One Race, One BloodChikamu

In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are introduced as the first human beings. The Old Testament tells us that humanity started as just one human race.

But, throughout Christian history we can find Scripture passages that were misread, mishandled, or misinterpreted for the sake of making the Bible line up with people’s cultural biases and agendas. 

Brandon O’Brien’s Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes has a section on race that sheds a lot of light on this issue. Race is a fertile target for this kind of wrong thinking. But the Bible talks more about ethnic categories than anything having to do with race. The Greek word ethnos (usually translated as “nation”) is used in the New Testament to capture the idea of people who make up different groups based on a common history, language, or geographic region.

“Ethnic distinctions are general characteristics that include a person’s nation of origin, language, lineage, customs, and outward features, such as skin color,” explains my friend Norman Anthony Peart, a trained sociologist as well as the pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship, a multiethnic congregation in Cary, North Carolina. He adds, “When familiar racial identifiers such as skin color are used in the Bible, it is to distinguish and differentiate between people and people groups."  He points to the description of Simeon in Acts 13:1 as an example: “Among the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch of Syria were Barnabas, Simeon (called ‘the black man’), Lucius (from Cyrene), Manaen (the childhood companion of King Herod Antipas), and Saul."

Norman (who is African American) says these efforts to distinguish between people are a reasonable practice that humans use to discern the differences in the world around them. It’s when we use these practices to generalize or discriminate against others that it becomes a problem, both in secular and religious contexts. “The Bible does not present racial identifiers as indicators of the possession or lack of possession of innate abilities and qualities,” Norman says, adding that the only instances where whole people groups are cast negatively in Scripture are when they collectively fail in their obedience to God. It’s not about their ethnicity or nationality but their spiritual integrity.

The Bible says God made all nations from one blood. This tells me that He intended that humankind would be a people that were spiritually connected despite their cosmetic variations. This speaks directly to the call in 2 Corinthians 5 for people to be reconnected (or reconciled) to both God and their fellow man. This connection is a spiritual one. 

We know just from looking at God’s creation that He delights in diversity, even as that diversity is rooted in common traits. Did you know, for example, that there are more than 31,000 species of fish? They make up endless varieties of colors, shapes, and behaviors, yet they are all fish. There’s a reason why God did it this way. I believe He loves to showcase unity amid diversity.

Diversity sometimes grows out of God’s correction of sin and His need to redirect human attention. In the story of Babel (see Gen. 11:1–9), when we see God scatter the group of folks who had decided to “make a name for themselves” by constructing a state-of-the-art tower to the heavens, He was addressing their pride and rebellion. Apparently, God had plans for them to not just cluster in one spot but to be missional—to spread out to accomplish His purposes. (God’s redemptive plan, evidently, was already in motion.) 

But, these people saw greater opportunities for themselves by staying in one place and building a city that would celebrate their own brilliance. Their pride foreshadows Paul’s words in Romans 1:21 about those who “even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” God had to shake things up in Babel by confusing the people’s common speech in order to shift their attention away from themselves and back onto God’s purposes. This gave us a world with different languages, and the spark for cultures and ethnic groups to begin forming.