What's the Big Deal About Race, Part 1

One regular issue that I touch on here in blogger-land is race, ethnicity, culture, and how being a Christian relates to all of it.

A couple of weeks ago I got a great and thoughtful email from a student who had just read "Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multi-Ethnic World." He had some excellent questions that I attempted to respond to. He's graciously agreed to allow me to share those here.

Question:

I've heard many people reference the scripture about people from every tongue and every nation worshiping God in heaven [that's Revelation 7].

Does this necessarily have to be literal? Couldn't it be referring to the fact that the gospel will reach every tribe and every nation and that we may not carry those IDs with us into eternity?

When I think about this, I can't help but think of the tower of Babel which seems to suggest that different languages are more of a barrier than something to celebrate.

My response:

Good question! Like with all your questions, there's several layers of answers.

Part of what you're responding out of is an evangelical tradition that has historically downplayed the role of "stuff" like bodies or the value of the earth and over-emphasized a purely spiritual vision of the future that frankly just isn't biblical.

"Amazing Grace" classically summarizes this in one verse where it talks about the earth dissolving like snow and the last with us being in heaven 10,000 years. Uh, not happening. Read Revelation. We don't stay in heaven. God comes to earth.

God didn't create the world and people and then die for it simply to burn it all off (stinking bad dispensationalist/"Left Behind series end-times theology!). He created and died for it so that it would be his, and we would be his people. We don't end up in heaven, we end up back on earth, with God here among us, with resurrected bodies--not just spirits floating in the sky!

The Revelation picture of worship around the throne in heaven is temporary until everything is completed. Which leads us to...

Bodies and our ethnicity going with us when we die. I understand your impulse here to downplay the physicality of that description and simply say "that's just John saying everyone's up there in heaven" because that's how we've been raised up to think about heaven.

But I believe that it's not merely symbolic. And the primary reason why I believe that is Jesus.

When Jesus is raised back to life, he is raised a recognizably Jewish man. Don't blow over that. Scripture is adamant that Jesus' experience of resurrection is a first-fruit of what is to come (see Col. 1). He is our pattern. If Jesus was raised back to life as a recognizably Jewish man and actually remains that for all eternity, what makes us think that we'll have any different experience?

Back to the my first part of the response: God loves matter. He loves creation. He loves flesh. He loves skin tones. He's not just going to decimate it recreationally. Jesus takes on flesh in order to redeem it--really and fully. Part of your glory in heaven will be the different ethnicities you have as a part of you, just as a part of Jesus' glory in heaven is his ethnicity, his flesh, glorified.

You mentioned Babel--God's ticked at people, so he scatters them via...culture! Which is in the form of language! There it is--culture is punishment and difference is bad!

But don’t miss what happens immediately afterwards in the Genesis story: God calls Abram and tells him that his family will bless ALL THE NATIONS of the Earth! God has scattered the marbles at Babel, but his plan is to re-gather them in his way, in his time, for his glory--not the glory of man but the glory of God.

And so you have Acts 1 and 2--the promise fulfilled! There, God uses all these languages that once scattered the people to re-gather them under one name, Jesus. Everyone's gathered, and the disciples speak in all these languages--a divine affirmation of difference, a glorious "meeting them where they are" move by God to re-gather the marbles scattered at Babel but immediately planned by God for the re-gathering through Abram through Jesus.

And so the Revelation picture is simply the consummation of that promise--every tribe, nation and tongue IS there, visibly so, as the final celebration and affirmation and indeed final redemption and rolling-back of the curse of sin.

There, all the people's can gather and partake of an activity together NOT for their own glory ala Babel but for the glory of God--what they were designed to do! And God delights to affirm ethnicity and race as the good thing in the continuation of our ethnicity and race in heaven--and finally once and for all back here on earth when he comes back to rule and reign.

Babel has been un-done. The promise to Abram is complete. Not just "kind-of" but really, truly, nothing is left un-redeemed, including even our race and ethnicity! That's how thorough Jesus is buying back his creation. He refuses to allow any of it be lost!