Biblical Oneness: A Five-Day Devotional on Raceনমুনা

Refuse to Allow Culture to Interfere with Truth

In my Tony Evans translation, the Samaritan women is saying , “Jesus, you worship that way. We worship this way. Not only are we different, we were raised differently. My daddy taught me that this is how you do it because his daddy taught him that this is how you do it. This is our history and our background and what we are used to doing.” Jesus responds to her excuses using rather direct language. He says, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). In other words, “Your daddy was wrong. was wrong. Your great granddaddy was wrong. And your great-great grand daddy was wrong. You, and your people, are wrong.”

Now, the last time the Samaritan woman brought up cultural differences, Jesus never said a single word about it. But this time Jesus clearly says, “You are wrong.” Why does He address the issue now and not before? Because now God has been brought into the equation. Now there is a spiritual truth on the table. Our differences from each other are not wrong except when our differences bring in wrong information about God. One of the things that you and I have got to understand as brothers and sisters in Christ is that this divide in our culture and in our nation is because people have chosen to pay more attention to their granddaddy than to their heavenly Father.

Sin not skin has led to the division we hold tenaciously to our cultures. Our backgrounds, preferences, and unique cultural expressions are legitimate, but when they overrule or conflict with God, that’s when Jesus says, “You are wrong.” Whenever there is a conflict between culture and God’s truth, culture must always submit to the truth of God as revealed in His Word. This means that to refer to oneself as a black Christian or a white Christian or a Hispanic Christian or an Asian Christian is technically incorrect. In these descriptions, the word Christian becomes a noun that is modified by an adjective—black, white, and so on. It’s the job of the adjective to modify the noun. So, if you’ve got Christianity in the noun position, and your color in the adjectival position, you’ve got to keep adjusting the noun of your faith to the adjective of your humanity. Rather, you’ve got to put Christianity in the adjectival position, and your color and culture in the noun position so if anything has to change or adapt, it is the noun of your humanity and not the adjective of your faith.

We must see ourselves as Christian blacks, Christian whites, Christian Hispanics, or Christian Asians. We should celebrate the uniqueness of our created humanity while simultaneously submitting that uniqueness to our identity in Christ. This Christocentric identity-focus should serve to enhance the righteous validity of our uniquely created racial distinctives. They should not negate or cancel them.

Our cultures must always be controlled and informed by our commitment to Christ. Whenever we make the adjectives black, white, brown, and other descriptions of Christians, it may mean we have changed Christianity to make it fit a cultural description. The Bible teaches the opposite—we are Christians who are also black, white, or brown. If anything changes, it is to be our cultural expression, not our Christianity. This is so because cultural history and experience, while important, are not innately inspired. Therefore, Christianity must always inform, explain, and, if necessary, change our cultures, never the reverse.

Black Christians, white Christians, Asian Christians, or Hispanic Christians must decide to live as Christians first, without giving up their cultures, but still submitting it to the authority of Christ when it comes in conflict with Him and His kingdom rule.