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Notes on second publish (2026 07 07):
Wow, this one hasn't aged well.
I probably would get in a lot of trouble for trying to psychoanalyze minorities today (and probably back then, too). The stuff about cultural biases is basically valid, and my affection for African American culture didn't disappear. My portrayal of their cultural struggle is basically drawn directly from things I read in their own sources. I can't really retract any of that, but my thoughts on things like CRT, intergenerational trauma, and the "solution" to economic disparity have changed a lot since posting this as well, and those new ideas would definitely change the shape of what I presented here.
On the other hand, after having posted this, I dug deep into my family history. I'm pleased to say that I don't get to take credit for stealing land or prima nocta, at least. I don't retract my statement about us being criminals, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin are death. We all deserve it, but God has had mercy on us.
As far as taking responsibility for the actions of other people, that's a difficult topic which I've spent quite a lot of time working out in my own studies. Ezekiel 18 makes very clear that each person's guilt rests solely on themselves, but Jeremiah 45 tells us that corporate guilt affects whole nations and includes hardship even for those who don't share in the guilt. 2 Sam 21 is maybe the best case study for something like "reparations", but it amounts to harm for the guilty parties alone. The idea that the whole community is punished for failure to do justice to guilty individuals is coherent with the law in Deut 13 concerning corporate punishment and Israel's behavior toward Benjamin in Judges 20. It leads us to wonder what should be done if children inherit a society where justice was not done and the criminals died of natural causes. Thankfully, there's no civil penalty prescribed for total failure to do penalties, (except Deut 13 which requires an overarching society to come in judgment from outside), so the children of unjust parents aren't required to punish prior generations for failing to punish the criminals themselves. It seems God does the justice in those instances, and the kids (if any are permitted to become heads of house themselves) have the opportunity to establish a clean society by means of corporate repentance.
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I've been thinking about race and culture lately. I realize there's a distinction, but imo irl they often come coupled. I'm a white, middle-class, Christian man, and if that makes you think "this guy probably doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to race issues", then you've proved my point. My father is from England (about 4% Choctaw), and my mother is Irish. My understanding is that my mother's family fled to the U.S. during the potato famine, but my father's family was English nobility (granted, we were living in a shelter when I was born).
My wife is Korean, and she's taught me that culture isn't something which you can just decide to adapt to. There are things which I think are "just" right or wrong, without justification, and she also has that kind of cultural absolutism built into her way of thinking in certain areas. I think everybody does. Many of our prejudices are held without us even realizing it; much of what we believe has never been articulated with words either by or to us. In fact, sometimes we even recognize where we hold some (potentially false) idea to be true, but we reject the thought of changing our minds on the topic, because things are just "so" sometimes. I think I couldn't have learned this lesson about myself without having married her -- because Korean culture is so different from U.S. culture.
Many of these biases and cultural predilections are not bad things. They are even beneficial to us; enriching our lives, adding to our sense of identity, and enabling us to describe the world in terms that make sense. "I believe ____", and, "I see ____", are healthy statements of individual actualization. Furthermore, these leanings bind us to our heritage, making us feel like part of a family that reaches far into the past. More so for her than for me, I think, but nonetheless we both have certain aspects of our heritages which we are proud to identify with.
My wife taught me this lesson, but she isn't the only person who taught it to me. Contrast realizes abstract learning. I listen to a lot of rap, hip hop, R&B, gospel, and really any African American music I can get my hands on while I work and while I drive. My dad, my brother, my grandfather, my uncle, and my cousins are drummers, and my mom was a poet -- I love the rhythms and the lyrics. I'm infatuated with their art. But there's a common theme, expressed in a way most plainly understandable to me by the artist, Propaganda. I can't pretend to speak for them, but it seems plain to me that they are upset because they don't like American culture (with good reason), and their ancestors were unjustly taken away from another culture, but it's too late to go back because they've been loosely integrated into this nation by several generations. Even if they wanted to go back, they wouldn't fit in, they wouldn't speak the language, and they might not even know what part of the continent they came from. To make matters worse, the unfortunate reality is that minorities are disproportionately impoverished in America, making it feel difficult to achieve anything at all. They want to have those ancient cultural absolutes built into their way of thinking, but they don't, and it hurts their sense of identity.
But they have something I don't have, and for which I'm jealous. They love the culture of their ancestors. Don't get me wrong, I love my immediate family's culture, and that was established by my parents; I'm not ashamed to be white by any means, nor do I feel guilty for crimes which were not committed by me. But the farther I reach back into my family history, the uglier it gets. Whether it's oppressing our neighbors, and even our brothers, stealing land and moving boundaries, adultery, prima nocta, murder, abusing scripture, hating knowledge of God, or whatever other bad thing you want to mention, we've probably done it. In fact, if justice were done rightly, then my great great great great grandparents would probably have been executed, and I never born. For that matter, if justice were done right in the land, then Saul of Tarsus probably would have been executed for murder. Should I be grateful that the law of the land was unjust? I should say not, but God worked it out for His glory and His merciful plan, and so God is good when all men are evil.
I recognize that there is a place for people groups to take responsibility for actions committed by others in their land, to cleanse the land -- it's Biblical even, that land gets polluted when innocent blood is shed on it, and the land has to be cleansed by justice, and by the repentance of its people.
So what's the practical application? What does national repentance look like, at this point?
...From my frame of reference, the obvious answer is that everyone in America should first repent of their own sins, (including the sin of unbelief), and then do away with these unjust laws which passively oppress our neighbors, implement just laws, and thereby establish a more equitable system of government.
Before I close this out, I should discuss LGBTTQQIAAP (... or is it LGBTTIQQ2SA? QUILTBAG? just LGBT? Should there really be an I or Q in there? One A or two? I just want to make sure I'm not stepping on anyone's toes) pride today because Google is highlighting it, and...you know...2 Corinthians 10:5.
They celebrate it as if it's a new thing for people to be proud of sexual deviation, but this kind of thing has been done for several millenia -- and not just by individuals hiding in their proverbial closets, but by entire nations at a time. There's nothing new about it. You see, the thing is, although they know God's law, wherein such things are so wrong as to be made capital offenses, they not only do those things themselves, but they applaud people who do likewise. (Romans 1:32)
I love my gay friends and neighbors, (says the guy who just advocated God's word, and thereby capital punishment). I'll hang out with them, and we can have a good time whenever we're together -- because everybody sins and I know that I deserve death just as much as them. But my friends know my thoughts on the matter of our sin and need for Christ. I can't be proud of their crimes with them.
Lastly, I just want to be clear, when I make fun of that movement by doing things like messing with the acronym and stuff, it's not intended as a personal attack on those individuals. I honestly think the whole idea that our sexuality is part of our identity, and the way that that is used as an anthropo-ontological argument against sexuality-based discriminatory conversation, is really a steaming heap of poorly-seasoned sophistry. There are good, rational arguments to be made for why a secular nation should be totally accepting of homosexual marriage, etc, but those arguments come with lateral consequences that should be accepted by their advocates in this movement -- namely that they leave every form of sexual gratification in a state of moral ambiguity for lack of a clear, imminent, objective moral guideline. But that is really the logical end of secularism anyway, afaict.
"Hopeless, so we all learn Swahili as if we knew we were from that region. Silly, we know, but what are you supposed to do when all you know; your closest cultural customs are similar to your captors?"
