Racism: Why Is It Wrong To Weep Over Wakanda?

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Christ Alone, Sin, and Divine Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words,.

They will act upon them,.

And when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this latest episode as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

On this episode of Bible Bashed, we will be answering the question, Why was it wrong to weep over Wakanda? Now, when the movie Black Panther came out, I watched the movie and had a particular reaction to the movie, and then when I compared the reaction that I had to the reaction that many professing black Christians seemed to have over the movie itself, one of the things that was startling to me is to notice how different the reaction I had was to the reaction of many professing black Christians.

There were many professing black Christians at the time who were essentially weeping over the idea of Wakanda. Now, if you haven't watched the movie, Wakanda was essentially a country in northeast Africa in the comics and in the movies that had embraced essentially an isolationist policy and it was left alone and basically untouched by western whites as far as that's concerned.

And it had become, due to this isolationist policy, one of the most technologically advanced countries or the most technologically advanced country in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, when you think about how this played out on the ground in the movie, Wakanda itself was a strange mixture of a very advanced technological society, but then it also retained a lot of the primitive tribal aspects of traditional African culture as far as those things are concerned.

So there are scenes in the movie where Wakandans are essentially barking at each other like animals and engaging in contests of strength to determine who's going to be the next leader. And so you have the primitive tribal component to that with their mannerisms and their dress and their way of communicating and just these strange barking noises they're making and everything else.

But then you also have this highly advanced technological society and Wakanda in that way represents a fantasy about what Africa could have been like had white Westerners essentially left them alone. But the problem with this kind of fantasy is that it is indeed a fantasy.

That's the problem. So when you think about the way that science arose in the world in a historical way, science has not arisen naturally in primitive tribal societies. If you look at just many African countries today, you'll see that they're not paragons of science.

And you can't just blame white Westerners for all that. Science doesn't just develop in any soil. That's the point. There has to be a specific kind of worldview present for science to actually arise. Science didn't arise in an eastern soil that was dominated by a belief in order and chaos and animism and superstition and all those things.

So science arose in the West because in order for science to actually happen, you have to have certain presuppositions necessary to produce science. Now many people think that Christianity is at odds, fundamental is science, but there's nothing that's further from the truth than that.

Christians were the ones who invented science. And Christians invented science through the blessing of God and through the blessings of a Christian worldview. Just to give you an example of how this actually works, Copernicus proposed the idea of circular planetary orbits, and that was a theory that held sway for quite some time in the scientific world.

But Kepler, through his observations of the universe, he noted that there were differences between planetary movements and the standard Copernicus circular orbits that were proposed. And these small variations that he noticed in the actual observations that he was having on the ground with what the proposed orbits told him should be the planetary motions, led him to develop the idea of elliptical orbits.

And he's very explicit about what led him to these kind of conclusions. He came to this conclusion because he believed that there was an orderly God behind the creation. And because God was orderly and God's perfect, essentially God is going to uphold the world in a very consistent way.

And when you look around the world, you see differences in what you're observing with what you would expect. It must be that your model is wrong. And so that led him to come up with this theory of elliptical orbits because he fundamentally was basing that on the belief of an orderly creator who basically had no inaccuracies or a lack of precision in his operations in how he upheld the universe.

So when you think about the idea of Wakanda in that way, Wakanda represents a fantasy. And it's a fantasy that's a particularly destructive sort of fantasy, and that's why we're bringing it up. So we've talked about on our episode, Is America Racist?

We brought up the poster that the National Museum of African and American History put out. And essentially the National Museum of African and American History basically categorized a lot of the presuppositions needed for the development of science with being presuppositions that were fundamentally shared by white people or aspects of whiteness that many black people have internalized and are not necessarily things that are objectively true or objectively right.

So part of the characteristics of whiteness that the National Museum of African and American History informed us about was the belief in logical and linear thinking, the emphasis on the scientific method, principles of cause and effect.

These are the kind of principles that are necessary for science to arise. And as the National Museum of African and American History is telling us, these are not the kind of principles that all cultures uniquely share.

Now because of multiculturalism, one of the things that happens is that it's demanded that we praise every single culture indiscriminately. And so we have to view all cultures as essentially neutral. And one of the things that that has led us to do is basically we view all cultures as neutral, except for the West.

So there's some asymmetrical expectations as it relates to our perspective of the West. But with every other culture, essentially, we have to praise. And so this leads to basically this noble, savage kind of mythology, essentially, where as we view Native American culture, what we have to do is we have to look at Native American culture and somewhat romanticize it.

Or as we view African culture, we have to romanticize it. And so if you're engaged in this kind of project where the world is divided up into oppressors and oppressed cultures, then white Westerner culture is considered an oppressor culture.

And then Native American culture or African cultures, they're considered oppressed cultures. And because they're oppressed cultures, they have to be essentially universally praised. And so when there's differences in worldview as it relates to logical, linear thinking, emphasis on the scientific method, prioritization of cause and effect relationships, principles of delayed gratification, hard work, these kind of things, what happens is that if you put your multicultural lens on, you have to basically view every culture as fundamentally neutral and fundamentally equal.

And then that leads you to this kind of mythology that basically villainizes the West. And there's obviously things that the West is guilty of that we ought to repent of. Yes, the West definitely exported slaves from Africa to the West.

And these are abominable practices that the Bible would prohibit. But then we have to understand something, that it was the Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans and essentially sold Africans to the West.

And so it wasn't as if Africans themselves had some kind of wonderful culture. Now if you think about what the Bible says about these actual issues, what you'll realize is that there basically is no nation that is fundamentally neutral.

You have to view the nations or the inhabitants of land in the way that God views the nations or the inhabitants of land. And so when cultures and society engage in abominable practices like child sacrifice and slavery and rape and murder and all these things, you can think about God's pattern in how the Israelites came and conquered the inhabitants of the land, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Amalekites.

The Bible talks about these nations as basically like the land is essentially vomiting these nations up because of all the vile practices which they practice. And God will frequently use even wicked nations in judgment against other nations to remind them that they are all objects of His wrath.

And so when we're thinking about issues of the hope of Wakanda or you're thinking about the sin of the West or all these kind of things, what we have to realize is that nations rise and fall and that God is behind these things and that man is fundamentally not just some kind of neutral creature who is basically noble and basically good and everything else.

What you have to do is you have to put on a biblical worldview and you have to realize that when nations rise and fall, these are all signs of God's judgment. And so Africa was a nation of vile sinners before the West came and sinned against them by purchasing slaves that were captured by fellow Africans.

Africa was a nation of vile sinners and there are consequences to these nations' sin. It wasn't as if Africa had embraced Jesus Christ as Lord in any wholesale way. Africa was a nation that basically was under the judgment of God just like all pagan nations are under the judgment of God apart from some sort of commitment to follow the things of the Lord.

And so when you think about these kind of things, there was something unique about the West. The West obviously wasn't perfect, but there was something unique about the West in that the West did embrace Christianity and there were blessings that came from the West embracing Christianity and these blessings were extended to all the world.

So certainly the West had its own fair share of sin. But what you can't do is you can't engage in some sort of fantasy world to where you view all of the other nations as if they're fundamentally neutral and fundamentally good at heart and basically villainize the West for doing the kind of things that every society throughout the history of the world, even Africans were doing at the time.

Basically every nation throughout the whole history of the world has engaged in all sorts of evil and all sorts of sin, the West included. And in many ways the West was sowing in those moments the seeds of its inevitable downfall.

But then there was a remarkable difference between the Christianity of the West and the paganism of Africa. And so when you think about something like this hope of Wakanda or this fantasy of Wakanda, the idea of weeping over what Wakanda could have been like, one of the things you have to do is you have to look at the world the way a Christian would look at the world and think about the things that the Bible tells us to think about.

And what you'll realize is that there's blessings that come through formal acknowledgement of the Creator God. And part of those blessings are going to work themselves out in society. And part of the benefit of the West was to give the entire world science which didn't naturally arise in this pagan and superstitious worldviews of these primitive tribal regions.

And so the idea of having a primitive tribal society embracing its primitive tribal ways and also developing science, that's a historical inaccuracy. It just didn't happen and it wouldn't happen. And if we continue to pretend like it does, then we're engaging in some sort of fantasy.

Biblical Worldview, Work, and Social Advancement

Now, why this is all important is because there are characteristics that the Bible gives us which are necessary for success. And as long as we pretend as if all cultures are neutral, we are preventing blacks from getting ahead in the world today.

So there are characteristics that are needed in order to be productive members of society. If you want to produce cars, if you want to produce these things which seem like miracles to pagan tribal societies.

I mean, just imagine trying to explain how electricity works to a primitive tribal society. These are miracles. These are marvels. These are technological wonders. But then the point, though, is just to say that these things happen as a result of a kind of worldview that the Bible gives us.

And the kind of worldview that the Bible gives us is the importance of hard work, the importance of delayed gratification, the importance of logical linear thinking, the importance of truth over and against subjectivity, the primacy of cause and effect relationships.

This is just reading through the book of Proverbs. And if there is a culture that comes along and rejects all of these things as aspects of whiteness, then one of the things that's going to happen is that that culture is going to hinder its ability to actually contribute to society and advance in the world.

And that's why these things are fundamentally important. And not only is it important in order to help be a blessing to your fellow members of society, it really does no good to engage in some sort of fantasy where you romanticize your own people and villainize members of the opposite people groups.

And so every nation has its own kind of sins, but not all nations' sins are equal. Now when the Israelites came to inherit the Promised Land, God told the Israelites it wasn't because of your own righteousness that I'm dispossessing the inhabitants of this land.

I'm dispossessing the inhabitants of land because of their wickedness. And this is just how God works throughout the world in societies. God will use wicked nations of their own sort to be acts of judgment against other nations.

The Babylonians came a nation wickeder than the Israelites and displaced them because God was displeased with them. But at the same time, if there is a nation that is acknowledging God, there are blessings that are going to come from that.

And that's part of what it means to be salt and light in the midst of the world as Christians. And so there are blessings that are going to come from Christians influencing society and what you can't do is just engage in some kind of fantasy world where you believe that a pagan, tribal, superstitious people who are hostile to everything that the Bible commands, if left alone, would somehow end up with all the blessings that come from a people imperfectly acknowledging God as well.

So the West had plenty of problems, but then so did Africa.

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