In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was made into a law, making discriminatory actions illegal across the United States.
Through this act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created for the purpose of enforcing these anti-discrimination laws. Today, the EEOC has the capacity to assess charges and file lawsuits against employers that “discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and related conditions, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” 1https://www.eeoc.gov/overview This same federal agency takes efforts to prevent discrimination before it occurs, through training materials and outreach programs. In a way, the EEOC acts as a thought police, forcing employers to prove their hiring methods did not favor any particular demographic. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, employers could no longer just be passively not-discriminatory, they had to be actively anti-discrimination.
For Christians, the question is (and always has been), what constitutes discrimination? Many people will go to James 2:1-9 for reference. In the James illustration, the sin of partiality is put on display – the rich man is given a good seat at the table, while a poor man is told to stand in a corner. This is a fantastic, biblical example of discrimination, and one that every Christian ought to be able to condemn as a sin. James makes clear that to become a “judge with evil thoughts (v.4)”, is failing to “love your neighbor as yourself (v. 8).” But the question still feels unanswered: What constitutes discrimination today?
For that, we will need another analogy.
The Dodgeball Selection Process
For this illustration, we will imagine there are two captains who are instructed to make select their teammates one at a time. Each captain makes their selection from the pool of available players in turns, ultimately hoping to put together a team that will vanquish the other. At the start of the drafting process, the captains of the two teams analyze their potential selections. Despite being school-age children, the team leaders remember that the primary purpose of the draft is to create a winning team; any other other goal would a secondary objective.
A glance at the potential teammates gives no visual indication of who holds the greater individual skill. If the teams had played together before, this may be known, but for now you can assume that this is a truly blind draft. In this scenario, is it possible for either captain to violate biblical principles of discrimination? In theory, no. Due to the fact that they have no prior knowledge of these candidates, any selection made will be truly random.
Or is it?
Imagine the first boy selected is #3. Would the statistically unlikely selection of the Black child indicate something about the captain’s beliefs about race? Imagine the female, #4, is selected last. Did the captain of the final pick assume that she would be worse at dodgeball on account of her being a girl? Despite the fact that both these captains are completely blind to the actual skill level of the individuals, analyzing the draft process raises more questions than not thinking about it at all. Would a non-discriminating Christian boy have selected the girl first? But he assumed the shorter girl was worse at the game and only picked her in order to not discriminate, would he not be violating his original directive of winning the game? If we were to close our eyes and remember that the captains had no prior knowledge of the draft candidates, we would automatically assume that no discriminatory behavior took place. The only reason the captain’s judgement is even in question is because we were looking for discrimination in the first place.
The Sin Of Racism
Within a liberal version of Christianity, racism is typically considered a sin of discrimination. Included in this list of ‘discrimination-sins’ would be things like misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, ageism, bigotry, transphobia, and others. But in a Christian society, what would this look like? How would the Christian community know when a brother or sister is in serious sin, and ought to be corrected? A wise Christian might return to James 2, only to find that there is no specific penalty listed. If we want to apply biblical principles of discrimination, we should use what we do know. Let’s analyze the dodgeball draft again; this time with a strong suspicion that the captain of team B is going to engage in discriminatory behavior.
Suppose the children had known each other for some time. After all, it is a public play area, and a level of familiarity could have developed between them. Suppose also that the this was the tenth game of the day, and #1 and #2 (the two White boys) had been selected first every single time. Were they being selected first because they were white and/or male? The suspicion grows. Now the Captain of Team B has the third round pick, and, for the 10th time today, has to choose between #3 and #4.
At what point should the discerning Christian intervene? Do we have enough information to pronounce judgment? In this scenario, both captains have intentionally chosen the White boys first for 10 games in a row. Can we confidently pronounce either captain a racist or a misogynist and have them removed from the game? Of course not! This thought exercise is ridiculous. Despite the fact that 3 and 4 were picked last ten times in a row does not mean that either captain was acting with racist or misogynistic intentions.
It should be obvious that measuring discrimination in a selection process by the evaluating the outcome is a preposterous endeavor. Today, If one is accused of racism, Many people will point to their gender diversity metrics, or explain that they are friendly to minorities. Doing either of these is pointless. Sinful discrimination cannot be measured because it can only be known by it’s motive. In the dodgeball illustration, it is impossible to know if either captain is misogynist or a racist as we are unable to read his motivations. This makes identification of racial discrimination an impossible task. After all, only the Lord knows the heart (1 Kings 8:39).
Sin Vs Crime
The children playing dodgeball could have had many reasons for the choices they made. One captain could have been basing his decisions on a coinflip while the other could have been analyzing team chemistry and player strengths. It is also possible that one captain believed Black children are innately inferior, unworthy of a “teammate” designation, while the other captain’s hatred of the female sex burned so strong that he would rather lose the game than select a girl. If the results of the selection process were identical, how would we know if the captain was maniacal racist or just a coinflipper? Is it even possible for society to encourage the captain using his in-depth analysis was simultaneously identifying and correcting the blatant misogynist?
The entire point of the dodgeball analogy is to return to a more biblical understanding of racism as a sin, not as a crime. In today’s world, leftist thinking has has blurred this line into meaningless distinction. Today’s elites speak of racism as a crime against humanity, irredeemable, and irrefutable. The court of public opinion gathers it’s own evidence and performs it’s own trial, all while sitting on the sidelines of the dodgeball game. The first step in breaking free of this liberal poison is to emphatically refuse to relegate judiciary matters to the courts of social dogmas. This step alone would have significant impact on the unity of Christendom.
The second crucial step is to always remember that God’s law trumps any of mankind’s rules. Many Christians have been trained to think of racism as primarily defined by the Civil Rights Act, turning James 2 into a Sunday school lesson about equality. Instead of using Matthew 22:39 as the standard, modernized Christianity appeals to the criterion set out by the EEOC. Instead of loving our neighbors as ourselves, we have been conditioned to think our neighborly love as protecting minorities, or subjects of our hospitable affirmative action. The modern conception of misogyny is one area where the contemporary church has valued the words of men more than the words of God. Like the corrupt, secular society around them, liberal Christianity worships the state as the ultimate law giver.
“Wherever man has sought an immanent (not transcendent) source of power, a theology of state has developed and a new doctrine of God has been fleshed out. (…)
In this re-imagining process, he transfers the key attributes of God to man and his agencies. Because man is a sinner, these utopian schemes must always be dystopian in their outcomes.”
Joseph Boot, “The Mission of God” – 2016 (p. 162)
The Civil Rights Act was the result of mankind’s obsession with a new state-enforced morality. The establishment of the EEOC was not the result of Godly and faithful progress; it was the dystopian result of trading God’s law for a new man-made utopia. If you look to the era of civil rights as the new standard for humanity, I would warn you with this: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)
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