A Christian Reponse to Systemic Racism, Part Two

How serious is sin?

          Like so many other things in life, American Christians tend to talk about sin in hyper-individualist terms. Sin is “a heart issue.” My sin is a darkness that lives in my heart; your sin is a darkness that lives in your heart. Generally, this darkness follows basic laws of karma. If a person abuses alcohol, it is out of their own lack of control. In the Bible, the hardening of human hearts is an aspect of sin (Rom 1:20-25; Eph 4:18; Heb 4:7). The salvific work of Christ on the cross does melt those hearts (Eph 3:17; Heb 10:16). But to end the story there leaves sin a weak, fuzzy, almost-manageable concept that has extremely limited capacity in the world. Congruently, the redemption of Christ need not be that powerful either.

          Yet this is not how the Bible talks about sin. Sin is pervasive, devastating, unfair, capricious, and touches every aspect of our world. Literal or mythical, when Eve and Adam ate the fruit in the garden, more than just their hearts were affected. Nature itself was cursed because of them (Gen. 3:13-24). It causes the nature world to “groan as if in childbirth” under the weight of the competition, limited resources, fickle weather, and natural disasters that human sin unleashed (Rom 8:22). Humans are like King Midas in reverse. Everything we touch is touched with sin.

Rather than thinking of sin as a dark blot in individual hearts, think of it like the Zebra Mussel. Zebra Mussels are a small, filter feeding species that invaded the Great Lakes region in the 1980’s. Since then, these small shells have cost both the United States’ and Canadian governments billions of dollars trying to fight them. While one mussel is small and seemingly manageable, together they have clogged pumping systems throughout the Midwest, endangered native fish species, dropped beachfront property values, and staled thousands of personal and commercial boats motors. They are so aggressive that in their invasive species exhibit at Shred’s Aquarium in Chicago, they use plastic models in the tank, fearing the real thing will get into their water system.

Sin that lives in my heart is not that bad. Add in a little divine forgiveness bought at Calvary and the Holy Spirit playing the good angel on my shoulder and it becomes manageable. Sin that infests and spreads like an invasive species is not so easily contained. It requires radical redemption. At Calvary, Christ took his place as the first fruit of a reborn race with “all enemies under his feet” (I Cor 15: 20-28). Christ’s sacrifice did not rescue me from this creaking, broken world; it promises the remaking of both heaven and earth when “all things” will be made new (Rev 21).

Like the Zebra Mussels invade every waterway connected to the Great Lakes, sin infects everything humanity touches--- our institutions, cultural norms, family legacies, and governments. These are social sins. Social sins are monstrous things that have grown beyond any one human heart. For example, many people still use the r-word--- a demeaning and dehumanizing term for people with intellectual disabilities--- in conversation or humor. Most these people are not consciously choosing to insult the 6.5 million Americans with intellectual disabilities. They are just reflecting a culture that normalized this kind of language. Yet, it is insulting; it is rude; it is sin.

In the same way that sin can flow from human hearts to our institutions, sin can flow from the teachings of society into the human heart. In 1893, Indiana University Professor of Economics John Commons explained it this way to the Evangelical Alliance conference: “Man is a social animal. He is part of a living, growing organism. He receives life handed down by generations of ancestry. He grows up amidst all-pervasive pressures of beliefs, opinions, sentiments, habits, and industrial conditions. He is, therefore, the creature of his social class. Hence the reformation of society is a problem of ages; not merely a question of picking out individuals after they are born.”

Social sins can exist when structures such as social stratification actively cause suffering in people’s lives. This poverty cannot be traced back to one cigar-smoking slumlord with darkness in his heart. It grows out of centuries of complacency, tiny actions of greed, inequality, bureaucracy, and selfishness till no one person involved is technically doing anything wrong; yet the final system is very, very wrong. This is how every officer on a particular police force can be a good person who want to protect people. Nevertheless, because the force uses racial profiling, over-polices certain areas, has no cultural knowledge of minorities, and targets crimes that minorities are more likely to commit, the force as a whole plays a role in systemic racism.

In this light, systemic racism is not merely a sociological quirk. It is sin that has crept through every available channel to invade our world. Social sin was a recurrent problem in the Old Testament as the people of Israel and Judah cycled through loyalty and betrayal towards God. Godly leaders rose repeatedly to combat Israel’s social sins of idolatry, oppression, and greed. These leaders never looked at societal sins and said, “I’m not a part of that!” They looked at them and repented on behalf of their nation. Take Josiah the boy king. He grew up in the Temple and served God his entire reign, yet when the book of the Law was found, he led the people in mourning, repentance, and methodical attempts to root out these sins (2 Kings 22).

John Commons--- the nineteenth century economist and reformer give us a blueprint to combat social sins. First, educate ourselves. He believed that the “characteristics of the defective, dependent, and delinquent classes should be the familiar knowledge of every Christian.” Second, base changes on studies and science. Commons was a force among economists and sociologists in his day for his constant push to not base positions on “tradition,” but on research and current data. Third, make laws. Commons observes that “every effective measure for the advancement of society turns upon the formation and administration of laws.” He pointed out the reforms of his day: ending child labor, prison reforms, monopoly busting, improved working conditions, increased education--- all of which required government intervention.

Do laws and social reform change human hearts? Yes and no. Human hearts are sinful. Laws and protests do not change that. But laws and cultural movements can change social sin and its ability to seep into the human heart. Compare our day to Commons’. Most American factory managers today would never dream of forcing young children to risk their lives daily in unsafe factory work conditions. This is a social sin that Professor Commons and his allies fought, educated the public about, preached from the pulpit against, and advocated in Congress and state legislation for its termination. Slowly, this social sin was (mostly) eroded from the American workforce.

In that same address at the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, Professor Commons encouraged Christians to fight systemic sins such as our modern crisis of racism. He said, “The church should not content herself with saving individuals out of the world but should save the world. Society is the subject of redemption.” This is consistent with the biblical description of sin as an invasive species in in our world and the narrative of Christ’s passion which will redeem and renew all of heaven and earth one day.

Sources

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/02/zebra-mussels-impact-good-bad/

John Commons. Christianity Practically Applied: The Discussions of the International Christian Conference Volume II The Baker & Taylor Co, 1893.