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Part 1 of the series
Part 2 of the series
Introduction
John Piper, the pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has recently authored a new book on race, entitled Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian. Many Christians, even Reformed Christians, are fans of Piper’s work, but his own fanaticism for degenerate, white-hating multiculturalism ought to give plenty of reason for discerning Christians to reject his work and encourage others to do the same. I will continue to provide kinist criticism of Piper’s mischief.
The Glories of Diversity
Continuing his autobiographical sketch, Piper recounts his moving to the “poorest and most diverse part” of Minneapolis, citing the various races which lived in that same part of the city in 2005 (p. 38). In his exposition of the various wonders of living in such a diverse neighborhood, Piper makes a few quite disturbing comments.
Upon apprehending the neighborhood, Piper identified it as where he would want to be a pastor, and he today sees it as where he would want to die. Fortunately for him, diversity is one of the more reliable means to accomplish that. But despite this unintended admission of his death-wish, he says in the same paragraph that his wife and he would joke that their house lacked a television because “the boys can watch the nightly news on the streets outside their house” (p. 39). Apparently it is fine to acknowledge the danger of living among non-whites, so long as one does not draw the moral inference that it would be a bad idea to do so. With this one sentence, Piper shows himself to be a dolt and a maniac who places his deranged commitment to diversity above his own children’s safety.1
The other maniacal affirmations of Piper are in the form of glorifying diversity, speaking positively about the multiracial component of his neighborhood and other things. Just after outlining the racial demographics of his neighborhood, and just before admitting that the neighborhood was dangerous for his own children, Piper says that if he were to leave the neighborhood, it would “take a crystal-clear divine call to make [him] leave this kind of diversity.” Similarly, he praised his own adoption of a black girl: “Nothing binds a pastor’s heart to diversity more than having it in his home.” He states his church’s role to seek “a deeper and wider racial and ethnic diversity and harmony” (p. 39).
Here, Piper makes quite an extreme moral claim. Ordinarily, when pastors are defending the practice of miscegenation, whether it be racial integration in marriage, family, church, or any other aspect of society, they will appeal to the absence of a scriptural prohibition. They will say that the Bible does not forbid race-mixing in any of these spheres, in which case such race-mixing can be stamped with the label of “morally permissible.” They therefore evacuate the practice of moral value, denying both that it is morally obligatory and that it is morally prohibited. In so doing, they usually appropriate the colorblind theory of modern “conservatives,” reducing race to skin color and therefore treating it as entirely inconsequential—contrary to all of reality.
Yet, here, Piper goes further: he speaks of racial diversity as a positive good, one we are generally obligated to seek. (In fact, that is the entire propaganda behind the multicultists’ usage of the word “diversity” rather than some less value-laden term like “race-mixing.”) But if racial diversity is a positive good, then are not most people’s preferences for a spouse of the same race defective in some way? This same defect could be attributed to any preferences whatsoever which one has for one’s own race. If one merely prefers to be around the company of one’s own race, one is thereby opposed to diversity, and if diversity is positively good, then one is committing a transgression—the sin of racism. To be cleansed of this sin is to be purified of any preferences whatsoever one has for his own race. Even if the pursuit of diversity is conceived as a small or prima facie duty, to be overridden by more incumbent moral duties—for instance, even if a race-mixer admitted that living in a multiracial neighborhood could be forbidden by the duty to keep one’s children from harm—it still would be the case that, all other things being equal, one ought to more highly value spouses, family, and friends of a difference race. That is an utterly extreme, unnatural, and suicidal suggestion. And, of course, it is repulsive but worth noting that hardly any xenophilic whites would allow other moral duties to override the glorious pursuit of “diversity.”
I suppose it is broadly logically possible that race-mixing could be morally obligatory, in which case I would not want to utterly dismiss Piper’s case without any consideration of his premises. But it does not take much consideration to locate his error. I would strongly contend that both Scripture and nature have important information to impart concerning the moral status of miscegenation, but even apart from deeper and more complex reflections and arguments, it should be obvious that Piper is wrong. We know as a basic fact that it is not sinful of us to prefer to be around those of our own race. But if this is true, then racial diversity is not a positive good. That claim is entirely groundless and indeed contrary to basic experience. But leave it to Piper to treat amalgamation as an obligation and so imply the immorality of racial distinction.2 His deep-seated and backwards racial error is definitively encapsulated by a rhetorical question he poses: “For what does it profit a man if he gains complete diversity and loses his own soul?” (p. 40). No Christian should ever view those as competing goods.3
Hijacking the Gospel
Piper begins chapter 2 with a statement of Christ’s atoning work as the foundation for advancing “the cause of Christ-exalting racial diversity and Spirit-enabled racial harmony” (p. 43). His motif is that there is racial conflict or enmity today, entirely the fault of whites, which can be healed through the reconciling power of the gospel. It is certainly true that the gospel makes enemies into friends, just as the postmillennial prophecy of Isaiah 2 indicates that world Christianization will bring an end to war. This is because the existence of enemies presupposes some manifestation of sinfulness. But further information is required to identify which party (or parties) in a conflict is the sinful cause. It could be that all involved parties are sinful for their participation, or it could be that only one is. It is not sinful in certain senses to hate those trying to harm you, but someone has to sin for there to be enmity in the first place.
Given these basic principles, one can ask what exactly the work of gospel-reconciliation in race relations would be today. Is there still racial conflict or enmity? If so, whites are not its instigators; the vast majority of our race is fully and eagerly devoted to serving and helping other races, even to the point of altruistic suicide. The crime record, on the contrary, indicates a great amount of harm done against whites, hardly any of it reciprocated. But if Piper’s reconciliation involves a thoroughgoing white repentance, just what conflict is he trying to resolve? What reconciliation is he trying to effect? It should be clear that he is merely trying to bring about further amalgamation, wiping out any preference one has for one’s own race and cajoling everyone to appropriately value “diversity.” Unto this odious task he has snatched the gospel of free grace and redemption. It is one thing to just wish to fornicate with other races out of a love for strange flesh, but it is another to trample the blood of the covenant by hijacking the gospel for the ends of cultural Marxism. Piper ought to be terrified of what he is doing.
To Owe a Debt He Cannot Pay
Piper does not wish to exact penance for all the sins of his supposed racism, because he properly understands the doctrine of Christ’s penal substitution, but he still sees himself obligated to praise and glorify blacks as a way of making restitution. “If I demean a racial group, I owe them the effort to affirm their dignity when I awake from my stupor” (p. 44). Notice his amorphous and abstract sin, made even more mysterious by the absence of any concrete descriptions of it, and compare it to what could properly be said about the genuine and substantive black restitution owed to the white race. That some vague and ambiguous sin of “demeaning” blacks ostensibly compels Piper to adopt a black girl, promote miscegenation, write a book decrying his racist past, and seek ever-increasing mixing in his church is entirely ludicrous. Even if all of these acts of alleged restitution were in themselves morally permissible, it is still clear that the restitution does not fit the crime.
Moreover, the extent of Piper’s restitution raises the question, When will this restitution be fully accomplished? If I were to wrong someone, there is generally some time or another when I would realize I had done as much as could be expected of me in making it up to him. For example, in Old Testament law a thief had to repay 125% of the value of what he stole; he was not required continue making repayments indefinitely. But can we ever honestly say that John Piper and the white race have finally finished making restitution to other races? Of course not. Though Piper tries to distinguish the debt Christ paid on Calvary from the debt he owes to blacks, he actually betrays his own Messiah-complex.
Conclusion
Piper continues his mischievous ravings concerning pseudo-guilt for false sins. It should be systematically becoming clearer to the reader that, while he may be helpful on certain theological matters, Piper’s profession is unto an abstraction. May God grant us men willing to defend the white peoples from its assailants, and may He deliver us from pastors like John Piper. Our existence ought not be outlawed.
Footnotes
- I would also note that this stunning admission of Piper’s makes it even more obvious that anti-white ideologies are in fact artificially constructed because they are anti-white. It is not as if these ideologies come about just because people make intellectual and inferential miscues, the results of which happen to be anti-white. Modern anti-white ideologies are deliberately constructed for this purpose. As historical circumstances change, expect the anti-white flavor of the day to change too—whatever works to suppress our race. ↩
- It is worth noting that one could treat racial diversity as a positive good in many different ways, in which case these paragraphs should not be construed as a refutation of any possible articulation of the positive good of racial diversity. Someone could hold, for instance, that it is good to have a society or a church composed of many different races, even though marriage ought not to be interracial. Similarly, someone could hold that preferring to be around one’s own people is morally permissible, and that preferring to be around other races is not morally obligatory, but nonetheless race-mixers go above and beyond their moral duty in pursuing diversity. Other options could be listed, the vast majority of which I would find erroneous, but not all of which would be addressed in this article. Piper’s valuing of racial diversity is of such a kind that my critique applies to it but not to others who might have a more sophisticated rationale for race-mixing. ↩
- Of course, there are certain senses in which diversity is a good we ought to pursue. For example, we ought not to bring about vast miscegenation, since that would undo the racial diversity with which God has created the world. Nonetheless, Piper is speaking of “diversity” in the sense of multiracial communities and families, i.e. in the common way the word is abused in multicultural propaganda. In that sense, diversity is certainly not a competing good with salvation. ↩
