Introduction
So I posted on X yesterday: “Remember: anti-white rhetoric is actually anti-Christian. Don’t take the bait. If white people are Marxists they are allies. If you’re a black Christian, you’ve been colonized. This conflict is not about skin color. It’s about religion and culture. That’s why they also hate Jews.”
And then all the puppies came out to play. I should say many of them were very based puppies, but it has been a little yappy in my mentions over the last 24 hours. At the same time, several reasonable folks asked very reasonable questions, and I’ve been trying to answer them here and there, but it seemed to me to deserve a more thorough response.
Judeo-Christian Peaceniks
First, my friend Joel Webbon commented that he was following me until the last sentence. How does hatred of Jews figure into hatred of Christ and Christianity? Jews aren’t Christians, and we’re not collapsing important differences between us, are we?
And of course the answer is “no.” I don’t have any interest in the liberal project of blending monotheistic religions together into some kind of Eisenhower prune juice. That clearly hasn’t worked; it’s just given Western Civilization a bad case of the secular runs. “Judeo-Christian” has often seemed to want to soften differences, and pretend that Jews and Christians are just another version of Baptists and Presbyterians. So, no, count me out of the Judeo-Christian peacenik movement.
But there is something peculiar about the Jewish people, and that peculiarity is well-attested in Scripture, and succinctly summarized by the apostle as: They are enemies as regards the gospel, but beloved for the sake of the patriarchs (Rom. 11:28). And we really do need to hold these things together. In so far as they have rejected Jesus the Messiah, they are more culpable and will receive a greater judgment because they have the Old Testament, which is all about Jesus Christ. And precisely because this is so, God has also determined by His good and holy counsel to keep His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not only in His fulfillment of those promises in the salvation of the Gentiles, but also in the salvation of the ethnic Jewish people. Like a wayward, prodigal and disinherited son blowing his inheritance on hookers and meth, there is much to be condemned and plenty of fodder for Hell. And yet, he is still a son and so much loved. Both of these things can be true and are.
Closely related is the fact that next to Christians, Jews have been and continue to be some of the most highly functioning people in the history of the world. They often excel at higher rates than other cultures, and let us hasten to add, including excelling in both evil and good. So, you can give 15 examples of foul and heinous Jews, and I can flip it around and give you 15 more examples of Nobel Peace Prize winners, cancer research doctors, scientists, and relatively faithful husbands and fathers. And I would argue that this comes with the spiritual territory of that severed covenant status: enemies of the gospel, beloved for the sake of the fathers. They cannot shake that historic covenant reality. And to the extent that many still read and hear the Torah read, they above many other cultures, are constantly being exposed to the glory of Christ. Paul says that every time the Old Testament is read, the glory of Christ is shining on them, but their minds have been blinded and there is a veil over their faces so that they cannot and will not see Jesus (2 Cor. 3). Nevertheless, there is more common grace available to those who are exposed to the Old Testament than for other cultures. I think this is a massive reality. A monotheistic culture that has some reverence for the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament, warts, perversions, blindness, and all, is a culture that has more light than others, light that will result in more heinous evil in some cases and more astonishing good in others. This will result in hatred for the evil certainly and hatred and envy for all the good.
So back to my original point: why do Leftists hate Jews? Well, what do Marixists hate? They hate private property, marriage, private education, free markets, children, and the natural hierarchies that accompany these things embedded in the created order by our Creator. Why do Leftists hate Jews? Because to the extent that Jews pattern their lives off of Old Testament norms, they are embracing the goodness of those creational norms that Marxists hate. In other words, Leftists hate God, and the way He made the world, that has been reestablished for all time in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can call the first major iteration of this new world Western Culture or Christendom, if you like, and for the last two thousand years, despite serious differences between us and periodic animosity, Jews have often been included in the outskirts of that project, economically, politically, educationally, and culturally. Despite their rejection of Christ, the Old Testament is still full of the aroma of His ways. And Leftists hate that, and yes, a bunch of Leftists are angry Jews.
Pastoring People through Anti-Whiteness
This was also related to my point about skin color. And we really do need to keep this straight in our minds. The hatred of “whiteness” is not really, fundamentally about the skin color. Yes, I am well aware that many are openly saying they hate whites, and I’m sure a great deal of animosity has come to fixate on that superficial feature – just as it has in the history of our country from whites toward blacks. I’m not denying that, but I am denying that we should simply take what people say at face value. For example, why do men sodomize one another? Ask them, and they will tell you because they are attracted to men, they love men, they are gay, etc. But the Bible says that the real reason they do that to one another is because they have rejected God and refused to give Him thanks (Rom. 1:21). There is a theological and spiritual reality driving it all.
One reasonable question came from Josh Daws who wondered if my point was helpful given the fact that people really are being fired or not hired because they won’t meet DEI quotas. Don’t we need to address this white-hatred head on, and help pastor people through it? And yes, absolutely, and that’s exactly why I wrote what I did. The Bible teaches us to think this way. I’ve already cited Romans 1: Why are people full of malice, envy, murder, covenant breakers, and without natural affections (Rom. 1:29-31)? Because they refuse to glorify God and give Him thanks, and their foolish hearts were darkened – professing themselves to be experts in colonization and white fragility, they became drooling academic fools (Rom. 1:21-22). Pastoring people through this dark and cataclysmic moment in our nation’s history means teaching this point. Why do people fornicate and hate? Because they hate God, His Christ, His people, and the cultures we build. The hatred may fixate on the cultural artifacts, but like Amnon coming to hate his half-sister, the reason for the disgust in her physical features had everything to do with his sin and guilt, not merely because he suddenly came to prefer blondes to brunettes, even if he always did after that.
Elsewhere, Paul teaches pastors to do the same: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will” (2 Tim. 2:24-26). Why do people fight the truth? Because they have willfully suppressed truth in unrighteousness and been ensnared by the devil. Some of those very enemies opposing Paul and Timothy were unbelieving Jews. This is why we must oppose such enemies with firmness and compassion. But it’s important to underline these spiritual and theological realities because if we allow our collisions with unbelief to be reduced to physical features and materialism, we are being seduced into Nietzschean mud wrestling. This is no pietistic retreatism, this is simply full-orbed Christian masculinity. There is a time for peace and a time for war. There is a time for sharp words, and there is a time for soft words. There is a time for appeals to Caesar, and there are times to ignore the warrant out for our arrest and go into hiding. But our struggle is not fundamentally against flesh and blood.
Everything to Do With Christianity
One final, question came from my friend Andrew Isker. Part of his objection I’ve already answered above, and I don’t have any problem agreeing that “white” is often being used synonymously for Christian. I would just hasten to add that as pastors, we must keep pressing our people, discipling our Christian followers to see through the racial façade. Nevertheless, Andrew brought up the current Gaza campus protests and says they have nothing to do with Christianity. I understand that many of the protestors may themselves be Jewish, and yes, many see the modern nation-state of Israel as more European colonialism that has displaced brown people. Yes, I get that, and no doubt that is what many would say. But it is a significant pastoral mistake to then conclude and agree with them (despite their claims to the contrary) that this has nothing to do with Christianity.
Despite all the humanistic hubris that has crept into modern European nation-states, and I think we would agree, it is of obscene Jabba-the-Hutt proportions, the roots of the European nations were laid by the Protestant Reformation. It was the magisterial Reformers, Calvin and Luther, Cranmer and Knox who poured their lives out not only for theological reformation and spiritual renewal but for the political ramifications of those glorious theological truths. Their writings are repeatedly directed to the kings and princes of Europe. Whatever one’s appraisal of the establishment of the modern Israeli state, the ancient Christian instincts of Christendom and the crusades were certainly part of that move. And in the same way that ancient Israel became a whore with all the gods of the nations, modern Israel and America have been busy doing the same. But the overarching order is still recognizably the bombed out remains of a Christian cathedral. Muslims hate Jews and Christians with equal vehemence because to them, we are equally problematic in our rejection of Muhammad’s wet dreams. And we can say this, while recognizing that we have many Palestinian Christian brothers and many Israeli enemies.
Conclusion: Equal Weights and Measures
At the heart of my concern is actually true justice. Lady Justice is blind. Because I’m a Christian Nationalist, I’m committed to equal weights and measures. This is a thoroughly biblical principle, rooted in Old Testament law, reaffirmed emphatically by our Lord. With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And what do I mean?
If you allow skin color to become the center of the problem, you are insisting on injustice. If someone tells you a crowd of people broke into a building, and then asks you, what should justice do? If you need to know what color the mob’s skin was, you’ve joined the mob. If you need to know what the religion was of those who own the building, you’ve joined the mob. Which incidentally, is why it was glorious for Rory Wilson to stand against the mob. Justice for all means blind justice for all. The same measure that you measure others with, will be measured back to you. As Christians, we are required to insist that the same measure be used for white supremacists, Big Eva Christians, kinists, Jews, sodomites, based brothers, BLM, and Gaza protestors (but I repeat myself). This is true for judicial proceedings, but this is also true for our personal interactions.
Our enemies want everything to be reduced to physical characteristics and materialism because that gives them a feeling of power and control. They can manipulate, at least a little, their physical circumstances. It also gives them feelings of inevitability and fatalism. But these are the weapons they try to use to fend off the truth, and the truth of the gospel in particular. They want to explain their sin in terms of inevitability and victimhood. I couldn’t help it, white people are oppressors. I couldn’t help it, black people are lazy. I couldn’t help it, Jews are sharks.
But the gospel cuts through all of this. The gospel offers in the first instance the dignity of guilt. No, you are a human being made in God’s image with the power of moral choice whatever your circumstances, and you have sinned against your Maker and your fellow image bearers. Whatever the physical and material factors (and there can be many), none of them set aside our fundamental moral culpability. And it is that spiritual reality that Christ came to deal with. Christ died for sin. But if the problem is genes and blood and skin pigmentation, there is at least a plausible deniability structure. And what we need for that kind of problem is vaccines, surgeries, lockdowns, and ultimately, some kind of gulags. So our job as Christians is to continually bat away those excuses, and press home the point. No, the reason you hate white people is because you hate God, His Christ, and every cultural artifact that reminds you of Him.
The reason we insist on this is because Jesus is Lord. This is not some kind of reversion to a post-World War II secular consensus. This is one of the great foundation stones of Christendom.
Anna Little says
Thank you, Toby