For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world. (1 John 2:16 NKJV)
I’ve covered this before, but we need to keep drawing out the implications. That “pride of life” is keyed into the very essence of fallen nature in that humans naturally reject the idea that they are fallen. Cite any social or political problem you care to name, and I can show how it traces back to human fallen nature. Thus, when we propose a solution, it must take into account the reality that mankind is fallen.
For the most part, the revelation of God says that you cannot fix this world. God’s Law is aimed at mitigation when it comes to human interactions. Redemption is not a direct goal of the Law Covenants because law cannot redeem; it only condemns sin. So we use our heart-led connection to God’s truth to bring His Law to life on the earth as condemnation. That’s how it works, for without the awareness of fallen nature, no one repents. Repentance is the not the proximate goal, but the ultimate goal of law. That there is blessing in obeying the Law of God simply shows the power of conviction awakened.
But God said quite bluntly that we should not expect too much, because for reasons we could never comprehend, the whole of humanity cannot be redeemed. There is a volitional element in redemption, and redemption as God offers it means nothing if everyone takes it. The question is tied into His divine nature and the meaning of holiness. I struggle to make this all clear in human language, but one thing that remains utterly certain is that a majority of humanity will not accept the terms of redemption.
The point here is that you cannot change fallen human nature, particularly in its brokenness. You can at best mitigate fallen nature. The fundamental nature of law is to condemn sin, provoke an awareness of what sin is. But in presenting a code of law, God also points out ways we can restore some measure of sanity by putting up barriers and restraints on some elements of sin.
Need I restate the obvious that absolutism has no place in this? Stop dreaming about the purity of your logical vision and learn what the word “Utopia” actually means.
Any approach to legislation must start with the idea of mitigation. It’s the same with culture and religion and everything we as humans do to organize how we shall live on this earth. What we do must reflect the wisdom inherent in God’s Law Covenants. In particular, we bank on the Law of Noah as the ultimate expression of God’s will for human conduct on the earth. That governments today have failed is painfully obvious, but to explain the failure requires reference to Noah.
Pick any social problem you like; it requires Noah to understand that we can only mitigate, and how we should do so.
So let’s look at racial tension. What’s the problem? Right now I’d say the major flaw is expecting too much. On the one hand, we acknowledge that a lot of social tension labeled “racism” simply isn’t, but we can see that there are problems seemingly rooted in differences that are associated with ethnic identity. The first mistake is assuming that the tension of itself is wrong. There is a difference between “unpleasant” and “evil.” Not everything that makes us unhappy is evil.
Already you can see that virtually every attempt to bring the power of law enforcement against this tension is misguided at best. Indeed, a lot of anti-racist law is more evil than the problem it pretends to address. Law cannot fix the problem of racism itself and should not try.
It is fundamental to the Law of Noah — fundamental to reality itself — that we are tribal. Thus saith the Lord: You cannot live and prosper on this earth without a tribal social structure. While you need not rest your tribal identity on shared DNA, that is the default. It takes a higher level of awareness to shift the emphasis over to a shared covenant, but covenant is part of Noah’s Law. However, the point remains that people are hard-wired to live together with folks of like custom and habit. That’s not evil; it’s necessary and righteous. The mythology behind what passes for “cosmopolitan” and “open society” philosophy is from Hell.
The utter necessity of ethnic identity lends itself to a certain level of exclusion of folks who are different. Have you noticed how everyone of every color revels in their own cultural background? How you work out that exclusion is a matter of custom and habit, but a certain guardedness is essential. You are damned if you refuse to understand that. You are further damned if you pretend that previous conflicts make no difference. And even more so are you damned if you refuse to recognize that one person from one tribe causing trouble doesn’t heap God’s wrath on the whole tribe. The tribe with the offending member becomes liable before Noah’s Law for making amends if they can’t get the offender to do it himself.
The next question is how to make amends and restore some level of stability, but that in itself rests heavily on properly understanding what constitutes stability and peaceful coexistence under Noah. I don’t have space to write that book here. All I have to do is remind you that materialism is a part of every wrong answer we live with today.
But perhaps you will understand that whatever social justice crusaders mean by “racism” is a complaint against human fallen nature. The pretense of changing human nature is just damnably evil; it’s part of the problem. The only path to social peace starts with recognizing that racism is utterly normal and cannot be eradicated. Instead, it can only be mitigated.
