Race & Culture

When I was five years old , my family moved from northern Minnesota to a small town in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota. If I had been older, there might have been some culture shock. It was hockey to rodeo, Holsteins to Herefords, snow to cactus, fish to rattlesnakes. Grown men wore cowboy boots and hats. Some things were still the same, though.

As well as I can remember (this was nearly two score years ago), everyone in northern Minnesota is Norwegian or Swedish, and Lutheran. Everyone. They gather for worship on Sunday in their quaint, lovely little country churches, recite the Apostles’ Creed and the Confession of Sin, listen to a preacher named Olson give a three-point sermon, sing robust Lutheran hymns, and then retire to the church basement to observe the Holy Sacrament: coffee and lefse. At least that’s how I remember it.

In rural western South Dakota, everyone is not Scandinavian; but a lot of them are. Some are German. Some are something else entirely: Indians! — a subject I will return to shortly. The worship is the same, although I became aware — probably because I started school that year — that the world is not made up entirely of Lutherans. There are Catholics also, and a smattering of Baptists and Methodists (with woman pastors!). The worship service is the same, and coffee in the church basement — in all denominations — is still a means of grace.

We lived there from 1970–78, Kindergarten through seventh grade, as I reckoned it. All in all, it was a good place for a kid to grow up. I’m sure it is the most colorful place I’ve lived. One crusty fellow called “Slim,” old by my single-digit standards but by no means the oldest man in town, was reputed to be the last man to quit wearing a gunbelt. He still slept with his revolver under his pillow; I know, I saw it. He had a bed under a tree in his backyard where he slept in the summer. I’m sure he’s gone now, but if I named him and the town, there are folks still living there who would remember him.

Until we moved to South Dakota, I had been surrounded by the whitest of white people. But now, as I mentioned previously, there were Indians. The first ones I saw were anything but exotic. They just looked like ordinary cowboys-come-to-town: shined boots, sharp white shirts with pearly snaps, black hats, hair neatly cut and combed. In fact, a lot of them looked a bit neater than the average pale-face cowboy.

Sadly, a great many of the Indians I encountered were not like that. The ones I most often met smelled like alcohol, and often something worse.

Bill and Nellie would show up in town from time to time. I never knew how they got there, or how they left; they surely didn’t drive. I and a friend, or one of my sisters, would be heading up Main Street to the Jack & Jill to get a candy bar (15¢), and they would be sitting on a bench in front of the second hand store. Nellie, if memory serves, was a small woman, always in a dress. Bill had an enormous nose, made me think of a potato. If an artist was to draw a caricature of the alcoholic nose, he couldn’t have done better than to sketch Bill. We’d walk past, and Bill would begin ranting. He was harmless, and after the shock of our first encounter with him, we weren’t frightened. He wasn’t angry, but he was surely earnest. We couldn’t understand a word he said. After a few seconds, Nellie would say, “Shut up, Bill,” and he’d sit back as though nothing had happened. The next day, they would be gone.

Freddie was the same story. I don’t know where he lived, he would just show up in town and be hanging around the municipal bar. I’d see him as I went to the library, which was in the same building. Also harmless, he was tall and lean, well over six feet tall, probably six and a half or more. It was said he used to be quite a basketball player. Whatever talents he may have had were now wasted away. I doubt I ever saw him sober.

Martin was certainly no athlete. Overweight and filthy, he would ask if you could help him out with some money or, failing that, give him something to eat. The first time I was near him, I’m pretty sure he’d lost control of his bowels. He didn’t seem to notice.

One bitterly cold winter night, driving what I think was highway 212, far from anywhere, we came across a man walking along the road carrying a paper sack under his arm. We stopped and picked him up. He was wearing only a light jacket like you might wear on a cool fall day, loafers, and no hat or gloves. It was so cold and he was so far from any town that we knew he never could have gotten that far on foot without freezing to death. Asked what he was doing out there in this weather, he replied, “My friends left me.” As the story came out, he had made them pull over and let him out. Why? “They were trying to take my beer.”

To be continued . . .

Why have I told these stories? What is the point? Stay with me, and you’ll see.

First, the people in those stories are real people. It is important to state that up front, because very often we are able to ignore that reality and think in terms of statistics. The stories I told are true, and the names I used are their real names. I told their stories and used their names so you would picture people, not just sad facts.

I admit that, at the time of my encounters with those people, I didn’t think of them as real people. I thought of them more as characters, actors in a play, or perhaps clowns in a circus. My child’s mind, I suppose, just couldn’t grasp the reality of such a pathetic existence. But as I grew older, I became more aware of that reality, not only of the Indians of South Dakota (and later, Montana), but of other people groups I encountered along the way.

A few years spent in Minnesota’s Twin Cities broadened my experience considerably. It was during those years that I was saved. I then began to see a correlation between the sad social and economic condition of many cultures and their spiritual condition. They didn’t need social programs; indeed, the social programs aimed at them only served to make things worse. What they needed was the gospel.

What to do, then? They were so different. There were so many cultural obstacles to overcome. Not knowing what to do, I did the best I could to relate to the diverse peoples I rubbed shoulders with at the various jobs I held during that time. From the Chinese at the restaurant, to the black man at the formal wear company (a former sparring partner of Joe Lewis, with pictures to prove it), I tried to be an example and witness to them just as I was to my white acquaintances.

As you read these words, you might be detecting an air that smells almost racist. I don’t believe I was racist, but there was definitely a view of people that naturally gives itself to racism. That view is the recognition of race as a real classification of peoples. Once you believe that we are genetically different from those who look different, there is really nothing wrong with considering the possibility that one “race” is superior to another.

I’m not sure when it was that I was exposed to the ministry of Answers in Genesis. I’m not too proud to admit that it took an Australian with an odd resemblance to Abraham Lincoln to point out the obvious: that we’re all sons of Adam (and Noah). Of course, I already knew that, but knowing it had not prevented me from buying into the accepted “facts” of “race.” But believing in race, as Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile has said, “is a little like believing in unicorns; because race, like unicorns, doesn’t exist.”* Believing in “race” had led me to more than one incorrect assumption. I won’t expand on that at this point; it is enough to say that it served to increase my sense of separation from people of other ethnicities.

It is really that sense of separation, that focus on difference, that is the cause of all ethnic strife in the world. And virtually everyone shares that perspective. The attitude of “otherness,” of “them” vs. “us,” permeates everything we see in politics, entertainment, and the news media. We hear of the “African-American Community,” “Asian Community,” Hispanic Community,” etc. (there is apparently no “white community”). Always and everywhere we are reminded that we are different from them. There is now a lot of excitement over having elected the first black President, and what that supposedly means for “race” relations in America, but I’m not buying it. And as long as there are hyphenated Americans, I won’t buy it. We are still a divided people, and the paradox is that we are divided over something that does not exist.

We’ve got to throw out the category of “race.” That is the first step in reaching out to those who are different from us. But once we have done that, once we have disposed of the artificial barriers between us, we are still faced with some genuine differences. There are still cultural differences, some of which are the cause of serious problems: rampant alcoholism among American Indians, and high illegitimacy rates among blacks, just to name a couple of the more obvious ones. Surely we must bridge cultural divides in order to reach different peoples with unique cultural problems.

Did the previous paragraph make you uncomfortable? It should have. There is a certain pride in focusing on all this “difference.” It implies that I, as a Scandinavian-American (to stoop to hyphenation) have no inherited sins, or that the sins of my people are somehow less serious than those of others. More basically, it fails to recognize that our differences, however dramatic they appear, are only superficial. If we scratch through the thin veneer of skin color, and peel away the slightly thicker layer of specific sins, we will find that we are all exactly the same: fallen men in need of grace.

I began this topic with a few stories of alcoholic American Indians I had encountered as a kid. Now I’ll tell you about another Indian I knew. He was my boss. He was the head of the department I worked in, a very responsible, reliable man. He was well aware of the problems common to his ethnic group, and had intentionally gotten away and made a good life for himself. He thought he was different than the others. Based on what he had done, he believed himself to be different. But he wasn’t different. He was simply the object of God’s restraining grace. Lacking that grace, he could have been as bad or worse. And so could I. All of us, black, white, and every hue in between, are the same, and if our lives aren’t total wrecks, it is not because we have done so well for ourselves. It is because God has protected and restrained us.

Our Lord did not send us into the world to solve the problems of cultures. He sent us out to bring the solution to the one problem at the root of all others, the problem we all share: sin, and the resulting separation from God that it causes. He didn’t send us to individual cultures, but to one culture: the culture of sinners. We must therefore stop thinking in terms of our differences, but of our commonality. We are all created in the image of God. We are all fallen sons of Adam. We are all conceived in sin and brought forth iniquity. Our sins are the same, and like them, our righteousness is as filthy rags. We all need the same Savior. So we are really only two groups of people with one difference between us. We are all either in Christ, or we are not. We are all without any hope but that which is found at the cross.

As we approach our fellow citizens of earth, it must be with the humility that acknowledges that we are just like them. Indeed, we must cease thinking of them as them. They are us.

*“Bearing The Image: Identity, The Work Of Christ, And The Church,” Together for the Gospel Conference 2008. This message can be downloaded free at www.t4g.org. I owe a great deal to Thabiti for his contribution to the development of my understanding of this issue.

I gave my daughter Voddie Baucham’s book What He Must Be if he wants to marry my daughter. I asked her the other day how it was and what she was learning. If you don’t know who Voddie Baucham is, I need to tell you, for the purposes of this story, that he is black. You also need to know that I and my family are as white as Scandinavian-Americans with roots in Minnesota and Wisconsin should be; that is, very white.

One section of Baucham’s book deals with inter-“racial” marriage. His view is that it is both wrong and foolish to narrow your matrimonial options based on ethnicity (I concur). As he discussed this issue, he personalized it in the context of his own pigmentally advantaged family. If a godly young man of differing shade wanted to court his daughter, and she was amenable, that would be fine with him.

So, when I asked my daughter what she was learning, she replied,

“I’ve learned that I don’t have to marry a black guy.”

Last week I posted a somewhat humorous anecdote involving ethnically-mixed marriages. Today I want to open that topic for your comments.

I was raised to believe that all human beings are equal. I want to be clear that I am not just kidding myself about that. I was never allowed to believe that the color of my skin made me better than anyone. Segregation and discrimination were evil. It was said that the liberalism that prevails in black churches was due to the fact that conservative seminaries had barred the enrollment of black students. That should be a cause for shame in the church, they said. So I was never a racist in the usual sense of the word.

At the same time, I was taught that ethnically-mixed marriages were, at least, not ideal, and probably not God’s preferred option. There were a couple of reasons for this, and I believed them.

• God created diverse people groups. He obviously wanted his world filled with all of these different peoples. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” He doesn’t want all of these diverse colors melted into one “gray” race — does he?
• Wisdom dictates that we marry those with whom we share as much in common as possible. Marriage is difficult enough without adding differences to the mix that are inevitably more than skin deep.

While there is a grain of truth in both of those arguments, ultimately, they both fail as barriers to inter-ethnic marriages. Addressing each argument specifically, can you tell me why?