Paying for someone else’s sin

Identity politics lost in this election, and several woke movements will likely grind to a halt. Start with federal advocacy for technically complex and morally desolate ideas based on “equity,” such as reparations.

Four years ago, President Joe Biden’s administration used an executive order to inject ideologically defined equity into federal agencies as soon as he took office. Vice President Kamala Harris, in particular, supported commissions to study reparations payments to black Americans, claiming the United States has not “corrected [the] course” from slavery and Jim Crow laws. This aligns Harris with critical race theorists who oppose federal civil rights laws and support wealth redistribution.

Conversely, President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration reinserted colorblind policies and civil rights protections back into policy and the national conversation on race. If his second administration is like the first, Americans should anticipate more of the same.

There is an urgent need for such a reversal. At the state level, race-based payments are in the headlines. Reuters and local news stations in cities such as Chicago have released stories in recent weeks on the viability of reparations. California’s reparations committee issued a report to the state legislature last year.

The policy is fraught with moral and practical questions that advocates have not answered with any consistency. How much of a minority must someone be to be eligible for payments? How many steps removed from racist policies can a descendant be before they are no longer eligible? How much would each descendant receive?

Furthermore, Washington has already used trillions of dollars in taxpayer spending directed at communities that consist of high concentrations of low-income and racial minority individuals and families. Head Start (a federal preschool program enacted under President Lyndon Johnson), Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (federal taxpayer spending for children from low-income areas), the Higher Education Act, and other Great Society programs from the 1960s are all taxpayer-funded attempts to help the disadvantaged and racial and ethnic minorities. Yet these programs have failed for 60 years to help these Americans achieve the good life.

Emotionally, reparations-based policies may feel good, but politically, the policies have a poor track record.

Scripturally, the payments and racial favoritism are misaligned with Biblical justice. In his book criticizing radical racial theories, Christianity and Wokeness, Owen Strachan points to Deuteronomy: “I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

As Strachan explains, this passage does not mean that future generations are guilty of the sins of their fathers and responsible for payments-in-kind, either financially or otherwise. It means, rather, that future generations will feel the effects of their predecessors’ sins. The next generation should avoid the mistakes of the past so they are not guilty of the same sin.

Strachan’s exegesis has direct application to woke activists’ call for reparations. The act of assuming others’ guilt for trespasses is Christ’s role because only He can pay for someone else’s trespasses. How far back would we have to go in assuming the sins of those with whom we have any relation? At what point could we stop?

With ill-defined boundaries, reparations are an act of revenge, not an act of justice.

Seemingly anticipating identity politics, which directs our vision at skin color and allegiances based on categories of the flesh, the Apostle Paul writes, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5, emphasis added). Instead of making identities and historical accounts of sin the center of our worldview, we must keep Christ and redemption at the core.

Individually and collectively, believers should live lives of generosity and service, especially to those in need. Public policy should create opportunities for the future through educational choices and informing young people about the benefits of finishing at least high school, entering the workforce or college, and getting married before having children. But it is a dangerous act of arrogance—individually, collectively, and politically—to assume the ability to pay for someone else’s sins.