CBC Teaching Series – Tough Topics Race, Ethnicity, and the Gospel Sunday, 21 May 2017
CBC Teaching Series – Tough Topics Race, Ethnicity, and the Gospel Sunday, 21 May 2017 “…sin is the fundamental reason that humanity needs to be reconciled first to God and second to one another… Jesus’ sacrificial death for sin is the only provision for and solution to racial hostility…” Jarvis J. Williams, One New Man, p. 2 I. Toward a Biblical Understanding of Race and Ethnicity A. Genesis 1:26-28 1. We all have a common ancestor in Adam and Eve, who were called to flourish. 2. Properly speaking, then, we are all part of the same race (regardless of color, nationality, etc.). There are not totally distinct, incompatible “races” of humans. 3. Here we must also reassert that each and every human shares in the imago dei. This is the basis of our identity, before “race” or ethnicity. 4. Human unity is part of the original creation design. 5. Before people are ethnically diverse, they are made in the image of God. Thus, our status as image bearers must take logical priority over our ethnic or cultural affiliation. This is not to deny ethnic diversity or the celebration thereof, but to root our ethnic diversity in our commonality as image bearers. “…race itself is a construct, an interpretation of nature rather than an unambiguous marker of basic natural differences within humankind. Race is in the eye of the beholder; it does not enjoy a genuine claim to be regarded as a fact of nature.” Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races, p. 3 “…geneticists have shown that there is more genetic variation within Africa than there is in the rest of the world put together… According to the eminent geneticist Kenneth Kidd, ‘no human population is genetically homogenous – high levels of genetic variation are ubiquitous, even in small, isolated populations’.
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