City Life Starter

By Stefan Johnsson

There is no superior race. As Peter expresses in Acts 10 when speaking to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, “God does not show favoritism”. This we have to remember. Jesus came to die for all people, no matter the race, color of skin, or background. Jesus fulfilled the old covenant and created a new one through is blood on the cross. We are all, one and the same, under the saving grace of God.

Unfortunately, we know that our history is littered with problems of racial hatred and stereotyping. America has a very sad history in this regards. In the times of slavery and even still to some extent today, the Bible was and is used to justify the ideas behind why slavery fit with scripture. The main argument stems from Noah in the story related to Genesis 9 where his son, Ham, committed a shameful act. Ham’s son Canaan was cursed to be the slaves of the other brothers because of this. In Genesis 10, we can see where Ham’s descendants settled, which was in the Middle East and into Africa. Thus, the argument of some Christian leaders in America argued that these people, who were the descendants of Ham, were to be slaves to the rest and cursed by God. This is why they justified the slavery that was going on in the U.S.

You can say, how could this be true? It is not and it is a gross misunderstanding of the Bible. First, you have to realize that the curse was to Canaan only, not the entire descendants of Ham. Canaan, if you look at Genesis 10, did not settle in Africa but actually around Sidon to Gaza and as far as Sodom and Gomorrah. So a quick study of Genesis 9 and 10 will show you that this interpretation is incorrect and outside of the message of what the Bible says.

The greater point we have to see from this, is that the Bible was used to justify an atrocious act of slavery and also to the greater extent a way to put down an entire group of people based on where they came from. This has caused generations of Christians to be misled to think that their acts of enslaving a group of people based on skin color were not their fault, but something that God had ordained to happen since the days of Noah. Not only so, but they had to exclude the entire message preached by Jesus and further by the disciples regarding how we all are one and the same under Jesus, that there is no favoritism. They had based their entire interpretation of justifying slavery from these two chapters in the Bible.

The lesson we have to take from this is that we cannot justify our acts by using the Bible to our advantage. We are to be transformed by the word of God and to seek an understanding first, to look at what the Bible says. Then we use this to interpret how we should view the world. Thank God for people like William Wilberforce who fought for the end of slavery in the United Kingdom, who understood that this was not scriptural and against the basic human morality that stopped us from loving others more than ourselves.

You cannot justify your behavior by finding scripture that fits your thinking. History shows that this thinking leads to moral depravity and is against the very reason that Jesus came to die for our sins.