Am I Racist to Pray for Racists?

My wife and I have been talking about the fallout from the Charlottesville mess.  We both agree the white supremacists are morally wrong.  We are both concerned about our inability to talk about anything as a nation.

It’s so easy to pick on racists because it’s such an obvious and unpleasant sin to be racist.  But Jesus said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.  Matthew 5:44 – 45.  Since I obviously haven’t read every tweet or every blog post or every commentary, maybe some Southern Baptist leader has mentioned this.  I have not seen it.  All I’ve seen is condemnation of racist attitudes.  I get this is a sore spot for Southern Baptists and such attitudes are rightly condemned as unbiblical.  But have we forgotten the words of Jesus?

We don’t pray for these people because they’re so easy to condemn.  We don’t pray for them because we don’t want to be accused of racism.  We don’t pray for them because their sins are “worse” than others somehow.  We don’t pray for them because we don’t want God to put any of them in our path so that we’ll have to interact with them.

Paul wrote in Romans 3:10 that there are none who are righteous, no not one.  None righteous includes me and it includes you.  Our righteousness is found only in Christ, right?  Not in right thinking, not in right works, not in right political views, not in right “confession” but in the atoning work of Jesus on the cross and that alone.  At least that’s what I’ve been taught at seminary the past (too many!) years.

So I implore the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention – can we please start talking about praying for these lost souls?  Can we stop acting as if they’re beyond the saving power of God’s grace?  Shouldn’t someone (I guess maybe by saying it I’m volunteering?) start some kind of resource for Nazis, KKK members, White Supremacists to learn the truth of the Gospel message so they, too, can be saved? 

Let’s face it folks ­– it’s appropriate to be against racism, but boy is it easy.  It’s something we can all agree on, even when we don’t agree on other very important issues.  I disagree with people from the Church of Christ who think God is speaking today in such a way that homosexuality has become acceptable to Him; but we can agree racism is wrong. 

We have to be very, very careful that the gospel message doesn’t become something only for non-racists.  I have heard Dr. Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary say the gospel should be preached “promiscuously.”  Seems to me that includes racists hearing the gospel.  What else is going to change them?

Part of the reason, I think, we as a country are having such a hard time talking about this matter is because we, including most Christians, see racism as a social evil to be combatted by education and by political action.  Racism is a matter of the heart, not of the mind, and can’t be changed by making it against the law.  Rape and murder are against the law, but keep happening on a regular basis.  Why?  Because rapists and murderers, at least to some extent, see their victims as things, not as fellow travelers through this sin infested life.  Education won’t solve racism because we’ve been treated to years and years and years of “free” public education without seeing racism dry up and go away.  Having knowledge doesn’t equate to empathizing or sympathizing with your fellow human being.  In fact, one might well argue that our morally sterile educational system is part of the reason we are seeing a rise in those who are very publically racist. 

My dad brought me up to understand that you judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin.  He was clearly borrowing from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  According to Galatians 3:28 there is “neither Jew nor Greek” in Christ.  The description of worship in heaven that we get in Revelation talks about every tribe, every nation, every tongue glorifying God.  We clearly won’t find racism in heaven.  Racism, as I have said on this blog and elsewhere is wrong.  Done.

Yet, there will be former KKK members, former Nazis and former white supremacists in heaven because the gospel is the power to change hearts.  It is the only way to do so.

A while back I suggested the only way we could seriously dent Muslim terrorism was by trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.  The same is true for the deluded fools who think racism is acceptable.

I am going to commit to praying every day for the next forty days that God will show me how best to witness to racists like the ones who gathered in Charlottesville last week.  I’ll finish up on September 30 and let’s see where God might lead.

Will you join me in prayer for these poor souls who need Christ?

Or does it make me a racist to pray for them?  Be very, very careful how you answer that question if you say you’re a Christian.

Iceland's "Enlightened" Method for Reducing Down's Syndrome

Rather than get caught up in the storm that erupted after the Charlottesville incident, I want to focus on something equally as malignant, but which receives blessing after blessing from people around the so-called “civilized” world.

Recently, reports have come out of Iceland that it has all but eliminated Downs Syndrome from its shores.  If you aren’t careful to read past headlines, you might assume Icelandic doctors, researchers, and scientists have come up with a miraculous way to insure babies don’t develop the extra chromosome which causes Downs. 

Not so fast.

Iceland is seeing less and less of children with Downs because its citizens are deciding to abort babies who test positive for Downs while in the womb.  This should outrage and disgust anyone with a conscience for at least three reasons.  First, no testing is always correct, which means some of these children wouldn’t have Downs Syndrome and are still being aborted because prospective parents would rather kill off an “acceptable” child than take the chance of an “unacceptable” child.  What kind of human being feels that way about their flesh and blood?  Second, and more disturbing, it’s a short leap from aborting Downs Syndrome children to aborting children for things like red hair.  In other words, there is a scary, Hitlerian, master race overtone here.  Third, and most disturbing, there is an arrogance here that human beings have some kind of control of the world.

When are we going to recognize that our “control” is an illusion?  The world operates all around us whether we wake up in the morning , whether we get in our cars and go to work, whether we sing, pray, read, watch television, blog, play sports, exercise, take medicine or do anything.  The writer of Ecclesiastes understood this principle very well when writing “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  Ecclesiastes 3:1.  More:  “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to men of skill but time and chance happen to them all.”   Ecclesiastes 9:11. 

Icelanders may think they’re doing humanity some sort of service by eliminating Downs Syndrome babies but what they’re really doing is trying to control the uncontrollable.  God retains rights over his planet.  He will do as he will and no one in Iceland can stop it.   If God wants more Downs Syndrome babies, he’ll find other people to have them and love them.

The irony is of course that when people engage in this sort of behavior it’s always done in the name of decency and kindness.  Hmm.  Decency and kindness to whom?  The child who was just killed?  I read an article about this in which one Icelandic woman referred to these precious souls as “things.”  Her word, not mine.  Really?  What then does that make this woman other than a larger, born, thing?  Is that how she perceives herself and others?  I doubt it.  Do people in Iceland tell their kids “hey, you know I would have disposed of you if you had Downs Syndrome, but you got lucky and hit the chromosome jackpot.  There’s nothing special about you except that you fit the bill I was looking for.  You just happened to be a non-Downs Syndrome thing."  You know they don’t say that.

More importantly, are children mere commodities?  Is that really where we are?  In the US we have Planned Non-Parenthood selling off baby parts and decrying any effort to end abortion.  They claim what they are doing is a moral good.  In any other context, the killing of human beings would be seen as the apex of moral evil.  If I said, hey Hitler was okay to gas millions of Jews, because, after all, people are just commodities, just “things,” I would rightly be met with disgust.  For crying out loud, you can’t even get some animal rights activists to recognize the need for culling herds of deer that live within predator free metropolitan areas  - these deer are going to die from starvation or disease or being hit by cars, but let’s not kill any of them because SAY IT WITH ME NOW – YOU KNOW THE WORDS – it’s cruel.  If we care  more about deer than human babies, we know there’s a serious problem.

But killing babies who might have Downs Syndrome – that’s called eradicating Downs Syndrome in Iceland.  It sounds sensible, moral, justifiable.  In the most bizarre fashion, it’s not seen as cruel at all.  It’s enlightened.

Let’s change the scenario and think about how people would react to abortion for a different reason.  Suppose scientists finally find the elusive “gay” gene.  Suppose parents start aborting children because they don’t want gay children.  We all know precisely how that would be treated by the “enlightened.”   Of course, never mind that logically and rationally there is no difference between a parent aborting a Downs Syndrome child and a gay child.  In fact, as we launch ourselves down this path, upon what grounds could anyone argue that aborting a “thing” has any moral significance?  Either this “thing” is a human being deserving of protection or it’s not.  If it’s not, then there is no moral distinction between “things” just like there’s no moral distinction between a cardboard box and cement block.

This lets me circle right back to Hitler.  When we start treating the most vulnerable among us – children in the womb – as commodities, are we not treating them precisely as Hitler treated the Jews?  Does that not then, make us equally culpable?

Icelanders may be eradicating Downs Syndrome, but make no mistake, they’re simply doing what Hitler did.  The only difference is the age of the victims.