My husband and I attended McLean Bible Church in the D.C. area for a little more than a year, but we began looking for a different church that was better-suited to our needs during the coronavirus pandemic. I still have the utmost respect for Pastor David Platt, from whom I learned a lot. But recent comments he made about systemic racism and the church have convinced me that we made the right decision to leave.
There are a lot of other people who used to attend McLean who would agree. The crux of their complaint centers on some comments Platt made in reference to the debates over race last summer, during which he said we are all responsible for a system of “racialization” in this country, regardless of whether we actively hold a prejudice against others. “We subtly, almost unknowingly, contribute to it,” Platt added.
Over at the Dispatch, David French doesn’t think Platt is off-base. In fact, he thinks Platt is exactly right.
“Time and again, there are non-racist reasons for wanting to maintain the structures racists created,” French writes. One’s lack of overt prejudice, he goes on, does not excuse past injustices, no matter how far removed they might be. The effects of racism are still present, he says, and we are all responsible for that, whether we realize it or not.
Both French and Platt are wrong for two reasons. First, they both use a definition of “racism” and “systemic racism” that entirely neglects intent and individual purpose. Second, they use Scripture to justify this.
As to the second point, the biblical text French cites is a story from 2 Samuel 21, in which the newly crowned King David must atone for the sins of the previous king, Saul, by giving up seven of Saul’s descendants for execution. French says this passage points to an “underlying conception of justice” in which “Israel remained responsible for its former leader’s sins, and they were required to make amends.”
But French fails to take into consideration two vital points: First, the Israelites in the Old Testament were bound to a sacred covenant with God Himself. To compare their community to modern-day America is therefore absurd. Yes, Christians in America are still bound to God’s Word and are responsible for the sins we have committed against Him in our political community and elsewhere. But the U.S. government is not bound to God’s will as the Old Testament nation of Israel’s was; the comparison of the two is just not as clean as French makes it out to be.
Second, French cites the passage in 2 Samuel without mentioning one of the most important biblical principles: that the Old Testament covenant and its expectations were superseded by the Christ’s sacrifice. The Old Covenant demanded penance and exacted justice, even across generations, in a way the New Covenant does not. Christ freed us from this burden of guilt. No longer are entire families held responsible for the sins of their forebears because one man has taken responsibility for us all. The Christian doctrine of Original Sin holds that our inherited guilt for the first act of disobedience against God is expiated by Christ’s sacrifice. Moreover, in John’s Gospel, Jesus himself gently reproached his disciples for suggesting that a blind man must have been born that way as punishment for his or his parents’ sins. This is why the prophet Jeremiah says, “In those days, they shall say no more: the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
Christ’s sacrifice changed the entire nature of the covenant. For French to neglect this truth is to misrepresent the Old Testament passage he cites.
As far as French’s definition of racism goes, it seems as though he doesn’t believe intent matters — when, in fact, intent is the very essence of racism. He admits that the examples of systemic racism he cites — redlining, lack of school choice, etc. — are the results of past racist policies, not present-day bad actors, but he argues they prove our systems still have racist tendencies anyway.
The problem is this is the exact same argument that the proponents of postmodern racialism, such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, use. They argue that any policy that creates or contributes to “inequity” is racist, no matter the intentions of those participating within the system. Any person who might have historically benefited from inequity is also deemed racist, even if he has never held any sort of racial animus or discriminated against anyone due to race.
If French is right and the outcomes of past policies are what determine “racism,” this would imply that Kendi is correct. This is why definitions matter. Whether he realizes it or not, French has adopted the Left’s standard for systemic racism, and it shapes his entire discussion.
But the Left is wrong: Racism is not power or results, as my colleague Quin Hillyer so aptly put it. Racism is an active choice or a chosen attitude that involves hating someone or some group for a specific reason. And it is a hatred that anyone can either embrace or reject.
In that context, French’s examples fall apart. Past racist policies, such as redlining, may have produced some of today’s inequities. Perhaps we should even change today’s policies to increase fairness. But that doesn’t make the housing system “racist,” unless it is operated with the intention of discriminating against minorities. The lack of school choice in urban communities has certainly produced unequal results unfavorable to racial minorities. But the policy’s opponents should not be called “racist” unless they are deliberately opposing school choice in order to discriminate against minorities.
There is a huge difference between acknowledging racism as it exists today and catering to the Left’s narrative of systemic racism. The latter is false, toxic, and destructive. It imputes guilt based on skin color, irrespective of wrongdoing, and it holds that those arbitrarily found culpable based on previous generations’ choices cannot ever be redeemed for a sin they might never have committed themselves.
Any church that teaches such a thing is not doing itself or its members any favors.
