Jul
17
The Way Forward: Forgiveness and Clear Biblical Teaching
In earlier posts, I cited Voddie Baucham’s concerns regarding the growing “fault lines” within greater Evangelical Christianity due to the infiltration of Critical Race Theory, “social justice”, etc. Baucham explained what these ideas were, their unbiblical nature, and how they have manifested in “evangelical” churches across America. In this post, I present much of the final chapter of Baucham’s Fault Lines, in which he expresses what he feels is the best way forward and urges church leaders to stand firm against the “woke” teaching spreading across the land.
Baucham begins the chapter with a description of his emotional first visit to Africa and to the Baptist church where he was scheduled to speak….
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“I thought about the fact that my ancestors once inhabited the continent of Africa. That was, until for one reason or another, other Africans sold them into slavery — probably after taking them as slaves themselves. I thought about the horrors of the Middle Passage and the indignities of bondage in America. I thought about the fact that slavery had robbed me of so much that I didn’t even know which African country my ancestors had come from, let alone which tribe.
Then I thought about the moment at hand, and something switched.
Suddenly, I realized that I had traveled thousands of miles from the place of my ancestors’ oppression to the place of their betrayal. And for the first time in my life, I forgave. I didn’t forgive because I was big enough, or a godly enough man. Nor did I forgive because anybody asked me to. I forgave because I was overcome by the weight and majesty of God’s providence.
By God’s providence, my ancestors survived their ordeal. By God’s providence, one of their descendants (me) had returned — not as a slave of men, but as a slave of Christ. By God’s providence, I was born a free man and a citizen of the greatest Republic in the history of mankind. By God’s providence, I was numbered among the healthiest, freest, most prosperous people (of any race, not just black people) on the planet. By God’s providence, I had received the best theological education available in the world. And by God’s providence, He had brought me back to Africa to bless the descendants of the people who sold my ancestors into slavery. So I forgave.
I forgave the Africans who took my ancestors’ freedom. I forgave the Americans who bought and exploited them. I forgave the family that replaced my identity with their German name. I just forgave! I did not harbor any ill will. I did not feel entitled to any apologies or reparations. By God’s grace, I recognized that Providence had blessed me beyond my ancestors’ wildest dreams — or my own. I couldn’t help but remember Joseph’s words: ‘As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today’ (Genesis 50:20).
In the end, it is forgiveness that will heal our wounds. My hope is not that white Christians can feel sorry enough for their past or that ministries and organizations can dig up and grovel over enough historical dirt. That is not the powerful, life-changing, world-confounding message of the Gospel. That is the message of the world.
I have heard a mantra lately that rings hollow in my ears: ‘There can be no reconciliation without justice.’ When I hear that, I want to scream, ‘YES! AND THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THAT JUSTICE!’ All other justice is proximate and insufficient. It is because of Christ’s work on the cross that we can heed the apostle’s admonition: ‘Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you’ (Ephesians 4:31-32). Who am I to tell a white brother that he cannot be reconciled to me until he has drudged up all of the racial sins of his and his ancestors’ past and made proper restitution? Christ has atoned for sin!
Consequently, the most powerful weapon in our arsenal is not calling for reparations: it is forgiveness. Antiracism knows nothing of forgiveness because it knows nothing of the Gospel. Instead, antiracism offers endless penance, judgment, and fear. What an opportunity we have to shine the light of Christ in the midst of darkness!
I realized in 2006 that I had been blessed in order to be a blessing. I had been given much so that I could give much. A decade earlier, the Lord had called me to lead my family away from churches where everybody looked like us, and we became strangers in a strange land. Now, He was calling me to go to a place where most everybody looked like us, and we would remain strangers in a strange land (Jeremiah 14:8).
I am not an African. I am not an African American. I am an American, and I wouldn’t want to be anything else. American doesn’t owe me anything. America has blessed me beyond measure. If anything, I owe America. More importantly, I owe my Savior, and by extension, I owe my brothers and sisters in Christ.
This book was hard to write. I knew that no matter how careful I was, how irenic, deferential, or gracious, the very content of this book would be deemed offensive, unkind, and insensitive. Some will go as far as calling it ‘violence.’ So why write it?
I wrote this book because I love God more than life, the truth more than others’ opinion of me, and the Bride of Christ more than my platform. My heart is broken as I watch movements and ideologies against which I have fought and warned for decades become entrenched at the highest and most respected levels of evangelicalism. I want this book to be a clarion call. I want to unmask the ideology of Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality in hopes that those who have imbibed it can have the blinders removed from their eyes, and those who have bowed in the face of it can stand up, take courage, and ‘contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3).
I harbor no animosity against anyone named in these pages, and if you happen to agree with my perspective on these issues, I hope you don’t either. My goal is not to destroy, but to expose (Ephesians 5:11), warn (2 Timothy 3:15), and correct (2 Timothy 2:25) in hopes that ‘they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will’ (2 Timothy 2:26). And, yes, I do mean to call these ideologies demonic….
Pastors, I beg you to consider what I have written here. I believe the Church — your church — is under attack. As shepherds, we must defend the sheep. We must repel the wolves. And yes, the wolves are many. However, this one is within the gates and has the worst of intentions. He desires to use your genuine love for the brethren as leverage. Don’t let him! Recognize the difference between the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls you to love all the sheep and the voice of the enemy that tells you some of them are guilty, blind, ignorant oppressors and that others are oppressed — all based on their melanin. Reject cries that take principles and stories of individual restitution (Numbers 5:7; Luke 19) and eisegetically twist them into calls for multi-generational reparations. Reject the cries of those who twist the repentance of Daniel and Ezra 1) on behalf of theocratic Israel and 2) for sin that took place during their lifetime, in an effort to promote multi-generational, ethnic guilt that rests upon all white people by virtue of the whiteness….
If you are a person who has imbibed this ideology, let it go! Find freedom in Christ. ‘For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God’ (1 Peter 3:18). Why, then, would you hold on to guilt for sins committed by or against your distant grandparents? And if you do, why only stop at slavery and Jim Crow? What about the other commandments broken by our distant kin? No, beloved, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9). That is who we are, since ‘as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us’ (Psalm 103:12). And because of this, we can rest in the reconciliation that Christ has secured for us [Ephesians 2:14-18].
The Jew-Gentile divide was far more significant than the black-white one. If Christ took care of that on the cross, how much more did He take care of any man-made divisions we face today? Does that mean there is no more racism? Of course not! Does that mean it is not important for us to get to know each other, to hear one another’s stories? If I believed that, I wouldn’t have written the first two chapters of this book. What this does mean is that we do not occupy the space of oppressors and oppressed based solely on our melanin. Does that mean our ethnicity is irrelevant? I leave you with God’s answer to that:
‘After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7:9-12)’
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OK, no more excerpts from Fault Lines, I promise. But, I do hope that some of you have had your interests piqued enough by these four posts to read the book for yourselves. (Great sale at Amazon at the moment!) I got a lot out of Baucham’s writing and was quite moved in places, including the first half of this post. I greatly appreciate and echo his emphasis on proper exegesis of Scripture and on not letting changing cultural values and ideologies take precedence over Scripture in forming our worldview. I hope you agree.
