Having challenged the notion of "race" and suggested at least six problems with accepting a racialized worldview, I want to try and suggest some ways forward on this very important issue.

"Race"-ing the World at the Speed of Thought

The way out of racial quicksand is (a) admit and emphasize our common ancestry in Adam; and (b) disallow "race" as biology the place of reality or organizing system in our worldview. Thinking in racial categories has been an automatic reflexive assumption for all of us. It seems as natural as breathing. But we must deny it that place in our lives.

Some readers will no doubt feel the implication of what I'm saying. You recognize that abandoning the idea of "race" blows everything up. If we abandon race and emphasize our unity in Adam, even at a pre-Christian level, it changes all of our behavior. For example, abandoning "race":

• Removes the factor that leads to easy identification of friends and social groups;
• No longer works as a basis for choosing where we live;
• No longer serves as a limiting factor for marriage decisions;
• Hiring policies and preferences have to change;
• Public policy analysis and decisions must be re-examined; and
• A new basis for hate crimes must be established.

We don't know how to live without "race," and so it scares us to think about it, like a child who will not sleep without their security blanket.

To illustrate how reflexive our racial instincts are, picture yourself walking into a lunchroom. You enter alone. There are two tables in the lunchroom. The table on your left includes a group of people not like yourself, some ethnic other. The table on your right includes a group of people ethnically like you.

What would you instinctively do?

We gravitate towards those people we perceive to be like us. Now what is the mental calculus behind that gravitation? What are the mental mathematics taking place that lead to that impulse?

We enter the room, we look at the two tables with the two groups, and at the speed of thought we calculate, Not like me. Like me. Then we think, Like me, therefore safe. Like me and safe, therefore some benefits to be gained. Like me and safe, some benefits to be gained, and therefore the likelihood of some joy and peace from our commonality.

And there is an opposite calculus going on simultaneously. Not like me. Not safe. No benefit to be gained. No joy to share.

This happens at the speed of thought for most of us. What we want to replace that calculus with when we walk into the lunch room filled with differing groups is, Descended from Adam — like me. Made in the image of God — like me. Fallen sinners — like me.

It's the emphasis on like me — the heritage we share in Adam — that begins to lay for our feet a bridge to cross over "otherness."

Union with Christ

But for the Christian, there is an even greater basis for unity across ethnic lines and the abandonment of "race" as a part of our worldview and spiritual life — our union in Jesus Christ.

When the Christian walks into that lunchroom, she or he sees two groups and thinks, Descended from Adam — like me. Made in the image of God — like me. Fallen sinners — like me. And then if we find that any of those persons in the lunchroom are Christians, we are able to say, United to Christ — like me. Sharing His Spirit — like me. Received the promises of eternal life and everlasting joy — like me!

The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, "We have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us."

Paul's insight into this union with Christ comes first from the Lord's own teaching. For example, in John 17:20-26, Jesus petitions the Father for our union with Him and the Father. We are made one in God just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father (v. 21). The Father in the Son, the Son in the Saints (v. 23). We have entered into the eternal fellowship of love shared between the Father and the Son from all eternity.

The Difference Our Union Makes

Our union with Christ produces in us new life. It's surprising how often the New Testament reaches for the little adjective "new" to describe the reality we've entered in Christ (2 Cor. 5:14-18). And in this new reality, as Sinclair Ferguson put it, "We are brothers and sisters together — for Christ's blood creates a deeper lineage than our genes."¹

Because we are united with Christ, we are together being restored to the image and likeness of God. "Those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom 8:29). "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18).

Most appropriate for our discussion, notice how Paul applies this truth in Col. 3:11: "Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." Even the natural ethnic distinctions — which are real and to be valued — are vastly secondary to this union that God has so wonderfully wrought in Christ.

Union, Ethnicity and Privilege

So, our main project is not fundamentally to build shrines to ethnic achievement or manmade culture. And to be clear, relaxing into ethnic privilege because we are the majority in our church or culture is a form of ethnic shrine building. It's ethnic shrine building because we presume upon privilege in a way that exalts our own ethnic culture above others. We are to be living monuments of God's glory in Christ, bearing the renewed image and likeness of God more clearly through faith in Christ, and living in the divinely-given culture of the church — a culture of holiness and righteousness, justice and truth.

Failure to do this, I think, is the serious limitation of so many well-intentioned racial reconciliation efforts. Those efforts seem to me to major on "race" and to minor on Christ and His work in too many cases. Some approaches seem to suggest that merely embracing the "other's" ethnicity and culture somehow enhances our embrace of Christ. I think the opposite is the way forward. It's as we tightly cling to Jesus that we find ourselves embracing other people clinging to the Savior. The cross reconciles men to God and men to each other.

In accepting the idea of "race" as a reality, we keep grasping for a mirage instead of tightening our grip on Jesus. And that effort to grasp the mirage is hurting us.

Now, nothing I'm saying destroys ethnic identity but profoundly orients our identity in and toward the spiritual realities and accomplishments of Christ on the cross. If ethnicity is a fluid construct then what happens to the Christian is that he is poured out of the old jars of "race," distilled and poured into the new jar of Christ. Our natural ethnic identities, already permeable, give way to our new identity. We become Christ-ians, a new spiritual ethnic group. We gather by that family and clan and nation and we speak the language of Zion! That's what we're after.

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1. Sinclair Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel Centered Life (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed), p. 157.