Paul Davison 

Race Matters

Race matters in New Zealand. The race that you are can significantly alter your life.

• If you’re Maori you’ll live, on average, 8 years less than non-Maori
• If you’re Asian you’re more likely to leave school with an NCEA qualification
• If you’re European you’ll earn, on average, $4.60 per hour more than a Pacific Islander
• If you’re a Pacific Islander you’re 3 times less likely to be in prison than a European

Race matters in New Zealand. And race matters in the world.

The race that you are can significantly alter your life. On a global scale, being a New Zealander, of any colour, puts you in a better position in terms of life expectancy, education, and earning power than probably 98% of the rest of the world. But as a generalisation the fairer your skin colour, the whiter you are, the more likely you are, from a global perspective, to be richer and healthier and better educated. And the more pigmentation in your skin, the darker you are, the more likely you are, from a global perspective, to be poor, to be malnourished, to oppressed, to be illiterate, to be landless and homeless.

Race matters – both in New Zealand and in the world at large. The race that you are can significantly alter your life.

Those kinds of observations aren’t new to you. That kind of information pours out of media portals all the time. And what it does is make us “racists”. Now I’m using that word racist in its broadest sense – I’m using the word “racist” in the sense that on the basis of race we frequently will reach a conclusion about another person.

In the same way that we evaluate a person based on their age (making us ageist) or their gender (making us sexist) or their clothes or the accent of their voice – we also make judgements about others based on their skin colour. That makes me a “racist” – not in the neo-Nazi, skin-head, white-supremacist sense – but nevertheless a small “racist”.

I think it is part of the way that we deal with the world – we move from our general understandings to the particulars, to the exceptions. But I do start with my generalisations – and I do have generalisations (both right and wrong) about different races. I’m at least “racist” in that sense.

What are some of my generalisations, my racial assumptions?

I think a key one is the “otherness” of a person with a different skin colour, with a different facial structure, with a different cultural background. They are different to me, there is “them” and there is “us”; they are “other”. There is a distinction, a difference – that is one of my first, often unconscious, reactions.

I think another factor can be fear - the more “other” they are, the more threat assessment I make. Now that difference will include age and dress and situation and level of relationship – but I think, encountering strangers on the street late at night, racial difference is one of the criteria that comes into my “threat assessment” of the circumstances. The bigger the racial difference, the high the contribution to my “fear factor”.

I think a critical factor is that my education, my culture, my social history has breed into me, at the very least, the equivalence of white with any other race, if not a subtle feeling of superiority over people of other ethnic backgrounds. Doesn’t that assumption underlie all our cultural assessments of people from other races and other ethnic backgrounds.  “Asians are bad drivers” – assumes that white people are superior drivers; “Our jails are full of Maoris and Pacific Islanders” – assumes that white people are superior, law-abiding citizens. Is driving skill determined by skin colour? Is personal morality determined by race?

So I have to put my hand up, and admit to some degree I am a racist; I make judgements of other people based on their skin colour; I assume certain generalisations about others based on their skin colour.  Is that right? Should I do that? Or should I treat everyone exactly the same? Should I ignore race and cultural history? Is the melting pot approach to race and culture the right way forward?  What is the right way, the Christian way, to deal with race and racial differences?

Thinking about race is important for us here in New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi makes us a bi-cultural nation, but immigration is making us a multi-cultural nation.

What wisdom, what instruction does God have for us in 21st C New Zealand as we face these issues?  Thinking about race is important for us as we support missionaries around the world. What wisdom, what instruction does God have for mission, and our part in, to the nations (and therefore the races) of the world? That’s what I want consider, particularly in regard to the task of the gospel going to all the world, praying for missions around the world, giving to fund missionaries working cross-culturally. And I want to do that by looking at the book ends of the Bible – Genesis and Revelation. 

The second article, Mission In A Multi-Ethnic World, will consider what the New Testament contributes to our thinking about races and nations, as the book of Revelation speaks about the goal to which we are moving:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. (Revelation 7:9-10)

Humanity Created in God’s Image

The Bible doesn’t begin with the creation of a special race of people. Adam and Eve aren’t Hebrews or Egyptians or Canaanites. Despite all the art work of European artists - they weren’t white. Nor were they black. Their “race” isn’t identifiable; they’re the mother and father of all peoples. The division of humankind into different peoples and races is mention only when you get Genesis 10. Adam and Eve, along with Noah – are non-ethnic and non-national. They represent all people, not some people. And the Bible says that these first people – Adam and Eve were made in the image of God.

So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

God didn’t give human beings the image of God, rather it’s a dimension of our creation. The image of God isn’t so much something we possess as what we are. To be human is to be the image of God. It’s not an extra feature added on to our species; it’s definitive of what it means to be human.

And at least four truths flow from humanity being created in the image of God:

All human beings are addressable by God

Human beings are the creatures to which God speaks. Other creatures are blessed and go their merry way to multiply and spread. But the human is the creature who is aware of God through rational communication and address. And as the Old Testament goes on to show it is all human beings that this applies to – with no regard for ethnicity or race. God can speak to an Abimelech or a Balaam or a Nebuchadnezzar just as easily as he can speak to an Abraham, a Moses or a Daniel. Whatever the cultural environment or whatever the religious background or whatever the race – the most fundamental ground of a person’s humanity is that they are made in the image of God. God the Creator needs no permission and no translation in order to communicate with any person whom he has made in his own image.

All human beings are accountable to God

The other side of the coin of being addressed by God is being accountable to God. Adam and Eve had to answer when God addressed them – even when they were hiding from God, they must answer God. And that too is a universal phenomenon, independent of culture and religion and race.

Every human being on the planet is known by God, considered and evaluated by God – and called to give account by God. White, black, yellow, brown – whatever a person’s skin colour, more fundamentally they are made in the image of god and are accountable to him.

All human beings have dignity and equality

Being made in the image of God is simultaneously what sets us apart from the rest of the animals and that which we humans have in common. No other animal is created in the image of God, so humans are unique in their significance and their dignity. All other humans are created in the image of God, so humans are united in their equality regardless of ethnicity or gender or religion or culture or language or politics or economics.

The biblical gospel fits all people

The image of God is not the only thing we human beings universally have in common. We are also all sinner and rebels against our Creator God. But just as our sin is a universal reality, which underlies the many cultural forms in which it manifests itself, so also the gospel is a universal remedy that address the human need in and all cultures.

Whatever the appearance or the caricatures have been, Christian mission is not a matter of inviting or compelling people to become Westerners or White or even Black. It’s inviting them to become more fully human through the transforming power of the gospel that fits all because it answers the basics needs of all and restores the common glory of what it is to be truly human – a man or a woman made in the image of God.

Before skin colour, before ethnic diversity, before language and cultural heritage – before all that differentiates us from each other, there is a fundamental unity because all human beings are made in the image of God. And yet within this core unity as human beings, there is also wide diversity. God has so designed humanity that we aren’t all vanilla, we aren’t all chocolate – it seems that if God were choosing his flavour it would be neapolitan.

When you look at the world God has made you find incredible diversity within a unity. Whether it is flora or fauna – plants and animals don’t come in just one colour, one shape, one design. Chiwawas, poodles, Great Danes, and grey hounds – they are all united as dogs, but what incredible diversity. Kitten to cougar, Siamese to Panther – they are united as cats, but what amazing diversity. Asian and African and Semitic and Caucasian – all united as humans, but actually not that different when you think of other species on this planet.

God has created a genetic system that produces variety within a fundamental unity.

Genesis 1 and 2 show us the Designers intentions and values – but we live in the world after Genesis 3 – after humanity’s rebellion against God, after rejecting God’s designs for humanity. We don’t live in the Garden of Eden, we live in the broken and fractured world outside the Garden. And the pattern of rebellion after Genesis 3and the Fall, gives us a distorted view of ourselves and corrupts our dealings with others. In particular humanity sins with regard to race and ethnicity.

In Genesis 10 we have a table of nations as the sons of Noah and their descendants spread out over the earth. But we know from chapter 11 and the account of the Tower of Babel that humanity will do the opposite of whatever God instructs. His command was to multiply and spread out over the earth, so not surprisingly we find humanity in Genesis 11 scheming in order not to be scattered and divided. Humanity in rebellion seems particularly good at taking what God has said and turning it on its head.

And history records much of a folly with regard to racism.

Slavery and Racism

The black vs. white racism of the Western world is particularly shaped by the tragic history of slavery. Back across history slavery in one form or another has been part of every major civilisation. Various Chinese dynasties had slaves; Indians had slaves; the dominant African tribes had slaves (in fact substantial numbers of slaves sold to the Western world and to the Persian Gulf were sold by other Africans); the Israelites had slaves, the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans all had slaves. The major “barbarian” tribes of Europe had slaves. The Arab world had slaves. Even some Maori had slaves.

So there is a sense in which, from the vantage of history until two centuries ago, the phenomenon of slavery wasn’t itself viewed as shocking. But not all forms of slavery are alike. In the Roman world there were slaves of many different races and cultures – a variety of conquered people, a variety of those who sold themselves into slavery to pay their debts. But there were also free and wealthy and educated people from those various peoples. So that there was little identification between slavery and one particular race.

By contrast, in the West from the beginning almost all blacks were slaves, and certainly only blacks were slaves. That meant that even after legal emancipation, the psychological association of slavery and black skin has lingered on for a long time – both in the minds of whites and in the minds of blacks. The same dominant culture involved in trading black Africans in slavery, was the same dominant culture subduing light brown Maori and Pacifica people. Although there was no colonial slavery in New Zealand - surely the same racists perspectives were at work – are still at work?

So we have cultural baggage with regard to racism – but we also have Christian baggage with regard to racism.

Christians and Racism

Particularly galling for Christians today is that a number of our forebears used the Bible to defend their right to slaves – and in our Western context thereby defended racism from the Scriptures.

Because the Bible regulated slavery for Israel, because the New Testament apostles tolerated slavery within the prevailing Roman slave culture – this was used as justification and permission for slavery.

Southern states in the United States argued that the cursing of Canaan, the son of Ham, the Son of Noah in Genesis 9 justified the slavery of black Africans – in fact it was the fulfilment of prophesy that they be enslaved. The logic goes like this: in Genesis 9 Ham commits some form of sexual offense against his father and is not blessed but rather draws forth a curse from his father Noah. “Ham” means black or burnt, thus referring explicitly to the Black race and God commands that these descendants of Ham be slaves to Japheth, who represents the White races. So, it was argued God commanded the slavery of Black Africans.

Only 20 years ago some white South Africans were defending apartheid from the Bible. When the Dutch first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope (1652) they saw themselves as the heirs and bearers of European Christian civilization. They saw a parallel between themselves and the exodus of the Old Testament people of God, destined for a new promised land. The Africans were their equivalent to the Amalekites and the Philistines. The Dutch Reformed Church (until 1989), "the Scriptures ... teach and uphold the ethnic diversity of the human race" and regard it as a "positive proposition" to be preserved. Consequently, "a political system based on the autogenous or separate development of various population groups can be justified from the Bible”. But we have seen an end to apartheid in South Africa.

2007 marked the 200th anniversary of William Wilberforce’s Christian convictions which brought about the legal abolition of slavery. And the strange irony is that those European Colonial nations, blamed for promoting racial slavery, have - through that same colonial influence - practically eliminated all forms of legal slavery around the world. (To be sure, much illegal trafficking in human beings continues.)

Conclusion

What is God’s plan for the races? Genesis 1-11 leads us to Genesis 12 and the promise to Abraham:

I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. (Genesis 12:2-3)

There is a sense in which the rest of the Bible is the fulfilment of this promise. From the very beginning of the Bible God has a plan for all the nations, for all the peoples, for all the races of the earth. World mission has always been his agenda – and therefore it must be our agenda.

And racial variation is by his design and for his pleasure. In the world that God has made there is a fundamental, core, unity between all human beings – for we are all made in the image of God. Within this foundational unity is a wonderful variety of ethnicity and culture which enriches the human race.

It is an historical folly, which the Western world keep tripping over: to see ourselves as superior and others as inferior; to see White as first - with black and brown and yellow (and any other colour) coming in second. It is an historical problem that our country is seeking to address through such means as the Treaty of Waitangi tribunal. We may debate the pros and cons of how to address the past – but when it is within our power to redress wrongs of the past surely that sought of tangible reconciliation is a gospel path?

It is also an historical problem that we face in Christian missions. Colonialism and missionary endeavour have been too closely tied in the past – sometimes for good, and other times to the detriment of gospel work. It’s a heritage that our missionaries must work through on the mission fields.

But it’s not just an historical problem: it’s a contemporary problem of my heart as well; and quite possibly yours also. I need to have my view of the world transformed by the gospel: humanity first, colour second; not the other way around. When I encounter someone whose skin is a different colour to mine, my first response should not be: “other”– but like me, “human”, made in the image of God. Different, yes, but different within our common humanity.

And that difference is to be acknowledge and respected – it is a God-given difference to be valued.