by Hiram R. Diaz III
[N.B. Next week, I want to explain my last post, as it was partially tongue-in-cheek. Is there a conservative emphasis in new movies and TV shows? I'm not sure, but I thought I'd share a deconstructive review of recent TV shows and films, in order to provide and example of how Christians can subvert the world's reasoning against it. I hope to explain my intention in a little more detail next week. So if you're interested, stay tuned :)
As for this post, it is a re-post of an article I wrote back in October of 2018. I thought it would be helpful to anyone who has come across recent claims that Voddie Bauchaum's book Fault Lines "misrepresents" Critical Race Theory and the social justice movement. CRT and Social Justice advocates utilize the same bad arguments and rhetorical tricks that I have elsewhere brought attention to, so what the current pro-Social Justice and pro-CRT professing Christians are currently doing is nothing new to me. They were doing this back in 2018, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing it in years prior to 2018. In any case, I hope this article benefits you.]
The Utter Incompatibility of CRT and Christianity
I want to give a basic explanation of why it is that Critical Race Theory (hereafter, CRT) is not only un-Christian but anti-Christian. This necessarily involves first defining CRT, establishing how its stated goals are distinct from the Christian’s duty to love one’s neighbor as oneself, disambiguating the discussion surrounding the “origin” of CRT, and then demonstrating the anti-Christian philosophical underpinnings it cannot exist without.
I want to give a basic explanation of why it is that Critical Race Theory (hereafter, CRT) is not only un-Christian but anti-Christian. This necessarily involves first defining CRT, establishing how its stated goals are distinct from the Christian’s duty to love one’s neighbor as oneself, disambiguating the discussion surrounding the “origin” of CRT, and then demonstrating the anti-Christian philosophical underpinnings it cannot exist without.
The utilization of CRT in determining whether or not the sin
of racism has occurred, as well as determining the best means of combating
racism, is becoming more and more prominent in professing evangelical churches,
sadly. This is in part, I believe, due to the way it is being sold to
philosophically naive Christians, be they ministers or parishioners. I pray this
helps clear up why it is that I and many others oppose the use of CRT, as well
as reject the CRT-birthed calls for Christians to engage in so-called “Social
Justice.”
§I. Defining CRT
If you haven’t come across Critical Race
Theory in evangelical conversations, either being promoted as the means of
church unity between Christians with differing ethnicities or being rejected as
the source of much unnecessary church division and conflict, you may not be
aware of Critical Race Theory at all. So, let’s define it. According to
Brittanica.com, CRT is
…the view that race, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is socially constructed and that race, as a socially constructed concept, functions as a means to maintain the interests of the white population that constructed it. According to CRT, racial inequality emerges from the social, economic, and legal differences that white people create between “races” to maintain elite white interest in labour markets and politics and as such create the circumstances that give rise to poverty and criminality in many minority communities.[Source]
This is CRT, in a nutshell. What is the purpose of CRT?
§II. Establishing the Difference Between God's Law and CRT
CRT proponents see the
world as comprised of those who privilege white interests either by creating
institutions, laws, etc that are geared toward that end, or by implicitly
privileging white interests by not opposing institutions, laws, etc that are
explicitly geared toward that end, on the one hand, and those who are neither
white nor benefit from those white-oriented institutions, laws, etc, on the
other hand. The goal of CRT in action, therefore, is to fix social injustices
that come through white supremacist institutions, laws, etc. Proponents of CRT
seek to bring about “social justice,” which is defined as “justice in terms of
the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.” [Source]
At times, CRT’s stated goal of bringing about justice within a
society and the Christian’s duty to love one’s neighbor seem to overlap. This
has led some evangelical proponents of CRT to argue that CRT is simply a means
to the end of loving one’s non-white, marginalized, minority class neighbor. But
this is not the case. Let me explain.
Firstly, while the outward
actions may at times seem to be identical (e.g. opposing overt acts of racism,
providing the poor with things they need, and so on), these actions are not an
end in and of themselves for the Christian. Rather, they are a means to an end.
Christians are to love our neighbors as ourselves so that we may demonstrate to
the world that we are God’s children (cf. Matt 5:44-45), lights in this dark
world (cf. Matt 5:14), and hopefully, if God so wills, see our fellow neighbors
come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. As Christ explains –
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”-Matt 5:14-16
The end goal of our acting in accordance with God’s Law is
God’s glorification, not the rectification of social ills. This is not to say
that we shouldn’t desire to see social ills rectified. Rather, it is to say that
the Christian’s goal is the glory of God in the salvation of sinners (for how
else can one give glory to God other than by first becoming one who glories in
God by faith in the redemptive work of his Son?), whereas the goal of CRT is to
fix social problems.
Secondly, because CRT originates from an
anti-Christian worldview, the ethical actions which it legitimizes are often at
odds with Christianity altogether. For instance, CRT allows its proponents to
believe that white people occupy powerful positions, ultimately, for the sake of
benefiting from “white supremacy.” CRT proponents, thus, engage in “social
justice” that is rooted in this assumption. However, unless one can evidentially
justify the claim that one’s white neighbor has sinned by tipping the scales, as
it were, in favor of white people, one’s vocal and public identification of
one’s white neighbor as being guilty of sin is slander and bearing false
witness, both of which are actual sins. CRT’s view of white supremacy allows for
large-scale slander and false witness bearing, and cannot be reconciled with the
Law of God which forbids not only the perversion of justice, but slander and
false witness.
The stated goals of CRT, then, and those of the
Christian are not at all the same, though they may seem to share an identical
external appearance.
§III. Disambiguating the "Origins" of CRT
When we
talk about the origins of a particular movement, we could be referring to either
the historical genealogy of the movement, or to the academic roots from which
the movement has sprung. This needs to be done when considering a movement that
is being presented as one that doesn’t owe its origins to academics but the
pressing needs of a society’s marginalized people.
The reality of the
situation is that,
The launch of the CRT movement in 1989 marked its separation from critical legal studies (CLS; the theory established at a conference in 1977 that rethinks and overturns accepted norms and standards in legal practice and theory).[Source]
And proponents of CLS were themselves influenced by the
post-structuralist philosophers Jacques Derrida (see
this paper for more information on this subject) and Michel Foucault (see
here for more info), academics who made a career out of opposing absolutes and universals in the
fields of philosophy, history, psychology, and literature.
So it is
misleading to claim that
Instead of drawing theories of social organization and individual behaviour from continental European thinkers such as G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx or psychoanalytic figures like Sigmund Freud as its theoretical predecessors, as CLS and feminist jurisprudence had done, CRT inspired by the American civil rights tradition through figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois, and from nationalist thinkers such as Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and Frantz Fanon” [Source].
It is misleading because not only is CRT the offspring of CLS
(itself largely influenced by post-structuralist philosophers), Martin Luther
King Jr.’s own understanding of human psychology and relationships was greatly
influenced by G.W.F. Hegel,
as this article explains.
Moreover, W.E.B. Du Bois was likewise greatly influenced by G.W.F.
Hegel’s philosophical psychology (see
here), in
addition to being influenced, to some degree, by Sigmund Freud’s concept of
double-consciousness [See
here
for detailed info, specifically section 4.2.5], a fact which further implies dependency on Freud's Anti-Christian/Evolutionary anthropology.
CRT did not spring
from a pure desire to help others in need, but from a way of looking at the
world that is in direct opposition to the teaching of Christianity. It’s
philosophical roots poison its “social justice” fruits.
§IV. The Anti-Christian Underpinnings of Critical Race Theory
1. Anti-Christian Anthropology: Freud, Marx, & Hegel
Common to Freud, Marx, and Hegel is the idea that human
psyche is not a stable, fixed, and sealed reality. Rather, the human psyche is
in a process of becoming ideally human. For Freud, the psyche is moving from
animality to sociality. This means that outward behavior and verbal expressions
conceal the real, inner primal urges of the person acting and speaking. Freudian
slips, dreams, involuntary bodily movements – these all point to an underlying
reality that is pre-social, in fact anti-social, violent, and purely
self-interested. For Freud, humans are animals whose true intentions have been
covered by a thin veneer of socialization. These true feelings and desires only
come to the forefront when one’s guard is down, making the tasks of speech and dream
analysis necessary to understanding what is truly occurring in a person’s
mind.
For Marx, the human psyche also develops over time, i.e.
historically under specific material conditions. Personhood is bound to one’s place in society, his ability to
produce and possess capital (e.g. property, land, agricultural goods, etc).
Those who do not possess capital (i.e. the proletariat), but who engage in the
production of objects for the possessors of capital (i.e. the bourgeoisie),
experience alienation from their work. This hinders them from acquiring what
they desire beyond their basic animal needs, and results in what Marx identified
as false consciousness. This is a way of thinking that blinds a person from
seeing their true plight in a society, i.e. socio-economically. As with Freud,
Marx’s idea here is that what is consciously voiced by a proletariat/oppressed
individual is the expression of a socially frustrated person who is, at
root, an animal seeking to best satisfy its basic needs, as well as exercise
social and political power via means of production that allow for his acquiring
and possessing capital.
W.E.B. Du Bois famously taught a theory of
racial double consciousness that very closely follows Freud’s theory of
dual-consciousness. Whereas Freud saw the unexpressed real desires of man as
consisting of base animal instincts, and Marx saw the unexpressed real desires
of man as being socio-economic frustration, Du Bois believed that black
Americans experienced a divided/double consciousness. He describes it as
…sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.[Source]
The philosophical anthropology taught by the above thinkers can be
summarized as follows –
1. Man is an animal.2. Man’s needs are ultimately related to the preservation of physical life.3. Man’s needs are inextricably related to a primal desire to obtain power.4. The conscious expressions of others are only part of the story, they may in fact be concealing attitudes, beliefs, and desires that completely contradict what they consciously express.5. Man’s soul/psyche is dependent upon his material conditions.6. The psyche/soul is wholly naturalistic, i.e. a product of brain chemistry and nothing more.
The human psyche, in
other words, is not the imago dei but the product of naturalistic [read: historical and material] causes. The
internal conflict of man due to his (a.)being the image of God and (b.)being
fallen in Adam, and (c.)corrupt by his own actual sins is not properly accounted
for by the founding philosophical anthropologists of CRT. Rather than
identifying man, individually, as the primary cause of man’s psychological and,
therefore, social woes, the founding CRT thinkers viewed man as being the made
by his circumstances.
These two views of man are completely at odds
with one another. You see, while Scripture does not deny that others may
influence one, to some extent, to sin (cf. Matt 18:6), it places the
responsibility for one’s sins of the mind and body on the individual himself.
James 1:14-15 clearly teaches us that
...each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Our environment may
reveal our desire to sin, but we are ultimately the ones who bear the guilt for
our transgressions of mind and body.
And while Scripture teaches that
we are capable of having animals as companions, which implies a very basic level
of reciprocal interaction that only sometimes involves the reciprocal exchange
of emotions (e.g. between dogs and humans, or between horses and humans, etc)
(cf. Gen 2:18-20 & 2nd Sam 12:1-6), it does not identify humans as animals.
In Genesis 1 & 2, in fact, man is created on the same day as the land
animals (cf. Gen 1:24-29 & 2:18-20) but is twice excluded from the category
of “animals” (cf. Gen 1:25-26 & 1:29-30).
2. Anti-Christian Valuation of Material and Spiritual Needs
In contradiction to the ideas of man
held by the above mentioned thinkers and their CRT progeny, the primary need of
man is righteousness, not food or shelter or clothing or equal opportunities to
accumulate capital and thereby become a fully realized individual self. This was
the case before the Fall, since Adam’s life was not perpetuated by his
consumption of food, or by his employment (cf. Gen 2:15), or by his shelter from
harm (since there was no other harm in the universe but that which the serpent
was capable of producing via temptation), but by his obedience to God’s Law (cf.
Gen 2:16-17 & Rom 5:12-14ff).
This was also the case after
the Fall, since “life is more than food, and the body more than clothing” (Matt
6:25). Christ actually identifies anxiety over food and clothing as sinful
behavior by which the lost are characterized. The Christian’s concern is to be
the kingdom of God and his righteousness (cf. Matt 6:33) – the Christian’s
concern is to be the preaching of Christ as Lord, who died for our sins, was
buried, was raised on the third day, and is coming back to judge the living and
the dead. This concern for the declaration of the truth of God’s Word concerning
his King and the nature of his Kingdom is to be definitive of the Christian’s
life, not “social justice.”
Proponents of CRT mock those who say the
church’s primary focus is to be the preaching of the Word to God’s people for
their sanctification, and for equipping them to go into the world with the
Gospel and make disciples of all nations. However, they are standing in
opposition to Christ’s clear teaching in his Sermon on the Mount. They are
likewise opposing Paul who in Eph 4:11-14 writes –
…he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
The leaders Paul mentions have been given for the sake of
building Christ’s body up with respect to sound doctrine. That sound doctrine
forms the basis upon which a Christ-like life lived in response to the grace of
God is founded.
CRT proponents invert the Scriptures’ valuation of
material and spiritual needs. Scripture says that spiritual needs are of primary
concern, CRT proponents say that material needs are of primary concern – vice
versa. Either material needs are primary or they are not – these two ways of
valuing spiritual and material needs are mutually exclusive.
3. Anti-Christian Epistemology
CRT’s foundations imply a form of
epistemological relativism. This is because the anthropology & psychology it
is ultimately founded upon views man’s consciousness, and the content of his
consciousness, as being inseparably tied to his social experience. Freud, Marx,
and Hegel all embrace an epistemology that limits what is knowable to the knower
in his particular social and historical contexts. This kind of subjectivism as
regards what is knowable contradicts what the Scriptures teach regarding
knowledge. Scriptural epistemology is an involved subject that requires a lot
more space to flesh out the particulars as regards physical sensation and its
relationship to the acquisition of knowledge, but it can summarized as follows
–
God’s knowledge is unchanging, indefeasible (i.e. not capable of being augmented or entirely rejected by further study or research or correction from another rational being), and is not dependent upon creation. This knowledge is given to us by God as he sees fit. Because we are creatures, we necessarily receive that knowledge in a creaturely way (e.g. in time, alongside of our physical experiences (some argue that it is through those experiences), and in particular contexts (though these contexts aren’t always related to the knowledge we receive alongside our being historically located in them). So while we learn as creatures, because we will always be creatures who receive from God any knowledge we possess, it follows that knowledge of anything is not dependent upon our experiences, socio-economic or otherwise.
The
Christian understanding of the nature of knowledge, how knowledge is acquired,
and from whom it is acquired is, in other words, diametrically opposed to the
views espoused by Freud, Marx, Hegel and their CRT successors, at the
presuppositional level.
Lastly, while many want to speak of truth
that only certain persons and groups can know, their stated belief contradicts
what we can learn from the incarnation of our Lord Christ. For he was, is, and
always will be omniscient. Therefore, according to Scripture it is the case that
a straight, heterosexual, Jewish man knows all truths that are knowable. Christ
is God, of course, and knows all things by virtue of his being omniscient.
Nevertheless, what we see in the hypostatic union is that a heterosexual,
Jewish, 2nd cent. man knew and knows all truths. If only some truths can be
known by particular persons or people groups, then this would imply that Christ
lacks knowledge that is peculiar to each and every female, non-Jewish, 2nd cent.
and post-2nd cent. person. But Christ is omniscient. Therefore, it is not the
case that there are some truths that are only knowable to a given person or
group of people.
§V. Concluding Remarks
Someone familiar with logical
fallacies might read through my breakdown of the philosophical origins of CRT
and think that what I have presented is a form of the genealogical fallacy.
That’s not the case. [For more on this, see my series: "The Genetic Fallacy: Critical Race Theory's Indispensable Tool," Part I & Part II]
When I say that the reason why CRT is
anti-Christian is because it is derived from anti-Christian philosophical
presuppositions, I am not saying that the conclusions of CRT and social justice
warriors are false for that reason alone. I am saying that their philosophical
underpinnings provide the necessary basis for their sociological, ethical, and
spiritual beliefs. And given that those philosophical underpinnings are comprised of a wrong sociology, ethics, and
spirituality, it follows that social justice warriors' & CRT proponents' concerns in those three areas are also wrong
to that degree.
The anthropology, ethics, and spirituality of CRT and
social justice proponents are counterfeits of what we find in Scripture. They
are superficially similar to what we find in the Scripture, but upon closer
examination reveal that they are not identical.
CRT is not Christian
because it has no basis in the Christian faith. Rather, it is rooted in a
rabidly anti-Christian academic and academically-influenced culture which
inverted and inverts the biblical doctrines of man, ethics, knowledge, and
religion. It must be rejected for what it is, a political ideology rooted in the
anti-Christian worldview of post-structuralist and postmodernist philosophy.
The
Scriptures are clear –
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.-2nd Tim 3:16-17
We don’t need to supplement the
Scriptures with any external source of information about anthropology, ethics,
and spirituality/religion. Scripture alone is necessary, and it is completely
sufficient.
Soli Deo Gloria
-h.
Comments
Post a Comment