The Perils of an Unfinished Job

God said, "You must drive them out completely” (Exodus 34:11-12, Numbers 33:51-55, Deuteronomy 9:3). But they didn't listen - and neither have we. 

It's always struck me as a harsh criticism. Yet one thing for which God repeatedly (see the Book of Joshua and Book of Judges) takes Israel to task is their failure to completely drive out the original Canaanite inhabitants of the promised land. As if it wasn't enough to invade, conquer, and "mostly" drive them out. As if this wasn't already one of the most disturbing concepts in the Bible. 

The Canaanites were probably similar in appearance to the Hebrews. Their culture would not have felt utterly foreign and they spoke related (Semitic) languages. A number of them even ended up in Jesus' family tree. To be a Canaanite was not so much a matter of race or ethnicity, but of ideology and allegiance. 

This was a culture in which child sacrifice was routine, in which sex slavery was a part of religious worship, in which there was no concept of justice - only the strong dominating the weak. It was a society so thoroughly rotten, so far gone, that it could not be saved. Individuals could flee it, and anyone could join the people of God no matter where they were from - unlike Trump's America, ancient Israel was a nation of open borders in which anyone could join or leave - but Canaan was irredeemable. Thus, the command to finish off that gangrenous society.

But the people of God failed. They tired of fighting, and the enemy seemed contained. They wanted peace and prosperity. So they didn't finish the job. And over time, the vile oppression of Canaanite society seeped into Israel and corrupted their entire nation - from the government, to the temple, to the home. 

We also, in this country, have failed to finish the job. As Theon Hill said in a Christianity Today essay, "The Centuries-Old Habits of the Heart," 

At key moments, Christians have advocated for the abolition of slavery, death of Jim Crow, and the end of mass incarceration, but the commitment to equality has consistently languished over time. Our lack of sustained commitment to biblical justice keeps the soil of racism and white supremacy fertile for the James Fields Jrs and Dylann Roofs of American culture to grow into domestic terrorists. ... We paint a picture of gradual progress on racial fronts since the Emancipation Proclamation but fail to acknowledge that the Compromise of 1877 injected new life in white supremacy, giving racists an unparalleled opportunity to execute violence against people of color for decades.

White Christians repeatedly walked off the job before it was done. And just like a patient who fails to finish their course of prescribed antibiotics, each time the pathogen of racism mutated into a new form and returned virulently. That's why we are in the situation that we are in today: generation after generation, we failed to complete the task before us.

As a Christian who happens to be a white American, I own this. None of my ancestors (or my wife's) ever even lived in a slave state, but we inherited this unfinished job.

After years of dealing with a recurring sin in my life, I went to see a Christian counselor. I told him, "I thought this would just get better with time. But instead of going away, it's getting worse! That's why I'm here."

His response? "Of course it got worse. That's what sin does. We're never stagnant, we're always moving in some direction."

We thought racism would just get better on its own. But instead, in reaction to a rapidly diversifying country, it is getting worse. I used to take refuge in demographic statistics, reassuring myself that in 20 years this nation will look more like my children and less like me. Now I realize that was naive. Because the response of racist people to growing diversity is not gradual acceptance, but rage.

I genuinely hope that this generation will finish the job and completely drive out white supremacy. May we dispense with the nostalgia and the national mythologizing and the self-justification, give no quarter to evil, and kill the dragon of racism - once and for all.