Critical Race Theory is a lie at war with Christian faith because of its belief in permanent cycles of conflict and oppression. There is no hope for anything better.
According to CRT, every white person is always a racist and an oppressor, even if she or he admits the error and actually changes. CRT teaches that racism for whites is as unchangeable as skin color. And the American system is “systemically” racist because it was created for and continues to be run by white people. People of color have no hope of attaining success or happiness except through constant and unending conflict with their white oppressors.
All Critical Theories, like Marxism, have perpetual conflict as their core dynamic, usually on economic terms. Critical Race Theory modifies the conflict to revolve around race, a quality that, unlike economic advancement, can never change for the individual. Hence the depressing and illogical CRT conclusion that only more discrimination, imposed perpetually by those in power, can fix
past discrimination.
Ibram X. Kendi explicitly prescribes this never ending “cure” in his 2019 book, How To Be An Antiracist: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
The Judeo-Christian core belief in individual Sin-Repentance-Redemption and Transformation is nowhere to be found in CRT. In fact, there is little focus on individuals at all—your identity groups define you, not your individual decisions, mistakes, or accomplishments.
But people do change and are transformed. Some by a persuasive intellectual argument. Some by personal experience. Some by the power of God’s
Holy Spirit. I know–I’ve been impacted by all three, and now I’m a different person.
Human nature and common sense scream that real societal change only occurs as the result of many individual transformations, not by group mandate. If one group is being forced to behave in a certain way by another group, that’s not societal change, it’s coercion. And when the force is removed, the group will likely return to its previous beliefs and actions.
If you want to really change a society, you have to change individual hearts and minds. And,
again, there is great hope here, because people do change. Multiply that individual process and you will change a nation. Stop it, and you will have, at best, temporary coercion. Compare The Great Awakening to Reconstruction.
In the specific area of American race relations, so large a number of individuals have been transformed in the last, say, sixty years, that expected outcomes for groups are now completely different than two generations ago.
This result confounds CRT adherents. In this month’s Ahmaud Arbery jury verdict, CRT advocates and their media megaphones were groping for words to explain how a Southern jury of eleven whites and one black could vote unanimously to convict three white men of murdering an unarmed young black man. But they did. The individual jurists considered all the facts and disregarded the stereotypical expectations predicted by skin color to uphold the truth. How was that possible? Through the transformed personal lives of white jurists who chose truth over lies.
It’s crucial that we continue this process, one mind and heart at a time, and that we not divert instead into a regimen of discrimination by identity group, impossible quotas, resegregation, guilt by bullying, and imagining that doubling the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Budget to hire more experts is the same as real change.
Like all the best lies, CRT begins with a kernel of a real truth: Racial Discrimination Exists and is Evil. It’s therefore easy for well- meaning people of all faiths, and of no faith, to be pulled in. But then CRT’s lie is the supposed solution that creates even more discrimination and therefore more evil.
Those of us in the Judeo-Christian faith tradition know that we are all equal brothers and sisters because we are all made by our one Father, in His image, male and female, and for His pleasure. And, because we are all co-equal image bearers, no human being is of less or more value than any other. All must be treated equally. It’s that simple and that transformational.
We don’t need a program or a rule or a law or a bigger budget to coerce us into the correct behavior. We simply behave as God has directed us, by His principles.
In his powerful book Fault Lines, black American pastor Voddie T. Bauchman, Jr. uses his own experience and extensive research to show that “One of
the biggest problems with antiracism is the fact that it is law based. It condemns based on melanin, and although it constantly uses the words, it holds out no hope of salvation, restoration or reconciliation…Because antiracism is law based, its ultimate end is changing and establishing laws, then enforcing those laws authoritatively…it knows nothing of the Gospel. Instead, antiracism offers endless penance, judgment and fear. What an opportunity we have to shine the light of Christ in the midst of darkness.”
“Love your neighbor as yourself”. Those five words did not fall out of an expensive ad campaign. Rather, they are the second half of the true words for correct living from the lips of the one who gave his life for our eternities, and for truth. The cost was in fact great, but he paid the price in our place. The free gift of surrendering and living by God’s grace will transform your life and lead you to right behavior in the area of race relations, and in every other area.
It’s not complicated or expensive. But, thankfully, it is truly transformational. One heart at a time.
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