Black lives matter: The slogan vs. the organization

Black lives matter, but on several grounds Christians should not support the organization known as Black Lives Matter (BLM). Here’s one of them: BLM declares on its website, “We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

That’s a red light to anyone aware of how the Bible right from its beginning embraces “heteronormative” thinking. Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 say, “God created man in his own image … male and female he created them. … Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” That’s the norm for humans.

Why not say the early chapters of Genesis are mythical, more story than history? One reason among others: Jesus disagrees with that. He told the Pharisees, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” Can’t get more heteronormative than that. If we put aside the Biblical norm we’re putting aside both Genesis and Jesus.

Does that make a difference to those who don’t believe the Bible? It should, because those who ignore its first two chapters also lose a big reason for confidently insisting that black lives matter as much as white lives, or any lives. The Bible emphasizes monogenesis, the belief that all humans descend from a single pair of ancestors—and that promotes equality.

The alternative, polygenesis, says humans are descended from multiple first parents: Harvard anthropologist Carleton Coon contended that each race evolved separately from an earlier species and that blacks are 200,000 years behind whites and Asians. His theory has no scientific backing, but it obviously opens the door to racism. We’ll have more about this, and BLM’s class warfare emphasis as well, in a future issue of the magazine.