was referred to as your place of origin. You were of the Irish race or the English race or the Chinese race. Persecution between these races was very real and very present - by this time basically all of Europe was transporting African slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas, Chinese were working as slaves on the west coast of the USA, and countries engaged in wars on a regular basis to exert their authority over other races. This brand of racism is a mark of the history of the world.

However, the concept of racism took a major shift in the 1800s with the ideas of Darwin and his book On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life published in 1859. The truth of the matter is this - Darwin’s theory, which is accepted by almost all unbelievers on the planet, is inherently a racist theory. It teaches that different people groups - or races - evolved at different rates and times, meaning that some people are more closely related to our ape ancestors than others are, and therefore less human.

What had once been a matter of civic pride and patriotism (and to be honest, free labor) became justified by science. Races were no longer simply where you came from, but what things about you made you less advanced than me. There was a marked shift from cultural heritage defining race to genealogical heritage defining race. Race became more about how we are different than about where we came from.

When we think of racism, we generally think of slavery and the social injustices in our country. Did you know that in the late 1800s the Bronx Zoo had a cage which held an African native and an orangutan to show their similarity? How about this evolutionist observation by Ernst Haeckel and cited within Darwin’s book:

“At the lowest range of human mental developments are the Australians, some tribes of the polynesians, and the Bushmen, plus some of the Negro tribes. Nothing, however, is perhaps more remarkable in this respect, than that some of the wildest tribes in southern Asia and eastern Africa have no trace whatsoever of the first foundations of all human civilization. They live together in herds like apes.”

Yet, even by Darwin’s classifications, all humans on the earth are classified as homo sapiens. Scientists - even Darwinists - admit today that there is biologically only one race of humans. At a convention for the advancement of science in Atlanta, a keynote speaker stated in 2018 “Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and has no basic biological reality.” In fact, concluding a study on the concept of race, ABC News stated: “More and more scientists find that the differences that set us apart are cultural and not racial. Many even say that the word race should be abandoned because for all intents and purposes, it’s meaningless.

Bible Truth

The Bible does not use the word race or its Hebrew or Greek counterparts in reference to people groups, but it does make a powerful statement about race as we see it. You may remember Acts 17:26 from last week: “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.”

Doesn’t the Bible condone slavery, and therefore racism?

Both the Old and New Testaments speak of slaves within the populace. Even Mosaic Law outlines the treatment of slaves according to God’s commands. We have to first understand the difference between slavery as a practice then versus what it became in later centuries where human life was traded like a commodity. In OT times slavery functioned as a means to handle two things - paying a debt between two jewish men - if one could not pay, and could be bound to servitude to clear his debt, though never for more than 7 years. Slavery was also used to deal with another fact of life - especially in the days of Joshua - what to do with prisoners of war. Many of the POWs were eventually accepted into Jewish society over the years through marriage and cohabitation, and there was never an act of going into other lands for the purpose of acquiring slaves. Even when slaves changed hands in those days, it was not the sale of the person, but of the debt.

Even Job recognized that all are equal in Job 31:13-15: “If I have denied justice to any of my servants, whether male or female, when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account? Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?”

In the days of the early church, a new reality was taking shape in the wake of Jesus’ sacrifice. It took Church leaders a long time to come to the truth of many matters - including equality and slavery. This is why many people ask “Where was the church when so many slaves were oppressed?” 

The truth is that those consistently living out their Christian faith eventually realize that the forced enslavement of another human being goes against the biblical teaching that all humans are created in the image of God and are of equal standing before Him.

Gal. 3:28 - “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Col. 3:11 - “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

In fact, the most ardent of the past abolitionists were Bible-believing Christians. John Wesley, Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce (who fought slavery as a member of English parliament for over 20 years), Jonathan Edwards (Sinners in the Hand of an Engry God preacher), and Thomas Clarkson all preached against the evils of slavery and racism and fought for the abolition of slavery in Europe and in the Americas. Most famous would be John Newton - notorious slave trader turned pastor who worked behind the scenes for many of the men I just mentioned, eventually writing one of the most beloved hymns of all time - Amazing Grace.

Racial Differences

There must be different races of people because of our differences like skin color and eye shape, right? 

Genealogy studies have, again and again, proven that the percentage of genes responsible for a person’s outward appearance - the basis by which we determine race today - is actually less that .01 percent. In other words, the so-called racial differences are trivial to the point of absurdity. In fact, if you were to separate people according to skin color, you would find more biological variation within each group than you would between any two groups as a whole.The fact is that a white person who needs a tissue sample may very well find the best match from a black person, and vice versa. The differences stem from culture and not from race or biology.

So if the Bible teaches and science confirms that all of us are the same human race and biologically the same as descendents of Adam, then why do look so different to begin with?

Skin Color:

Scientists have discovered that there is one major pigment which produces our skin color - melanin. There are two types of melanin producing two different ranges of color - brown to black and red to yellow. These combine to give us our skin color.

The fact of the matter is that no one really has red, yellow, or black skin. We all have the same basic color, just different shades of it. We all share identical pigments - just different combinations of them.

Following the flood, the world was reduced to eight individuals, and from these eight come all tribes and nations. Scholars state that it is likely that Noah’s family’s skin shade was a middle brown, allowing for the production of a variety of different shades even within the first generation. As the populace grew, remember that all people spoke a common language and lived in the same general vicinity, so people were not restricted from intermarrying among family units of slightly different colors.

Then Came Babel - Genesis 11. God judged this rebellion by confusing their language and scattering them across the face of the whole world. As they were scattered, family groups either had the ability to communicate with their own families, or they had to learn. As they became able to communicate with each other, they took with them the knowledge that had been passed about history and technology now translated into their own individual languages, bringing variation into historical account.

Because of the dispersion and language barrier, groups no longer freely intermarried and connected with other groups, so the individual groups began to take on traits which began to define them. Things like skin color, eye shape, etc became characteristic of certain groups based on external pressures - environmental, sexual, and even mutation. For example, because of the protective properties of melanin, those with darker skin were more likely to survive and thrive in in areas where sunlight is more intense, as they were less likely to suffer from diseases such as skin cancer. Those with lighter skin living in those areas would not have had the same protective melanin levels and would have been more likely to die off over time as a result if they did not move away. At the same time, a light skinned individual is more able to withstand areas with less direct sunlight, as they have better adapted livers for producing Vitamin D in limited sunlight. Dark skinned individuals in the absence of sunlight suffer Vitamin D deficiencies as their melanin blocks what sunlight they do receive, striking a balance between peoples.

Ultimately, humans are one race, of one origin, from one blood. Even scientifically we are all hom sapiens and scientists themselves recognize that biologically the difference between human beings of any color or nationality is so negligible that it is beyond mentioning. Racism is a cultural construct - there is no basis in biological reality for it. We are all different in appearance, and these differences stem from the conditions following the dispersion of people from Babel.

What do you think about all of this?
What should be the church’s role with respect to modern racism?
How can we use this answer to help spread the Gospel?