Race, intelligence, and the love of God

Many people who have studied race and intelligence come to the conclusion that certain races of the human species are more intelligent than others (Asians are at the top, if you were curious). A century or so ago, that conclusion paired up with the newly-popular theory of materialistic evolution to lead to some rather despicable practices and beliefs - like eugenics (particularly racial eugenics, which is simply sanitized genocide), colonialism, justification of race-based slavery, and social darwinism. Even in the US, in the 1910's and 20's, these type of ideas were taking hold and growing quickly. In the next few decades, however, in the wake of German Nazism, these beliefs faded to a hushed undercurrent in the scientific community.

But the ideas didn't go away. Ideas don't, usually. People stop talking about them out of fear, or to maintain a good image, or to help themselves win approval and career advancement, but they still harbor their true beliefs in their hearts and heads. So in the 1960's we see a resurgence of all the old racial prejudices; in particular, one study questioned the value of remedial education for African American children who had been disadvantaged during segregation of schools, claiming that those children were innately less intelligent and would never succeed academically despite receiving additional support and teaching. Needless to say, this sparked quite a debate, that continued through the 90's with publication of books, articles, and rebuttals from both sides. It is interesting to realize that even as the government was striving to do more to promote racial equality in society, scientists were debating about the mere existence of biological racial equality in the first place. More recently, world-renowned figures like James Watson have postulated that the continued poverty and chaos in Africa is due to lower average intelligence of the people there. Some people (most of whom are white supremacists) go even a step further, and suggest that different races also have different moral norms - that Africans are inherently more violent because of their genetics, for instance.

When I read these kinds of theories, it makes me intensely angry. In the first place, it is extremely hard to separate environment from heredity in many of these studies; looking at Africa again, as an example, how would be one be able to be sure that poverty is caused by lower average intelligence and not that lower average intelligence is caused by malnutrition, disease, and the emotional trauma of living in an insecure and war-torn land? And there can be even less certainty with regards to ethical mores! The people who believe that theory forget that their own culture has been steeped in Christianity for centuries - don't you think that might affect where we are today as Western society? In many developing countries, even where Christianity has technically been present for a long time, it has been assimilated into previous modes of thought and operation, leaving them unchanged, and has not in the majority of places been woven into the tapestry of life. True change takes time and the work of the Spirit, not an outward veneer of religion or modernity. Finally, it angers me because it is used as an excuse to withdraw resources and aid from people in these racial groups or from nations consisting largely of certain racial groups. I have read blogs where people argue that because Africans are less intelligent and more violent, we should let them kill each other off in Africa and do nothing about it, regardless of the human suffering involved, and it sickens me.

I don't think that our behavior toward other people, as Christians, should be affected by the truth or falsehood of these theories. Compared to God, we are all unintelligent and full of sin - and yet what do we see in His behavior toward us? He loves us unconditionally and He suffers for our redemption, restoration, and transformation; when He was walking around the earth He provided healing and food for the poor and not always very bright crowds that followed Him and listened to His teaching, and He knelt down in humility to serve the ones He created. So no matter what science or pseudoscience would have us believe about the nature of other people or groups of people, we need to remember that in Christ we are reconciled together in one body (Eph. 2:14-18) and that we are called to consider others as better and more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3-4). There is no permission, in our faith, to condemn others or to consider ourselves superior to others. If they do not know Christ, then our heart's desire should be for their spiritual salvation as well as their physical well-being, and if they do know Christ, then our hearts should break at their suffering for they are our brothers and our sisters. Remember what our Lord said to His disciples at the end of His ministry?

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for on another." - John 13:34-35

I think that might be a good principle to strive to live by, don't you? We cannot rank people (whether by wealth, power, intelligence, or morality) and attend only to those at our level or love only those who are superior and can benefit us or interact with lower than us only with scorn or pity or condescension! We are simply commanded to love one another, with no limits or qualifications.

Racism and eugenics and similar beliefs about the nature of humanity ultimately stem from a worldview that is in outright opposition to the one we claim to hold as children of God - a worldview that would have us believe we descended from apes and that some of us are closed to that ancestor than others, a worldview that would make us think that what seems advantageous in this life (intelligence, health, money, or power) is all that matters because this life is all there is. Believing as we do that humanity was created in the image of God, in beauty and meaning and worth, and that we have an eternal home and purpose, we can look at the human species in all of its diversity and in all of its sinfulness and learn to genuinely love and value each member of it (insofar as we are able with the constraints of time and space and resources) by the grace of the God who first loved us. I'm not saying that this is an easy or a simple task - I am currently finding it quite difficult to respond with love to people who speak callously of the atrocities in the DRC and wish the Africans would destroy each other, for instance! - but it is the task we are called to and it is our responsibility to discover what obedience to that commandment ought to look like in all the situations in which we find ourselves.