Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian

Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the ChristianBloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian by John Piper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a remarkable book on racism. Piper has read the popular, academic, and biblical literature with his usual care and insight, and in this book he provides much help to the rest of us Christians who “have not trained [our] powers of discernment in matters of racial and ethnic issues” (45).

Part One (Our World: The Need for the Gospel) opened my eyes to the black-white racial tensions to the south. Here Piper talks about structural versus personal strategies for making racial progress before concluding that a third strategy is needed—the gospel itself. The gospel is able to overcome nine destructive forces (Satan, guilt, pride, hopelessness, feelings of inferiority and self-doubt, greed, hatred, fear, and apathy) in ways that personal and structural strategies can’t touch (87).

Part Two is all about the power of that gospel. Jesus is the end of ethnocentrism. God provided one way to himself through Christ’s blood. This one sacrifice is for everyone. In reconciling all to God it reconciles peoples to each other, as all who believe become one new entity.

Revelation 5.9 teaches us that God intends to have people from every ethnic group (chp 9). Romans 3 teaches us that every people is justified the same way (chp 10). In chp 11 irresistible grace means that no one is too racist to be out of reach of God’s grace. All of these chapters, along with the subsequent ones, show the gospel’s relevance and power to such a large problem as racism.

Piper also has wise words to say about interracial marriage (chp 15), persuasively showing that the Bible blesses, not prohibits, it. Another thorny issue is dealt with in chp 16: the issue of prejudice and generalizing about others based on their ethnicity. Piper suggests that generalizations are unavoidable, and they can be made without falling into racial sin provided that one has a good heart. He offers eight penetrating questions with which to test our hearts in this matter.

Appendix Four usefully takes up the question: “What are the implications of Noah’s curse?”

I’ll let Piper summarize the book for himself:

The aim of this book has been to encourage you to pursue Christ-exalting, gospel-driven racial and ethnic diversity and harmony—espe­cially in the family of God, the church of Jesus Christ. I have tried to argue from Scripture that the blood of Christ was shed for this. It is not first a social issue, but a blood issue. The bloodline of Christ is deeper than the bloodlines of race. (227)

My favourite quotes:

The bloodline of Jesus Christ is deeper than the bloodlines of race. The death and resurrection of the Son of God for sinners is the only sufficient power to bring the bloodlines of race into the single bloodline of the cross. (13-14)

To be a Christian is to move toward need, not comfort. (110)

Jesus’s behavior is like a US Marine caring for a Taliban freedom fighter. (117)

Jesus is the point in redemptive history where the true Israel becomes the church of Christ and the church (Jew and Gentile) emerges as the true Israel. This is the mystery of Christ, now revealed, and it is possible because of the cross. (125)

The ethnic diversity of hell is a crucial doctrine. (135)



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