The Gospel of reparations?

This is an interesting discussion that I've been having with friends from my old non-denominational church lately. Regarding the issue of reparations and affirmative action. I hold both of these things to be disgustingly and egregiously immoral. One has been trying to ask me why I view this. On the way home from Church just the other night, I started to think of it through a Gospel-oriented lens. What exactly would reparations consist of and what does affirmative action consist of? How does this relate to the Gospel and what would an affirmative action Gospel even look like?

I am subscribed to the neo-Evangelical Pete Enns's podcast. I cannot remember when I did that. But I have been seeing some very whacky podcast titles recently related to seeing the Bible through (insert race, gender, pronouns, here) eyes. When I first saw this, I thought, huh? And that was a correct response. Because the Bible does not have a multitude of cultural perspectives. The Bible only advocates for one cultural perspective! The Biblical cultural ethos is Christianity. There is only one perspective on Biblical hermeneutics and that is the Triune God. There isn't a white Christianity or a black Christianity or an Hispanic Christianity or an Arab Christianity. There is only one perspective of Christianity. That is not your culture's perspective regarding Christianity because when you are baptized, the Old Adam is put to death and the New Adam is raised to life. As Robert Cardinal Sarah put it so wonderfully, the liturgy is not the place where I promote my culture, the liturgy is the place where my culture is baptized. Just like the Old Adam is put to death, the old ways are put to death. You become a Christian and your past culture is moot. There is no Jew nor Greek. Pete Enns is fostering heresy by this series which is why I was rightfully appalled.

So what does a Gospel of reparations look like in comparison to the Triune Gospel? Reparations are typically payment for a past wrong that has been made by one community against the other. Usually, this is a financial stipend paid with in terms of money. In America, this would mean white people pay with their taxes to the black community for damages caused by slavery and Jim Crow laws and other redlining laws. But how does that relate to the Gospel? What does the Gospel look like? It is always important when considering moral doctrine to have a firm founding on what the Gospel has to say about Christianity.

The Gospel begins with creation. Man is created in God's image. God has told them that they may eat of every tree in the Garden of Eden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When you eat of it, you shall surely die. They sinned by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their sin brings death into the world. The Gospel then continues and culminates in the incarnation of God himself. He comes into the world not to condemn sinners but to condemn sin. To separate sin from the hearts of sinners. To give his life unto death in order to restore a lost order. God becomes man so that man might become god as St. Athanasius put it. We grow into communion with the divine nature as we rid ourselves of sin and put on Christ in baptism. The incarnation, death, and resurrection of the incarnate deity, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, is a matter of Christ reconciling the world back to himself. He doesn't come in and force financial compensations for the wrongs they have done as a community toward their relationship with God. He paves the way for communion and reconciliation with God.

In the East, we call the sacrament of confession reconciliation. This is our second baptism. When we commit a wrong, we offend God, but God has mercy on us and awaits for us to be reconciled with him. He eagerly awaits our return to him. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is what the story is called in the West. In the East, the parable is called the Parable of the Loving Father. The East is emphatic about reconciliation being the heart of the Gospel. Sin is not just a moral right or wrong checklist. Sin is a matter of relationship with God. When we fall short of the Love of God we sin. When we say no to grace, we sin. That is the only free will we have too. The ability to say yes to grace and no to grace.

A Gospel of reparations is a Gospel that would look more like this. God was so offended by the sin of man that he came into the world to condemn man. He came into the world to make man pay for what they had done to him. He held an eternal grudge against the man for the very idea of being born into a world that was now introduced to death. He sought to punish man and terrorize man until they paid up what he felt was needed to compense for the significant offense that man had committed toward him. He came after man with a wrath-filled vengeance. I'd been troubled by a lot of thoughts lately and I told my pastor how I had felt as if God was punishing me through these lockdowns and riots and I was wondering what I did wrong. He rebuked me sharply and ordered me to stop thinking like a Calvinist. Calvinism. That's what a Gospel of reparations really looks like.

Affirmative action has similar alignments with that. It is a sought out compensation at the expense of others. It does not look for the best in people but seeks to target people for their success based on skin color in order to "right" the wrong. The problem with both reparations and affirmative actions is they are wrongs and two wrongs won't and never make a right. They will lead us into carrying out further racial tensions. What we need is not a Gospel of reparations to allow our racial tensions to heal. What we need is the Gospel of the Triune God. That requires us coming to full submission to God's mercy. That requires our reconciliation with God. It's not our payment to God or our brother our wrongs that we can never satisfy by paying. It is God's reconciling us to himself. That is what is missing in the current racial discussions. How do we reconcile? Reconciling is healing. Reparations leads to vengefulness and then to racism. Affirmative action is a doctrine that looks at one's race as more important than their qualifications. This fosters hatred toward our brother and keeps racist attitudes inside of us. Reconciling is what the Gospel of the Triune God is. Reparations is the Gospel of a never-ending cycle of sin. Affirmative action is more the same. The only way to end racism is by reconciling ourselves to our brother in full submission to the loving mercy of Christ. He is Truth and he is Love.