“Diversity Training”

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Where did race come from?

Sincerely,
Multicultural

Dear Multicultural,

All of mankind descended from Adam and Eve (Gen 5:1-2, Gen 3:20).  The word ‘race’ refers to a group of people that have a common ethnic background.  In the purest sense, we are all of the same race – the race of Adam.  However, today we have people that share various cultural and physical characteristics because their ancestors came from certain parts of the globe.  This ethnic diversity happened because God commanded the descendants of Adam to “go forth and multiply” (Gen 9:7).  After the flood of Noah’s day, God expected mankind to spread out and inhabit the whole earth (Gen 9:1).  Instead of doing that, Noah’s descendants decided to stay together and inhabit only a small portion of the globe – directly in contradiction of God’s command (Gen 11:1-4).  As punishment for this behavior, God scrambled their languages and made it so that they were unable to communicate with each other (Gen 11:7).  The people then scattered across the globe and created the various races we see today (Gen 11:8-9).

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