Twenty-four-year-old mother Jessica Doty Whitaker was killed after an argument with Black Lives Matter. Someone in a group of BLM supporters shouted “black lives matter” to Whitaker and a group of her friends. Jessica responded by saying “all lives matter.” For saying that, Jessica was shot in the head.

Either all lives matter, including young unarmed black men shot by white police officers, or no lives matter. If only the lives of unarmed black men shot by white officers matter, it’s no big deal to murder a young woman simply for proclaiming all lives matter.

At a time when the world seems to be falling apart, is there any hope? When a white cop murders a black man, when someone murders a young mother for saying “all lives matter,” is there any place for hope? Can racist culture change?

In the old racist culture of Margaret Sanger and Adolph Hitler, there is only despair. Likewise in the new racist culture of Critical Race Theory of BLM.

An empty, silent universe cannot satisfy humans. Only a universe envisioned and created by God, a transcendent universe, with an infinite, personal creator gives hope. We need a universe filled with life and birth, of seed and womb, a place of life and unity, uniqueness and diversity, a universe where God exists and human beings are created in His image. God is not made in man’s image, as those with hollowed out lives would argue. No! God made you imago Dei.

What is needed is the deep personal and cultural understanding of the cross of Jesus Christ. The horror of racism can only be solved in the hearts and minds of individuals. But not with a simplistic gospel that lacks the foundation of a biblical worldview and divides the spiritual and physical, or love from truth.

Christians are to counter racist culture

What the United States and Europe need right now is a new reformation based on the biblical worldview and biblical first principles. Christians must become a counter-cultural movement, neither of the left or the right, presenting an alternative in the unique, hopeful worldview of the scripture.

The dilemma today is that too many Christians do not function from a biblical worldview. Rather, they operate unconsciously from a postmodern, neo-Marxist paradigm. Dr. Van de Poll, a prominent African theologian, commented on this phenomena in the African context.

Because the gospel was not brought to the people as a new, totally encompassing life view which would take the place of an equally comprehensive traditional life view, the deepest core of the African culture remains untouched … The convert in Africa did not see the gospel as sufficient for his whole life and especially for the deepest issues of life. For that reason, we find the phenomenon across Africa today that Christians in time of existential needs and crises (such as danger, illness and death) fall back on their traditional beliefs and life views … The sad fact is that many Western missionaries to Africa focused on a narrow gospel. Numbers of converts and new churches were regarded the exclusive measures of success. Lost in the process was a commitment to the discipleship of Christians in a biblical worldview.

My friend and colleague Jeff Wright said it so well, “The Christian today is ill-equipped to answer the questions they want answered about race and justice and so they see a big, shiny Trojan horse of a movement, that, on the outside, says what they think a Christian should be saying and they respond, ‘Sign me up!’”

Stand against the racist spirit of the age

Because too many Christians fail to think “worldviewishly,” we lack the capacity to understand the times. Too often we are moved by emotions rather than reason and the Word of God, and simply want to join the latest movement, be it good or ill.

As Christians we must think critically and worldviewishly. We must stand against the spirit of the age, be it the modern naturalistic world that enlivened the racism of the Nazis in the last century or the postmodern world of Critical Theory enlivening the new racism of the 21^st century.

Writer and researcher Elizabeth C. Corey affirms this truth in her article at First Things, “The First Church of Intersectionality.”

One of my African-American colleagues was recently asked to give an interview about what it felt like to be a black professor at a largely white university. He refused. As he said, “I don’t identify as black.” The student who had approached him was perplexed, because the professor is indisputably black. But he was making a point that should be underscored: He does not choose to allow his membership in a particular racial group to determine who he is. He is not in denial about being black; he’s well aware of his skin color and origins. But he sees himself through other characteristics: He is a prolific writer, a religious person, a father.^[1]

This understanding is rooted deeply not in race consciousness, but in human consciousness. Each of us is a member of the human race. This concept is taught and grounded in scripture.

Humans have one blood

Genesis 1:26-27 affirms that all human beings are made in the image of God. Whatever else that includes, it means that as human beings we have unity as God-image bearers, and we have glorious diversity in His image as well. We exhibit, at the same time, unity without uniformity, diversity without superiority. Human beings are of one race, the human race.

We have one set of first parents, Adam and Eve, who in their bodies had the DNA components for all the great diversity of the human family. Before we are male or female, we are human beings. Before we are Latins, Asians, Africans, Americans, Indians, we are human beings. Before we are black, white, or brown, we are one race, the human race. All of us descended from one set of parents.

Acts 17:26 affirms that we have one blood in our veins: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth ….” All human beings are of one blood. What an incredible message. When I look at my friends from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, I realize we are bound together by one blood.

Revelation 7:9 celebrates this great diversity of peoples and nations united in one kingdom: “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 before the Lamb.” It would be wise to let the coming kingdom of God be the pattern of unity for our nations.

All humans are imago Dei

The Latin phrase e pluribus unum—out of many, one—captures the counterpoint of intersectionality, the radical action of living out the concept of unity in diversity of imago Dei.

It seems to me that this is the more helpful framework for today’s discussion about race. It reflects both the nature of God and the nature of His creation, including our own nature as human beings. The antithetical order of atheism leaves us with two racist alternatives, Social Darwinism or Ideological Social Justice. We need to affirm that all human beings are made imago Dei and as such there is only one human race.

Racist culture needs to be fought and slain, be it in the Social Darwinian or the Social Justice form. All lives are to be enjoyed and celebrated, because all lives matter, each is made imago Dei!

• Darrow Miller

[1] A similar, book-length testimony is Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams.

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