Most Christians concerned about Critical Race Theory (CRT) begin their conversations about it by pointing to its connection with writings from Karl Marx. “It’s cultural Marxism, an unbiblical worldview!”
But that’s not where to begin if we’re going to have a biblical perspective of it.
Pointing to Marx while simultaneously claiming CRT as an “unbiblical worldview” assumes everything he taught was unbiblical.
Furthermore, it exposes the fact that we are more afraid of Marxism than we are of an unbiblical worldview. After all, capitalism has unbiblical aspects as well. The American slave trade, abortion clinics, and pornography each have capitalism to thank for their ability to have existed as industries. Yet conservative Christians rarely point out the dangers of capitalism and how aspects of it as a theory for economics clearly were quite unbiblical as neither of those industries are “biblical.”
Is Marxism dangerous? Absolutely!
Does capitalism offer a better way for economies to thrive? I tend to think so.
But if our primary concern about CRT has to do with it being an “unbiblical worldview,” we better make sure we actually have a “biblical worldview” and not merely a “capitalistic” one. That’s why we’re going to start this series by getting a grasp of how God views this world. In order to do that, we must first get to know God.
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Yahweh
“God” is not actually God’s name. It’s simply a term that refers to a god. The fact that we capitalize it indicates we are referring to the one we view as the supreme God.
But this “God” actually has a name and it means something significant. His name is “Yahweh.” In order to fully understand its meaning, however, we need to gain a little bit of context.
In the Bible, as it was in all ancient settings, names meant far more than a label to identify which person was who. One’s name gave them their central identity. It essentially told their life story in one word.
Take, for instance, Abram, which means “exalted father.” After God covenanted with him and promised to make him fruitful and a father of many nations, God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of many nations.”
God didn’t just give Abram a new name, He gave him a new identity.
Naming a person according to their identity happens throughout scripture. Isaac means “laughter,” which he got because his mom, Sarah, laughed when she heard that she would have a son. Jacob means “heel grabber,” a euphemism for a liar and a cheat—which was exactly who Jacob was. After the encounter at Jabbok where he wrestled with God, God renames Jacob to Israel, which means, “he struggles with God.”
In light of this, when God reveals His name to Moses in Exodus 34, we ought to understand that God is not simply revealing how Moses should refer to Him, but He is explaining to Moses His very identity. In His name, Yahweh identifies the nature and character of who He is and what He is doing throughout creation.
The LORD came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed His name Yahweh. Then the LORD passed in front of him and proclaimed:
Yahweh — Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin. But He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.
Exodus 34:5-7 HCSB
Yahweh Is Compassionate and Gracious
The first words Yahweh uses to describe His identity are “compassionate and gracious.” Yahweh is father and mother of all creation and His baseline emotion toward you and I is mercy.[1] God does not look on us with contempt, upset that we messed up His creation. He looks on us with grief, compassion, and a willingness to pick up the pieces of the mess that we made and begin to shape something even more beautiful than before.
Embedded within Yahweh’s compassion and grace is His character of generosity. Consider the parable Jesus told of the prodigal son. The father, who represents Yahweh, willingly restored his wandering son to the rightful place as an heir of his inheritance even after he had squandered his original inheritance (Lk. 15:11-32).
We ought not to approach Yahweh with a perspective of Him based on what we’ve done or on what has been done to us. Instead, we ought to approach Him with a perspective based on who He is: a God of generous mercy.[2]
Yahweh Is Slow to Anger
As John Mark Comer puts it in his book, God Has a Name, it’s possible to make Yahweh mad, but you really have to work at it.[3] Yahweh does not lose His temper quickly like we do. Instead, He “rules His spirit” (Prov. 16:3). His anger does not come from the result of a wounded ego, but from a parent-like love for His children.
While He is merciful and ever patient with our failings, He cares about the wellbeing of His creation. Because of His compassion, there are a few things that bring forth His wrath. For example, mistreating the sojourner (Ex. 22:24), failing to recognize that He who is compassionate and gracious is the Maker of all that is good (Ro. 1:18-21), oppressing people (Is. 58:3), and neglecting the poor and homeless (Is. 58:6-8) all kindle the wrath of God. While it’s really hard to make Yahweh angry, the things that do make Him angry matter and we ought to take them seriously.
Yahweh Abounds in Love and Faithfulness
The Hebrew words for “love” and “faithfulness are hesed and emet. Because hesed gives a broad description and has no English equivalent, it often gets translated in a variety of ways. Depending on your translation, you will probably see, “steadfast love,” “unfailing love,” “covenant loyalty,” or “loyal love.”
Yahweh’s love is covenantal in nature. It doesn’t come and go with the whims of emotions. Neither is it restricted to ongoing conditions. When Yahweh loves, He loves always.
Emet means “firmness” or “truth.” Like the word “amen,” emet signifies something that rings true deep in our hearts. Another way of translating emet is “trustworthy.” Unlike anything else in this life, Yahweh will not let you down.
When hesed and emet are put together, the author is using a literary device called a hendiadys to amplify a point. The two words define each other.[4]
In other words, Yahweh’s love is His faithfulness.
Yahweh’s faithfulness is His love.
Embedded within His love and faithfulness is the generous gift of forgiveness. When a person realizes and repents of their wrongdoing, rebellion, sin, and turns their heart towards Yahweh as God, He forgives them. And this is true all the time.[5]
Yahweh Is Just
But Yahweh does not let the guilty go unpunished.
This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of Yahweh in our day and age. If Yahweh is truly loving there needs to be punishment for wrongdoing and sin. But our understanding of punishment tends to be filtered through what we know of in our judicial system.
In America, punishment is receiving certain consequences for your actions. When a person shoplifts, they might pay a fine, get arrested, or be banned from the store for life.
But throughout scripture, Yahweh demonstrates a punishment that doesn’t end with the consequence. His consequences are not merely for the sole purpose of making one feel the pain of their wrongdoing.
Punishment, for Yahweh, is the doorway to restoration.
The consequence of someone’s wrongdoing and sin ends up being something that helps them realize why they should have followed His commands in the first place. Punishment serves the purpose of a shepherd’s staff directing a wandering sheep back on to the right course.
His whole design is birthed in compassion, grace, and faithful love and it will not end well for those who reject His design and thereby exhibit hate for Him as God. To quote John Mark Comer again, the fact that Yahweh doesn’t let the guilty go unpunished shows that He is “the God who just won’t stop until you’re completely free.”[6]
Creation
Yahweh’s design for creation was birthed out of who He is: compassionate, gracious, loving, faithful, and just. His goal was to create a world with no evil and a people to commune with in covenantal relationship.
We all know that His goal is not being realized at this present moment since evil abounds in the world. What He is now working toward, then, is restoring creation to being a place of no evil.
But for us to see this current evil world through the lens Yahweh does, we need to remember the beginning of the story.
Yahweh Is Creator
This supreme God who abounds in love and faithfulness and doesn’t let the guilty go unpunished—constantly seeking to bring them back to His original design—it is He who created everything. As hopeless as life may appear at times, everything exists for a purpose. And, as we looked at above, the One who made it all defines Himself as incredibly good.
His Creation Is Good
Therefore, His creation is good. When He looked on all creation and called it very good (Gen. 1:31), He bestowed on it His own identity. When we look around creation today and see things that are not good, we know that something has gone awry. Something evil, unlike Yahweh, has touched this place. The goodness we do see gives us glimpses of the true Creator: Yahweh.
Mankind Is Made in Yahweh’s Image
Genesis 1 depicts the creation story culminating in Yahweh bringing forth mankind. Genesis 2, however, depicts it as centering on Yahweh bringing forth mankind.
We could view Genesis 1 as the prologue to a movie and Genesis 2 as the opening scene. The prologue gives a sweeping overview of where the story begins and finally settling in on the main characters. The opening scene introduces these characters more in-depth.
Who are these people?
Why are they here?
What are they supposed to be doing?
Yahweh calls them representatives of His image (Gen. 1:26-27). When creation sees mankind, they should remind it of this God Yahweh: the one who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, not letting the guilty go unpunished.
As Yahweh’s Image Bearers, Mankind Is to Rule and Reign According to His Definition of Good and Evil
These people are not just any people. They are designed to act like Yahweh in the way they rule and reign (Gen. 1:28-29 & 2:15-25).
Remember, Genesis describes mankind being made “in the likeness of the image of God” (1:26). Mankind is not God’s image; Jesus is (Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3). Mankind is created, not creator. Therefore, mankind is given a purpose or function: to rule and reign like Yahweh who we see fully in Jesus.
This is why Yahweh warns mankind about pursuing the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17). He is asking humanity to trust His definition of good and evil and not attempt to create their own.
Sin
As we know, mankind ignores this warning. Instead of trusting that Yahweh—the One who makes all things good—has their best in mind and accepting His definition of good and evil, mankind seized that knowledge and power for themselves (Gen. 3:1-6). They created their own definition of good and evil and effectively defaced the image of Yahweh in themselves.
Now mankind rules and reigns according to their own perversion of Yahweh’s image. Rather than reflecting the compassion and grace of Yahweh in the way they relate with each other, they react with jealousy and wield weapons in domination over one another (Gen. 4:8, 22-24).
At its core, sin causes mankind to deface the Yahweh’s image in one another. Because of sin, mankind rules and reigns over creation in a way that puts themselves first and Yahweh’s design last. This is the downward spiral of Genesis 3-11 and the backdrop for why we experience death, destruction, and injustice toward each other today (see Gen. 6:1-3, 5-9, 22-7:4, 9:1-7, 20-25, 11:1-7).
Justice
If Yahweh is a God of love and compassion, He will not let His creation be taken hostage by an evil that does not love and does not have compassion. He will fight for its freedom.
In Romans 8, Paul describes Yahweh’s fight for freedom as “subjecting creation to futility” (8:20) so that one day creation will be set free (8:21). His end goal is to restore creation to a place of no evil, a place where mankind treats each other with the dignity of being made in His image.
Justice, for Yahweh, is not merely making one pay for the wrongdoing they’ve done but it’s helping one become who they were meant to be in the first place. It is not simply making things right, but changing in such a way that one now functions completely differently.
In Genesis 12, the story shifts from spiraling into chaos to a covenantal plan for restoration (see Gen. 12:1-3, 15:1-21). The Torah, or what we know as “the Law,” laid out the instructions for how a people who are now inclined toward defacing Yahweh’s image in one another can put Him back on the throne of their hearts and rule and reign throughout creation according to His definition of good and evil. This is what it means to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8).
We Are All Equal
Foundational to a biblical understanding of the world is the idea that as humans we all equally bear Yahweh’s image. No one person, culture, or ethnicity more fully resembles Yahweh’s image than others.
Core to this picture of being made in Yahweh’s image is the interconnectedness of male and female (see again Gen. 1:26-27). When Yahweh describes His image, He describes male and female.
As equal bearers of Yahweh’s image, we are commanded to treat each other in the way we would want to be treated (Lk. 6:31), including sharing what you have with those who don’t have it (1Jn. 3:17).
Throughout the Torah, Yahweh’s people are commanded to specifically care for the orphan, the widow, and the immigrant (Deut. 10:17-19). They are to include them in their social gatherings (Deut. 16:11-14) and help them out financially (Deut. 24:19-21; Lev. 19:9-10, 23:22; Deut. 26:12-13, 14:26-28).
My friend, Josh, points out how Yahweh does not command us to “treat everyone the same.” After all, those who have money don’t need to be given money. Those who have food don’t need to be given food.
Rather, these are people for whom the deck has been stacked against, particularly as the result of mankind’s sin (i.e. dominating over each other, prejudice, and death). These commands are Yahweh’s way of making sure His people make up for this disproportionately stacked deck and properly care for the vulnerable in a way that demonstrates they also bear His image.
We Have All Done Wrong
When Yahweh describes mankind’s rebellion, it once again includes male and female. Furthermore, notice how mankind’s fall happens before Yahweh had chosen a specific ethnic people to display His good design. In other words, no one person, culture, or ethnicity more fully resembles the brokenness of our world than others. As Paul put it in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned. All fall short of the glory of God.”
The Path Towards Justice Runs Through Mercy
So what does Yahweh do in order to bring about justice? What is His plan for restoring this broken creation?
It’s to send His image into the world to give them a firsthand experience of what He is like.
Jesus was sitting at the right hand of Yahweh Himself. In Philippians 2, we get the picture that Jesus literally had equality with God within reach. But instead of clinging to His godlike status, He willingly relinquished His divine privileges in order to declare to the cosmos just how faithful this love of Yahweh is (Phil. 2:5-8).
Jesus came into the darkness and dwelt among us (Jn. 1:14).
He showed us the path of righteousness/justice and peace (Lk. 1:76-79).
And liberated us from the bondage of sin through His death (Ro. 6:17-23, Col. 1:13-14, Phil. 2:7-8).
Yahweh took responsibility for bringing about justice even when He was not responsible for the injustice that was taking place (Eph. 2:4-6).
Justice Is Both an Individual and Corporate Work
You see, justice according to Yahweh isn’t simply getting rid of evil things. That would mean He would have to get rid of people for evil runs through every human heart.
Justice, according to Yahweh, is to bring about an inner change where mankind again rightly relates with one another as equal bearers of His image (Ro. 8:29). As Paul alluded, we have been saved from sin so we can be a people of righteousness (Ro. 6:18). In 2 Corinthians 3:9, Paul tells us that the ministry of reconciliation—which is the ministry the Church has been given to do as a result of the New Covenant we now share with Yahweh through Jesus—is a ministry of righteousness/justice.[7]
Through Jesus, we not only see what it looks like to properly bear Yahweh’s image, but we ourselves are being made into a new humanity (see Eph. 2:15, 4:24, 2Co. 5:17, Col. 3:10). Jesus followers (aka “the church”) are a new nation being formed to demonstrate throughout the ends of the earth what Yahweh looks like.
The effect of Yahweh’s new covenant with humanity through Jesus Christ is to create a righteous/just people.[8]
As Disciples of Jesus, We Are Called to Do the Work of Justice
In Matthew 23, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for pursuing strict faithfulness to the Torah yet neglecting the work of justice (v. 23).
It’s important to understand the context here. Too often, we compare the Pharisees to legalistic catholics, as if they were attempting to be saved by doing a bunch of random good works the Bible never commands (i.e. paying for penance and taking long, spiritual pilgrimages).
There were five primary groups of Jews in Jesus’ day. The Sadducees essentially believed the primary goal was to find a way to remain faithful to the Torah while living in the midsts of a Roman empire. They had kind of concluded there would be no “resurrection,” no Messiah coming. So the goal was to get along with Rome so they can worship in peace.
The Zealots believed the exact opposite. They believed the Messiah would come, but only if they violently overthrew the current political scheme. They expected the Messiah to bring about a political revolution.
The Essenes believed it was best to withdraw from society altogether and practice their religion in peace. They lived in the wilderness and caves. Then the regular, everyday Jewish people sought to make a decent life for themselves in the midst of the Roman regime, doing their best to keep the Torah while not always being certain exactly how and when the Messiah would come.
The Pharisees, however, were the die-hard devotees. Sure, maybe they weren’t as aggressive and violent as the Zealots. But they believed that the Messiah would come if the Jewish people would become completely pure through faithfulness to the Torah.
“Focus on the Torah,” they might have said. “Just preach the Torah!”
Jesus came and said it was the Torah that should have taught them how to live justly.
I can’t help but think of this when Christians who bulk at the work of justice today say something like, “focus on the Gospel. Just preach the Gospel!” Are we talking about the Gospel revealed in scripture? Because it is that Gospel that shows us we are to be a people of righteousness and justice.
It is that Gospel which tells us that in Jesus all ethnic groups become not only equal heirs to the spiritual inheritance Jesus gives, but equal heirs to the civil blessing offered in the New Covenant (Eph. 2:13-22). The wall of hostility has been torn down. No longer does one ethnicity receive the socio-economic blessing of Yahweh’s household above others.
We all—Jew and Gentile, American and Asian, black and yellow, brown and white—are becoming together a new humanity. Together, we access the spiritual and physical consequences of the Abrahamic blessing for all nations. We are to embody right living with one another, not out of compulsion to obey the Law, but from the inside out because of what the Holy Spirit is doing in our hearts (see Ro. 12:2, 6:17-18, 8:5-11).
It is the Gospel message of the scriptures that tell Yahweh’s people to advocate for those who can’t advocate for themselves (Prov. 31:8-9), rescue the disadvantaged and refuse to tolerate oppression and violence against the immigrant, orphan, and widow (Jer. 22:3), uphold justice, give food to the hungry, and set free those in prison (Ps. 146:7-9).
This is the work Jesus says is more precious than sacrifice (Prov. 21:3, Matt. 23:23).
Why?
Because sin is much more than removing your connection with Yahweh.
Sin causes humanity to live in a way that is contrary to Yahweh’s design.
When Jesus says He came to proclaim good news, it wasn’t just a spiritual setting free. He wasn’t saying He would only give us spiritual sight. He meant that He would give us liberty from sin (Ro. 6:18, 22), that would open our eyes to the way in which we have been living contrary to His way and free us to love Him and others from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith (1Tim. 1:5).
It’s Jesus who healed.
Jesus loved the least among us.
Jesus told us to share our possessions with those who have none (Lk. 12:13-21, 14:12-24).
Yahweh’s image, Himself, says to go out of our way to make sure our enemies (or those of different cultural and ethnic background) are treated with the dignity of being made in His likeness (Lk. 10:25-37).
We may have concern about how the secular world seeks to bring about justice. We may even be concerned about how precisely they define “injustice” or “inequality.”
But the fact that people who do not know Yahweh pursue justice and equality should not keep us from acknowledging that even Yahweh recognizes that injustice happens and wants His people to be a part of bringing about justice in an unjust world.
After all, in the past, Yahweh has used people who did not know Him to bring about the justice He desired when His people refused to do it themselves.[9]
This is not a time for getting distracted by secular theories. It’s a time for humbling ourselves before Yahweh in repentance and beginning to reflect to the world who He is: compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, and not letting the guilty go unpunished.
Feel free to share your responses to this article in the comments below. Please be respectful to each other as you do. Grace and peace.
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Footnotes
- John Mark Comer. God Has a Name. p. 125
- Ibid. p. 133. Also see 2Chron. 30:9b, Eph. 2:4.
- Ibid. p. 157
- Ibid. p. 195
- See Ex. 34:4-7, Duet. 7:9, 2Chron. 16:9, and 2Tim. 2:11-13
- Comer. God Has a Name. p. 219
- Michael Gorman brings out in his book, The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of a New Covenant, how the word often rendered “righteousness” in the English New Testament has a close justice component as well. Some translations render it “justification” or “justice” at times. Righteousness is to live rightly, which results in a lifestyle of justice.
- Gorman. The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of a New Covenant. p. 60
- Consider the books of Amos, Lamentations, Jeremiah where Yahweh moves other nations into positions to scatter Israel and thwart their own ethnic identity because they tolerated (sometimes executed) injustice toward the immigrant, orphan, and widow.
Further Reading
- Amos
- Micah
- The Bible Project: Justice
- A Biblical View of Justice by Josh Nisly
- Justice in the Bible by Timothy Keller
- Is Yahweh’s Discipline Retributive or Restorative? by Asher Witmer
- A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory by Timothy Keller
- Critical Theory, Tim Keller, and David Fitch by David Fitch
