Racism was in the Bible, but so was sacrificing your firstborn
Just because something is in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s right.
Horrific things found in the Bible that you just can’t make up:
- Killing your spouse
- Offering your child as a sacrifice
- Selling your children
- Eating your family…yes…eating your family
- Racism
- Having sex with animals
Again, just because something is in the Bible, doesn’t mean it’s the ideal. Instead, these atrocities are often used to emphasize humanity’s shortcomings. Of which there are many.
It’s important to note that while the word racism didn’t exist in the Bible, the concept of it did. The word race has been around for hundreds of years but has not always been linked to skin color.
It’s a word that has been used to divide up humanity based on arbitrary factors. Historically, the word race has been used to refer to people's jobs, religions, birthplace, etc. So the concept of race can not be defined by skin color exclusively. The word race defined many other factors before it defined skin color.
And before the word race existed, the concept of arbitrary categorization still prevailed. In the Bible, people were often categorized by their religion and/or birthplace. Hence the stark division between Jews and Gentiles (religious differences) or the Israelites and the Babylonians (nationality/birthplace differences).
When Paul writes to the church in Galatia, he knows there is racial tension between the Jews and Gentiles. There is also tension between the Israelites and the Romans. People were enslaved, women were taken as concubines, and children were sold to pay off taxes. You thought 2020 was rough.
So as he’s addressing these concerns in his letter, Paul says something he knows will get their attention:
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28
The church would have been shaken by this. It would have been hard to wrap their minds around “being one” with a Gentile or a Roman authority. Those people believe different ideas, look differently and live differently than them. Not to mention, the Samaritans, the Israelite's arch nemeses, would have been a hard pass. Not a chance in hell the Israelites were about to have an ice cream social with them. It’s a long story.
The point here is that the concept of racism, as much as it has evolved, has not changed at all. The arbitrary categorization of humanity based on factors outside of biological ethics (i.e humans are separate from dogs as a species) has existed for as long as humanity has existed. And the Bible is not immune to the tendencies of human nature. The people in the Bible practiced segregation (no intermarriage), racism (mistreating or not serving someone based on their religion or birthplace, or gender), and persecution (harming or killing people based on their religion).
In the New Testament, we get some redemption with the teachings of Jesus who promotes the idea of equality. When he heals the Samaritan woman (John 4:1–26) or when he tells the parable of the Samaritan man helping a dying man while religious leaders overlooked him (Luke 10: 25–37). Jesus saw and loved the “other” as a means to express that they were not “other ” at all. Jesus’s actions in the New Testament confirm a belief in equality.
Though, the concept of racism was still present in the New Testament. But so were sexism, ageism, child marriage, and abuse. Again, just because something is in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s good.
But the question we can ask ourselves is “Why does humanity consistently categorize ourselves based on arbitrary factors? What good comes from these categorizations? What can we learn from the cultures that came before us? And is it possible to celebrate and honor our cultural, religious, and social differences without letting those same differences divide us in a negative way? “
