Racism dies the same way all other hatred dies, when, in the shadow of the cross, people see their great sin, and pride (racial or otherwise) is crushed beneath the two overwhelming truths of being stunningly unworthy and stunningly loved. But that’s a process, and one that will not happen by force.
And the weakness of All Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.—G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Chesterton’s words in 1905 remind us of how little people have changed. Everyone is still trying to solve the world’s problems without admitting that we, as people, are the problem with the world. But this problem is not limited to world-building. We, as modern people, have a tendency to carry over the problem that Chesterton associated with building utopias and make the same mistakes in dealing with the problems in our own lives. Let me tell you what I mean.
Dallas Willard wrote a book on the human soul. That’s a strange subject, but the fact that it is such strange thing is one of the main problems with our society. Willard talks about how in our society, from a very young age, children become spiritually malformed. He writes, “[m]arching forward in life, these little people become big people and move on with their malfunctioning souls into workplace, profession, citizenship, and leadership. From them proceeds the next generation of wounded souls.” (Willard, Renovation of the Heart) This spiritual malformation blossoms into social problems that affect all spheres of life. But our response to these social ills is not an emphasis on spiritual formation, rather, it is what Willard labels, “sickeningly shallow solutions.”
