I grew up down south. That means a lot of things, most of them good in my opinion — like chop barbecue, sweet tea, lazy days under a weeping willow or on the front porch watching the traffic pass by, neighbors who drop in without calling and summer family reunions.

It's a good life.

But there are also some not-so-good aspects to growing up in the south, one of which is the South's legacy regarding race. Actually, it's a legacy that affects the entire country, not just the South. It's a legacy that affects every individual, not in the same way, of course, but at least on some level.

One way race affects us all is that it determines our sense of personal and group identity. Rare are the people who don't think of themselves as "white" or "black" or Asian or Hispanic. And most often, our sense of racial identity is rooted in some assumptions about our basic biology. In other words, we tend to think or act as though race is a biological fact, something stemming from our genes, and therefore something intractable and as necessary as breathing.

But is that an accurate set of assumptions? Does race exist in some objective, scientific sense? Do our personal identities flow naturally from our biology as water flows from an upstream source?

Those are important questions to consider given that most people include some working definition of race as foundational to their worldview and to their practical decisions. Television pundits are telling us how race factors into political voting behavior. A recent report recommends that adoptive parents be from the same race as the adopted child so that the child has no identity struggles later in life. Many people pick which neighborhood they'll live in based upon racial composition. Certain kinds of music are regarded as black or white music, and often the implication is that folks from other races are a little "odd" if they like "their" music.

Race circumscribes what we find physically beautiful and desirable in a potential mate. It's everywhere.

Or is it?

A New Premise

Multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance are the reigning solutions to problems associated with race. That is, most everywhere people assume that racial identity rooted in biology is an objective reality and conclude that the way to manage tensions, difference and strife is to develop greater appreciation for those differences. Ironically, this strategy has produced debate and strife of its own as people argue and quibble about the ideas of diversity and tolerance themselves.

As Christians, we must fundamentally wrestle with these issues theologically and not merely sociologically or philosophically. When we turn to the Scripture, we find a very different description of humankind. It's a description that emphasizes that only one race exists, that all of mankind descends from one original parentage, Adam and Eve. Stated plainly: The idea of "race" or various "races" is a complete fiction with not theological warrant whatsoever.

Our Biological Solidarity with Adam and Each Other

Scripture emphasizes the unity of humankind in Adam and Eve, not the disunity into separate races. Genesis 1:26-28 records the divine announcement on the sixth day of creation that God would make man, male and female, in God's own image and likeness. Then after the Fall we find the earliest and clearest statement in the OT of the biological unity of all of humankind. "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living" (Gen. 3:20). In one sense, the rest of the primeval history of Genesis 3-11 is a summary of how Eve really does become the mother of all the living.

Modern biblical confusion about the existence of "races" begins with misinterpretation of Genesis 10, the Table of Nations. The Christian adoption of racial categories was at least in part a response to a perceived crisis in biblical authority. With the New World discoveries of people outside the biblical world several questions arose. How did Native Americans end up in the Americas? How do we explain the antiquity of Chinese civilization? In what way are differing world religions corruptions of the religion of Noah? And why did Moses appear to know nothing about them?

And in the late 18th century, some people needed theological justification for the subjugation of people in slavery and for the theory of racial supremacy. So things like the curse of Ham myth were created.

This is a history involving the gradual reading of layers and layers of racialized assumptions onto the text of Scripture — particulary Genesis 10. So, the Table of Nations came to be interpreted as a story of discontinuity of man into "races" rather than the essential continuity one human family in the image of God.

Attempts were made to answer the question, "Where do races come from?" But that is not the question the text answers. The text actually answers how it is Eve becomes mother of all the living. It's a story that includes the designation of people into "clans, nations, and languages" (10:5, 20, 31-32) — but not at the expense of their common genealogical ancestry.

The emphasis of Genesis 10 is on common origin and descent of all mankind and their geographic distribution in the region we refer to as the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the earth. I tend to think that Genesis 10 with its emphasis on the common origin and descent of all mankind and their geographic distribution is the passage the Apostle Paul has in mind when we read in Acts 17:26 — "From one man (God) made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

Race vs. Ethnicity

In Genesis 10 we witness the rise of "ethnicity" or ethnic groups, not "race as biology." This is a critical distinction.

"Race" is the theory, taking several forms, that there is an essential difference between peoples rooted in biological factors and seen in things like skin color, hair texture, eye shape and color, and a few other obvious markers of difference.

"Ethnicity" is a fluid construct that includes language, nationality or citizenship, cultural patters and perhaps religion. Race as biology entrenches identity in physical appearance. Ethnicity is something that people of various physical appearances can move in and out of. So, for example, when we say someone is "American," we're talking about people of every color. We're talking about an ethnic or national identity. And people can become an American or they can become some other ethnic group.

The emphasis in the OT and NT wherever the Bible speaks of creation of humankind is mankind's common biological descent from Adam. Our common ancestry is underscored. The most fundamental recognition is not our difference labeled as "race" but our oneness, not our discontinuity but continuity.

To put it another way — This obvious truth that all men are descended from Adam and Eve through the line of Noah demands complete abandonment of "race as biological distinctiveness." "Race" in the way we commonly use the term, as a proxy for explaining differences in appearances and identity, does not exist in truth.