Month: September 2020

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Group Guilt is a Non-Christian Concept

Group Guilt

(Exodus 20:5b)– I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,” See also ( Exodus 34:6-7) and (Deuteronomy 5:9)

Or no Group Guilt

(Deuteronomy 24:16)–“Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers;” also Ezekiel 18:20a)–“The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity;”

There is a difference between the penalty of sin and the consequences of sin. Both are unpleasant but they are different.

For Example: A man is a bank robber, he gets caught and sent to jail. His children are not penalized by the Judge, they are not sent to Jail – but because Dad is in jail, money is hard to come by and they grow up in poverty. The judicial penalty was not visited on the children, but the natural consequences were. This can create inter-generational dysfunction.

Inter-generational Dysfunction can bring pressure on new generations to fall into older habits of sin. The guilt is not passed from one generation to another but the consequences of the sin may flow down the generations corrupting each in its turn.

1) For those in Christ forgiveness of the penalty of sin is freely available.

2) We are subject only to the penalty of our sins, but we are subject not only to the consequences of our sins but the consequences of others sins as well.

3) God wants us not only to be free of the penalty of our sin, but also free of the consequences of sin. {Jesus wept for Lazarus}.

Therefore it is our responsibility as Christians, not only to repent of our own sins, but to hold up the consequences of all sin so that God can work.

Example: we may not be guilty of slavery but it is our responsibility to work to end racism.

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Chaos and Race Theory

A lot of what passes among protestors today for thought finds its origins in Critical Race Theory. Critical Race theory finds its origins in Marxism. Marxism finds its roots in a pre-Christian understanding of man (old fashioned inclusive masculine) as subject to forces beyond our control.  The whims of Zeus, the anger of Thor, the finger of fate, the claim of destiny have all given way to impersonal imperatives which control history.

For Marx history is not shaped by individuals but by groups driven by economic imperatives. Critical Race theory posits a world where people are driven by a foundational imperative to form groups, based on race, in order to acquire, enjoy and hold on to power.

In this world view individuals will sublimate their will to the will of their group. The group then influences the choices of the individual. Groups in dynamic interrelationship with one another determine individual choices.  There can be no individual free choice. There is only group agency.  Individual agency simply does not exist.  

Critical Race Theory postulates a world where the will to power is so great that it consumes individual free will and individual agency. Yet at the same time some people can rise above this fierce power, awaken to reality and become allies of the oppressed, a vanguard of the future. So which is it? Is the will to power irresistible or not? Is it a foundational imperative or not?

Looking at the people who seem to hold to Critical Race Theory, I have to ask. If a teenaged college student can break free of systemic racism, the imperative to amass power, and group think, how strong can those things be?

If systemic racism is so weak that an adolescent can overcome it, why have people not tackled it before? Oh wait. William Wilberforce, the Civil War, the Civil rights era, the voting rights act, Affirmative Action, the war on Poverty, to name just a few.

My old seminary professors would say that as a theory it is internally and externally incoherent. Internally because the will to power cannot be both so strong as to control the choices of all the people in the world and so weak that it can be so easily fought off. Externally because history and society are filled with examples of individuals, movements and nations fighting against the very racism that the Woke believe has controlled the ages.

Critical Race Theory makes no sense. Not Biblically, not spiritually, not historically, not socially. In order to buy into the movement I would have to abandon free will, logic, history and the evidence of my own eyes.   This is probably why I keep being told that reason, history, logic and critical thinking are racist. I suspect that someone is lying to me about that. I also suspect that incoherent theories of social organization can only be held together by violence. That is what we see today in American cities.