Bible Reading:
Genesis Chapter 11 verses 1 to 9

Racism - Mans Invention

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God created everything perfect, flawless and unspoiled. On the sixth day of Gods creating work He made a man and a woman in the image of God and commanded them to multiply on the earth. Adam and Eve were the first parents of the human race. The human race grew. People lived to great ages and parented children even in old age. (Noah was 500 before his three sons were born.)

Little is known about pre-flood activity. We read in Genesis 4 that there were city dwellers and tent dwellers. There were people who were expert in metalwork and who taught others. There were musicians trained on musical instruments. Depending on your reckoning this time lasted somewhere between 1656 and 2400 years. From the start people were intelligent and capable and society developed as time passed - there was no gradual evolution from lower forms of life. God made man a thinking, intelligent speaking being from the very start.

We also are told that people became increasingly evil until God sent the Flood in judgement, saving only Noah and his family and representative animals.

After the flood we have more historical detail about society in general. It might be that society developed again along pre-flood lines as the population grew after the flood. The way Noah's descendants lived might well have been how things were before the flood. Everyone mixing in together in society and intermarrying with whomever they wanted to.

This is where we get a bit technical. .

We need to understand a little of the subject of genes and genetics. A gene is a little piece of biological code that determines how a living creature will be.

A piece of string with beads on it can carry a message in Morse code.

A piece of string, by the use of a simple sequence of short beads, long beads, and spaces (to represent the dots and dashes of Morse code - every letter being a combination of long and short signals), can carry the same information as the English word "help" typed on a sheet of paper. The entire Encyclopaedia Britannica could be written thus in Morse Code on a long-enough piece of string.

The genetic information for a person, the human blueprint, is written in a complex chemical code which is carried on a very long chemical called DNA. Each piece of information, each gene, carries instructions about a different aspect of the life form for which it is designed. Plants, animals and people all rely on genetic information.

People all have a gene that governs the colour of eyes, another the colour of hair. Another gene decides how tall a person will grow. Another governs how the immune system works. In humans the information is for each of us a tiny little ball about the size of a full stop on a printed page. In that tiny ball, there are over six feet (2m) of DNA all coiled up. All of our characteristics (height, skin colour, etc.) are "spelled out" in that DNA. All the complex functions of our bodies and how they grow and develop are governed by this genetic information.

When God created Adam he was created perfect. All the information to reproduce more people to make up the human race was there in Adam and Eve; they had all the genetic information to pass on to their children. We, as individuals, are a mixture of genetic information from our mothers and our fathers..

While society stayed together before and after the flood there was a constant mixture of the genetic information. People were all similar because they all had access to the same genetic information..

When God changed the languages at Babel the whole mass of people split up and the different groups went their separate ways because they could no longer understand each other. Each group took with it its own genetic information and no longer had access to the other group's genetic information. They weren't going to look for husbands and wives amongst people they could no longer talk to. The new groups had less genetic information to mix together.

Say, for example, that in one group there were a large number of people with blonde hair. As those people intermarried both parents might tend to have blonde hair and have children with blonde hair. Eventually it might develop that most or all that group would be blonde haired people..

This is how the characteristics of what are now known as the different races developed.

People have observed these so-called differences and labelled those with these different characteristics as belonging to different races. The way the customs and cultures of these apparently different races have developed has led some people to consider groups within the human race as less advanced than others.

Almost from the beginning of time there has been conflict between people and groups of people who percieve that they are diferent in some way from other people or groups.

The theory of evolution was one of several factors that inspired the racism of The Nazis, during their time in power and particularly during the Second World War. They considered people of Jewish, Gypsy, Russian, Slavic, African and Indian backgrounds as lower forms of life. They believed these people had not evolved as much as Europeans, especially Germans. They murdered six million of these members of the human race in concentration camps. The earlier settlers in Australia - formerly people from the "civilised" west viewed the native Australians as less evolved as evolutionary thought caught on last century. They used to hunt and kill these people, these human beings, these men, women and children made in the image of Almighty God - thinking them to be no more than improved apes.

What an offence in the sight of God!

The Bible says nothing about there being different races. "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26). Human beings with the right blood group can all give blood transfusions to any other person with the same group. All "races" can do this for each other.

Think of a group of three men.

This is very much an over-simplification but it illustrates how European Man 2 is genetically closer to African man than he is to European Man 1. He has more similarities in his genetic makeup to the African man than he has with the other European.

Skin colour is governed by the amount of a substance called melanin. We all have melanin in our skin - unless we are albino - and then we have none. There is only one kind of melanin. Everyone who has it just has different amounts. The amount of melanin we have in our skin depends on the genetic instruction passed on to us from our parents. Lots of melanin darkens the skin. Only a little makes skin lighter.

So one of the primary differences we see between one race and another - skin colour - we find it is just one gene's difference amongst many more that are the same for everyone.

There is one thing that everyone has in common no matter what his or her genetic makeup. Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Everyone in all humanity has a fallen nature and has broken Gods law over and over again. Sinful people do not like to think of themselves as having to obey God. They do not want to even believe in Him. This is why evolutionary thought caught on. It is an attempt to explain the world without a creator.

God is still there whether people accept the truth or not.

There is a story that if an ostrich sees a threat sometimes it will bury its head in the sand so it can't see what's coming. Ostriches do not actually do this but it illustrates how sinners react at being confronted by the consequences of their sin. Refusing to look at something does not make it go away.

Sinners need to ask for forgiveness from God for their sin. They need to face up to the fact of their desperate situation in the sight of their angry Creator. Every sinner needs to ask for God's pardon or they will, one day, have to face God Himself as their judge. When I speak of "sinners" I mean you and I mean me. We are all sinners. The Bible declares this plainly. Everyone, whatever size or shape or colour needs The Lord Jesus to save them from Gods righteous judgement. The Lord Jesus, The Eternal Son of God came into the world, lived a perfect life then died on the cross at Calvary as a substitute for all His people. He bore their sin to deliver them from judgement and hell and to open the way for them to spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

Do you hope to go to heaven? If you do then, in common with eveyone else in the entire human race, you must trust The Lord Jesus to save you from the power of satan and sin, trust Him to cleanse you from your sin and to cover you with His perfect righteousness - only then will God accept you into heaven. There is no other way to get there.