From One Man

Racism is stupid. There, that's putting it bluntly. It's also evil. But it IS stupid. One simple sentence in Scripture puts the lie to it.
     "From one man (God) made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands." (Acts 17:26)
     Paul said these words during his address to the "eggheads" on Mars Hill in Athens. Granted, he was seeking to reach them more by philosophical thought than by Old Testament Scripture which would not connect with these educated Greeks. But in this one sentence, Paul upholds the reality of a historical Adam and plainly states that all human beings descend from him. We could also say that all human beings descend from one set of parents, since the name "Eve" means "mother of all living."
     I like a page on Facebook called "The Poached Egg," which deals with Christian apologetics. I highly recommend it. A few days ago, an author and speaker named Dr. Richard Belcher made a defense of the historical Adam. In that post, he said that without this, the whole Pauline argument of original sin through one man falls apart. http://michaeljkruger.com/the-historical-adam-why-it-really-matters/  I think the argument against racism might also be weakened, if we just began as a group of beings all over the earth. Let's see, Jesus and Paul believed in a historical Adam, Many modern scholars, including those in the evangelical camp, do not. Who will I go with? No contest. I stand with Jesus and Paul.
     In the final analysis, there really is only one race. Now I know that, anthropologically, there are said to be three - CAUCASIAN (Aryans, Hamites, Semites) MONGOLIAN (northern Mongolian, Chinese, IndoChinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Malayan, Polynesian, Maori, Micronesian, Eskimo, Native American) and  NEGROID (African, Hottentots, Melanesians/Papua, "Negrito", Australian Aborigine, Dravidians, Sinhalese) - but, biblically, there is one: the HUMAN race. I say this because the nations were divided in Genesis 10-11, following the Tower of Babel incident. Still, all peoples come from either Shem, Ham, or Japheth, all of whom came from one man, Noah, who also came from one set of parents, Adam and Eve. There is just no way around it. We belong to the human race - that strange mixture of nobility and evil. We carry Adam's genes in us. Unfortunately, we also carry Adam's sin nature (which is why we ALL need a Savior, no matter what our ethnicity or skin color is).
     It would be far more accurate to speak in terms of ETHNICITIES or NATIONALITIES than of races. I believe there is one race (maybe three sub-races, but I'm not sure I'm even ready to concede that. There might be a better term.), with a multitude of ethnicities within it. And God has determined these. He has chosen who would be darker skinned, and who would be lighter skinned. And the old children's song is spot on.
     "Red and yellow, black and white, (all) are precious in his sight."
     An argument simply cannot be made for the superiority or inferiority of any ethnicity or nationality. (More on that in the next blog).
     We have one human father and mother (Adam and Eve), one Creator (God), and if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, one heavenly Father. To share these in common is all we need to be one people of God.