Unless somebody has been living under a rock, by now everyone has heard the term critical race theory, or CRT, though I’ve been discussing it with people in my circle for five–or maybe six–years.
The purpose of this piece is not to give a detailed exposition of CRT. It will establish what I believe to be its most foundational and dangerous component. The one that gives birth to and governs all the rest.
Critical race theory is a subset of critical theory, which is itself a subset of postmodernism which was formed out of and in response to previous secular philosophical systems in France in the early to mid 20th century.
Critical race theory is a direct full-frontal assault upon the image and likeness of God in which man was created.
Let me explain. A major component of the image and likeness of God, in which man was created, are his powers of high intellect and analytical reason. Moral agency and the ability of complex communication flow from those and are other such components, but we are going to concentrate here on intellect and analytical reason.
We know that man’s powers of high intellect and analytical reason are major components of the image and likeness of God because we see in His scriptures that God Himself is eternally possessed in His own being and nature of uniquely divine powers of high intellect and analytical reason and man is the only one of His creatures who has the ability to function with similar, but limited versions of these powers. No other of God’s creatures are equipped to invent the wheel, the cotton gin, or the transistor for instance.
In fact, I couldn’t have expressed the above, nor could you be reading this were it not for the very image and likeness of God under present consideration.
Critical race theory openly denies that high intellect and analytical reason are the means by which an individual arrives at truth. The very idea of examining data and weighing demonstrable evidence in order to accurately apprehend the truth or falsity of a given proposition or circumstance is explicitly denounced as “whiteness.” The mere suggestion that a given proposition or circumstance be examined with clear evidence, analyzed by reason as has been decreed by Almighty God, is reviled as “white supremacy.”
Instead, we are told that one’s “lived experience” interpreted through “standpoint epistemology” (a different post) is the standard by which truth is established. In other words, reality is quite literally, whatever they perceive it to be.
Of course, being themselves created in the image and likeness of God, it is not possible for them to actually operate in this monstrously unbiblical fashion. You see this as they attempt to make their cases for truth by appeals to history and data. However, having been intellectually crippled by their own ideology, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they are diametrically violating that ideology in the very act of attempting to prove it.
In short, they seem to allow “proof” only for themselves and any challenge is an ipso facto demonstration of guilt by whoever is doing the challenging. There is no debate. Their truth is already settled by their subjective perception. No amount, or quality of evidence, by definition, can challenge their conclusions.
A more direct or deceptive attack upon the image and likeness of God can scarcely be envisioned.
God, in the midst of judging His covenant people Israel, demands of them in the 41st chapter of the Prophet Isaiah: “Present your case,” the LORD says.“Bring forward your evidence,” The King of Jacob says.”