14 March 2024
I'm going to interrupt the series today.
God has called me. I am not accountable to any man for that calling, only to God. When the Holy Spirit tells me to change something, I strive to obey. When man tells me to change something, I always check with my Lord first, because my peace with Him is far more important than the whole human race, and it's certainly more important than my life.
The human mind is incapable of discerning what is righteous, and the flesh has no power to do it. Only the Holy Spirit can guide and empower. Whether or not something is a problem is not for men to decide, and how to solve any problems is surely not within man's grasp.
I am not going to write a book on this, so what I do offer here is highly condensed, and you will need to make some connections, and recognize implications, on your own. Other people are making this more complicated than need be. But I know I need to offer an explanation so you'll know whether your peace with God includes continuing to read my stuff. And maybe I can offer an example of how to approach this hot button issue.
I am totally at peace with God on how I handle race and racism. Here's my secret: It's not as important as it seems here in America right now. A lot of people who serve the Devil are trying to make it a big deal, but that's just a distraction, something at which the Devil excels. America is loaded with massive amounts of spiritual sewage, crap that has no place in our pursuit of the Covenant. The issue of race sensitivities is part of that crap.
Race and ethnicity is not the only difference that divides humanity. It is not even a big one.
Paul and Peter were both Jews, but Paul was a Diaspora Pharisee, and Peter was just a regular peasant. They didn't work together very much; they had different callings and missions. Barnabas was also Diaspora. He and Paul had a lot in common, but didn't work together very long; they had personal differences. There was no sin in parting company. It is madness to pursue an absolutist solution that denies the necessity of excluding from your company people whose presence disrupts your mission. It is not a judgment against them, only their presence.
You do not get to decide what God requires of me on that level.
Jesus Himself had boundaries in His mission. As a matter of clearly enunciated principle and mission, Jesus avoided ministering to Gentiles. That didn't stop Him delivering the Gadarene Demoniac, and it didn't stop Him healing the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter or the Centurion's servant. Still, the point is He knew when to bend the rules because He knew His mission. He taught about the false absolutism of the Pharisees verses His Father's revelation about contextual priorities. And He warned His disciples not to interfere with ministry in His name that didn't involve them.
Boundaries and convictions, folks. Peace with God in your conscience. And by all means, let's shed false guilt, because that's a lie from the Devil meant to confuse and weaken your Kingdom service. Nobody can decide for me that ethnic differences are not a proper reason for finding someone's presence a bad fit for my covering.
When talking about the blindness of western eyes, I find that R/OB don't recognize that their approach to racism is rooted in that same western blindness. To me, it seems they wrote out of a false sense of white man's guilt, which is simply the backside of the old "white man's burden" of civilizing the barbarians, and giving them parental guidance, while plundering their natural resources.
Yes, the book is a good warning that white American culture is not from God, and injects a lot of falsehood into reading the Scripture. Our Anglo-American roots are pagan. I've already openly denounced my white ethnic identity. My human ancestors were nasty people who lived in deep moral darkness, and their brand of Christian religion is highly compromised. That false religion includes the sense of white guilt. I don't have to drag that around; it's lying at the foot of the Cross.
But I still have work to do in this life, and it must account for all the realities of my white flesh. I have a foot in two realms, and there are limits to what I can do without wasting God's investment in my life. He chose to make me white, and to live with some measure of the baggage that comes with being white. Nobody else gets to decide what God wants me to carry around. And with a clear conscience before the Lord, there are people with whom, and to whom, I cannot minister. I'm not called to reach the whole world, only a very small part of it. I happen to know that my exclusions are based on the reality of things I've already tried, and things I've studied, and more hours in prayer than I can count.
There are plenty of really fine servants of God who are not born in my place, who are called to different missions and I need to stay out of their way. Reality: I might be willing to go share my faith at a black church, or a Korean church, or any other kind of place upon invitation. However, chances are very good that my ministry will not do them much good. It's not likely I will have answers to their particular challenges. So, I don't look for such opportunities. And while I might be far more willing to accept an invitation to a white church, I seriously doubt any church anywhere will invite me to come and minister. That's reality, too.
Obviously the barrier is not some racial spite. Hatred does not enter the picture when God tells you where to go and to whom you should minister. If He told me to crash someone's party, I would. But for my nearly 70 years of life so far, He's always steered me away from that. Instead, I put my message online and in books, and I do my best to hide my human identity except for those points where I must testify. I cannot speak from outside my experience, nor should I try.
Today, I testify to you that the common American thoughts on race are a lie from Hell. They are an attempt to rob you of your divine heritage and privileges. The social orthodoxy is worldly and pagan, not from the Bible. I testify that we need to stop defiling our gospel message by compromising with the world on this and every other issue that we can identify. We cannot pretend that "racially colorblind" is even possible; that's a lie from Satan. Scripture does not call for that; it calls for nailing your ethnic identity to the Cross. That's not the same thing. The intellectual absolutism about this is a human invention.
We can trust the Holy Spirit for the boundaries and the exceptions we must make in obeying the Lord, as well as the choices others make for themselves.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
But have you denounced your white heritage enough? /s
CatRez
Heh. Thank God I don't belong to that community, and have no real accountability to such questions.
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