CONSIDER THIS: What If Racism Isn’t Our Biggest Problem, It’s Actually Otherism?
Few topics get more attention these days than racism. Advocates of Critical Race Theory (CRT) insist that racism is embedded in our political, social and economic structures, and they also claim racism is inherently a function of the color of an individual’s skin.
Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash
But what if the problem actually goes deeper than the mere color of your skin? What if it has to do with a trait found in every human being who ever lived?
And that among the multiple ways this trait manifests itself is how we view virtually everybody else as “Other”?
Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace points to Original Sin as the reason we human beings have an overwhelming tendency to identify with people like us and against those who are different.
Wallace points to seven academic studies that suggest racism is only one aspect of a deeper problem. For example, did you know we tend to favor other people who have emotional reactions similar to our own? Or that we tend to prefer others who have similar DNA?
“The scientific studies continue to demonstrate our attraction toward those who are like us. When we select for those who are similar, we automatically select against those who are different. We favor the similar, disfavor those who are not, and ‘otherism’ emerges in one form or another,” Wallace writes.
“As Christians, this predisposition toward ‘otherism’ shouldn’t surprise us. In fact, we should expect humans to act (and react) in this way. According to our Christian worldview, humans were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) as ‘good’ beings (Genesis 1:31), but were marred by the sin of Adam and Eve.
“We are capable of great beauty and virtue, but are also fallen, rebellious, prideful and self-serving (Matthew 27:3-5). As a result, we are often ruled by our jealousies, selfish desires, and personal preferences (Romans 7:1-25), and find ourselves separating, fighting and arguing with one another (James 4:1).”
Wallace has much more to say on Otherism and its impact on how we see others and the world in which we live. Go here for the rest of the story.
It’s collectivism. Somehow they’ve managed to translate the basis for leftism, communism, socialism, etc. into a skin color. By focusing on skin color, they can declare their superiority to anyone who thinks differently, just like leftist rulers get to live in mansions because they hate money and their supporters never complain.
Anyone who doesn’t agree with them is the ‘other’ and must be destroyed.