WHITE PRIVILEGE
What Does The Bible Say About White Privilege?
"I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:1–3).
There has been an immense amount of attention placed on “white privilege” in America over the past 4-months, which has spread like wildfire across social media platforms amidst the backdrop of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and even divided the Christian church.
It seems everywhere we turn, people are now repenting of their sin of being born white due to receiving infinite privileges not afforded to various ethnic groups, blacks in particular. Consequently, there is an urgency of sorts manifesting itself within the white demographic to appease the masses and avoid being labeled "racist" at all cost, even though radical social justice proponents have already declared with unquestionable certainty that America is unequivocally, systemically racist.
Therefore, there is now a push for whites to over-compensate for their presumed lack of care, attention and support on socioeconomic issues (predetermined by secular culture as systemic) via (1.) becoming more "woke" (i.e. aware) regarding racism toward blacks; (2.) accepting full blame for universal injustices against blacks; and (3.) taking ownership to fix all socioeconomic problems impacting blacks systemically.
The biggest problem, though, in the white privilege debate is that our culture now assumes systemic racism is always at play, even though racism (i.e. ethnic hatred) and prejudice are attitudinal sin issues of the heart (not systems). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 'I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds'" (Jeremiah 17:9–10).
Granted, there are indeed policies and social reforms which need to be addressed throughout legislative and judicial branches of government to expand economic and social equality of opportunity for minorities. However, predetermining socioeconomic disparities are the direct result of racism and specifically, white privilege, is simply discriminatory, irresponsible, unproductive, hateful, and dangerous to ALL races, including blacks.
Undoubtedly, there are numerous instances where we’re all guilty of sinning against man and God, but being born with varying degrees of melanin (i.e. pigmentation) in our skin is NOT one of them. Scripture reminds us, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well" (Psalm 139:13–14).
To determine our skin color or gender were somehow mistakes from birth is blasphemous to our Creator who made us in His own image. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). Therefore, we should never apologize for or be ashamed of our race or gender, but recognize we are all equal under God as His children, "For God shows no partiality" (Romans 2:11).
God's Word declares, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). The sad fact is that self-proclaimed, anti-racists are the ones perpetuating guilt into the minds of far too many whites and holding their feet to the fire by labeling them racist without probable cause.
Therefore, there is a psychological game of extortion taking place whereby whites are being emotionally blackmailed to support radical social justice initiatives and political, Marxist organizations such as Black Lives Matter in order to avoid suffering the consequences of negative publicity, backlash, protests, boycotts, looting, violence, persecution, and even death.
What is most surprising is how easily swayed people have become to endorsing white privilege ideology, even though the United States population is quickly becoming more diverse year over year. Granted, any country's cultural identity will predominately mirror their racial majority based on population alone.
However, according to U.S. census research provided by The Brookings Institution, over the past 40 years, America's population has become more culturally diverse as Whites decreased (-20%), Latinos increased +12%, Asians increased +4%, and Blacks increased +1%. The great irony is that regardless of how the U.S. population becomes more racially diverse, whites will always be labeled as privileged based on the past history of slavery (abolished 155-years ago) and segregation (abolished 56-years ago) in this country.
However, radical social justice advocates desperately need whites to identify themselves, both formerly and presently, as racists who have attained immeasurable privilege through systemic means—handed down over time from generation to generation at the expense of innocent, oppressed blacks.
Why? Because guilt is powerful motivator when yielded for personal gain, and whites have nothing to gain and everything to lose if they do not fall in the line with radical social justice demands. Therefore, it is imperative we recognize and expose those who use white guilt for political gain to promote ethnic hatred in our country.
"For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds" (2 Corinthians 11:13–15).
Ironically, consider the perspective of Booker T. Washington, former slave and one of the greatest black leaders and educators of the 19th and 20th centuries, who in a speech delivered September 18, 1895, essentially cautioned against the perils of radical social justice theory (at the time, advocated by W.E.B. Du Bois who helped start the NAACP) which promotes ethnic hatred towards whites.
Consider also the thoughtful perspective of John McWhorter, professor of linguistics, philosophy, American Studies, and music history at Columbia University in his article, Atonement As Activism, regarding the cultural dilemma whites now face:
"Over the past several years...whites across the country have been taught that it isn’t enough to understand that racism exists. Rather, the good white person views themselves as the bearer of an unearned “privilege” because of their color.
This brand of self-flagellation has become the new form of enlightenment on race issues. It qualifies as a kind of worship; the parallels with Christianity are almost uncannily rich. White privilege is the secular white person’s Original Sin, present at birth and ultimately ineradicable. One does one’s penance by endlessly attesting to this privilege in hope of some kind of forgiveness.
The self-affirming part is the rub. This new cult of atonement is less about black people than white people. Fifty years ago, a white person learning about the race problem came away asking “How can I help?” Today the same person too often comes away asking, “How can I show that I’m a moral person?” That isn’t what the Civil Rights revolution was about; it is the product of decades of mission creep aided by the emergence of social media.
What gets lost is that all of this awareness was supposed to be about helping black people, especially poor ones. We are too often distracted from this by a race awareness that has come to be largely about white people seeking grace.
Another problem is that I am not sure that today’s educated whites quite understand how unattainable the absolution they are seeking is. There is an idleness in this cult of atonement, in that it cannot get whites what they want.
We have gone from most whites being unaware that racism was a problem for black people at all to whites being chilled to their bones at the possibility of harboring racism in their souls, terrified at the prospect of being singled out as a heretic, and forgetting that the indulgences they purchase and the praying they do for their souls has more to do with them than with anyone black and their problems. This is a white America in which the message has become garbled.
Whites today are in a hard place on this, I know. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You’re taught that on race issues you are morally obliged to suspend your usual standards of logic. Faced with a choice between some benign mendacity (untruthfulness) and being mauled, few human beings choose the latter."
Make no mistake, cultural persecution has impacted all who stand in opposition to the false narrative of whiteness and white privilege, which includes many prominent, highly respected leaders in the black community who do not embrace victimization rhetoric, but vehemently reject it as justification that blacks are just as oppressed today (if not more) than before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or even the abolition of slavery in 1865.
These courageous men and women deserve utmost respect for rejecting the pressures of tribalism within the black community by educating and encouraging others to think clearly and intelligently concerning cultural narratives which oppose Biblical theology and strategically keep blacks enslaved for political gain.
Scripture warns, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1 John 4:1), and we should be thankful to those who defend God's Word by speaking truth in love and exposing false prophets of black liberation theology, no matter the cost.
However, Scripture affirms, "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18), which begins with simply exposing cultural lies and relative truths that do not align with Scripture, as noted by Darrell Harrison, Dean of Social Media at "Grace To You" ministries, and Virgil Walker, Discipleship Pastor at Westside Church in Omaha, Nebraska, from their outstanding podcast on Whiteness.
"How did we go in the span of one generation from (the black national anthem) 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' to (the negro spiritual) 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen'? This all points to the absurdity and shallowness of this whole idea of whiteness. Like the concept of 'race' itself, the concept of whiteness is just another invented, social construct that has absolutely no basis whatsoever in Biblical orthodoxy.
I kind of liken it to someone who saunters into their kitchen at home, grabs a mixing bowl, adds a little Critical Race Theory along with a dash of Black Liberation Theology for taste, puts it in the oven, sets the temperature at 375-degrees for 30 minutes, and waits to see what comes out.
That's exactly what this whiteness ideology is—namely, a recipe (if you will) for sinful division and hatred within the church and within the broader society. It is nothing more than a regurgitation of post-modernist, socio-cultural rhetoric that has been pontificated for decades by critical race theorists.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the view within social science that 'race,' instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is socially constructed, and that race as a socially constructed concept functions as a means to maintain the interests of the majority, white population that constructed it.
According to CRT, racial inequality emerges from the social, economic and legal differences that white people create between races in order to maintain elite white interests in labor markets and politics, and as such, create the circumstances and structures that give rise to the poverty and criminality that exists in many minority communities.
CRT's combine progressive, political struggles for racial justice with critiques of the conventional, legal and scholarly norms which are themselves viewed as part of the illegitimate hierarchies that need to be destroyed. Critical race theorists reject the idea that race has a natural referent. Instead, for them, race is a product of social processes of power.
The idea of Black Liberation Theology (BLT) emerged during the second half of the 1960's when a small group of radical, black clergy began to reinterpret the meaning of the Christian faith from the standpoint of the black struggle for liberation in the United States. The main objective of BLT was to 'theologize' from within the black experience rather than be confined to duplicating the theology of Europe or white, North America. BLT represented the theological reflections of a radical, black clergy seeking to interpret the meaning of God's liberating presence in a society where blacks were being economically exploited and politically marginalized because of their skin color.
In 1966, a group of 51 black pastors known as the 'national committee of black church men' bought a full page ad in the New York Times and demanded in that ad a more aggressive approach to eradicating racism. The statement, which was known as the 'black power' statement, echoed the demands of the black power movement, but the new crusade found its source of inspiration in the Bible.
For each of these ideologies, CRT and BLT, the focus is on the temporal liberation of black people from the racist structures that exist in America and the demonizing of white people who are to blame for creating those structures, whatever those structures may be... These ideas, all of them (whiteness, CRT, BLT, etc.) are grounded in worldly, man-centered wisdom and not in the wisdom of God. They are worldly theories, worldly solutions, and worldly approaches that are not grounded in Scripture.
In the final analysis, what proponents of CRT and BLT are attempting to do is use the divisive and sinful language of 'whiteness' to erect walls that Christ already tore down."
Harrison and Walker's exposition is incredibly valuable to properly understanding the cultural narrative and rhetoric surrounding white privilege ideology permeating our country. Unfortunately, both CRT and BLT have infiltrated the Christian church and little is being done to highlight their catastrophic impact and/or articulate how dangerous they are in shifting the conversation away from Biblical truth to politicize black victimization for liberals.
That is why Scripture warns, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths" (2 Timothy 4:3–4).
Enlightening whites by propagating systemic racism through white privilege theory is what radical social justice advocates champion as the universal root of black oppression.
Therefore, it is imperative we glean wisdom and perspective from those within the black community, such as Patrick Hall of Freedom's Journal Institute in his article, “White Privilege, Black Fathers,” who have resisted drinking the cultural Kool-Aid of radical social justice and systemic racism, and critically examined the white privilege argument to extract fact from fiction by articulating what some of the root causes of black suffrage truly are in America.
"It is not white privilege or racism that has retarded the aspirations of the black underclass, it is the lack of a stable family structure which teaches young men not to take responsibility for the women they impregnate (instead of being the useless sperm-donors that many of them have become). It is a lack of a work ethic that views entry level jobs beneath them, or chump work. It is labeling other blacks who are trying to get educated themselves as acting white…whatever the hell that means.
It is not learning or even caring how to present oneself in public. That, too, is labeled acting white by many in the black underclass. It starts with entire neighborhoods not learning simple civic behaviors like picking up garbage that litters the streets in most inner city communities. It is not white privilege, which stops underclass blacks from raising children in such a manner that they take responsibility for themselves. Instead, a victim mentality has entrenched itself in the thinking of blacks in the underclass—even blacks in upper income brackets sometimes display this latent victim mentality."
Shifting gears, what is most interesting in this entire cultural debate is how ironic the term, "white privilege," is from a Biblical perspective if we consider how the color white represents purity, holiness, God's forgiveness of sins, and eternal restoration.
"Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool" (Isaiah 1:18).
"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7).
The significance of these truths is that those who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, regardless of ethnicity, have been washed by the blood of the lamb, purified by His death, burial and resurrection, born-again, and made alive in Christ.
Therefore, the essence of "white privilege" from a Biblical perspective is the PRIVILEGE OF ETERNAL SALVATION through Christ alone, which purifies us from sin, rescues us from the clutches of hell, and presents us as righteous and holy before almighty God on judgment day—white as snow.
"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).
Make no mistake, we do not have to embrace culture's definition of white privilege which creates ethnic division, permeates dissension, and promotes hatred. Rather, we can take back what the enemy has stolen and choose to redefine white privilege as the blessing and honor given freely to every man, woman and child, regardless of ethnicity, who accepts Jesus Christ by grace through faith alone for his/her eternal salvation.
White privilege does not have to be a derogatory term wielded as a racial weapon to promote hatred, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Rather, as Jesus proclaimed, "I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matthew 12:36–37).
Therefore, let us not be careless with the words we speak in order to avoid creating division and promoting hatred within the church and society at large. Let us instead consider Matthew 7:1-7 (Jesus' teaching on judging others) by guarding ourselves from focusing exclusively on the sins of others (i.e. speck) rather than identifying our own personal sins (i.e. plank) and need of redemption before God.
For white privilege in God's economy is identifying ourselves as holy—washed by the blood of the lamb for the forgiveness of our sins regardless of ethnicity, not because of it.
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:4–10).
