In the wake of several mass shootings, gun violence, and other forms of hatred and destruction against those who bear the image of God, many of us are looking for a reason why this is happening. Why is the world filled with such hate? How can someone be so depraved that he can carry out such a heinous act of violence against fellow human beings? To most, this just seems foreign.

While the root of all evil and hatred is sin, having hope in Christ is certainly the only answer to a sin problem. Multiculturalism has become a popular buzzword not only in society but also in the Church. In fact, in many ways, it has become part of the gospel—or even the gospel itself. Pastors are preaching “multiculturalism” as if it is a great new revelation received directly from the mouth of God Himself.

Multiculturalism, however, typically results in the opposite effect of what it claims it attempts to achieve–unity. It tends to result in disunity. A nation filled with people with different beliefs, different standards of morality, different languages, and different goals, tends to cause clusters of competing people groups to form bringing disharmony and weakening the foundational structure.

And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. –Mark 3:25

This isn’t just true of the culture and the world, though. The idea of “multiculturalism” has also entered the Church–and Evangelical leaders are embracing it at an alarming rate.

Here’s Matt Chandler, for example, proclaiming multiculturalism as this great outworking of the gospel.

And David Platt once said, “The body of Christ is a multicultural citizenry of an otherworldly kingdom.”

To be clear, we should not equate multiculturalism with multi-ethnicism. If either of these two pastors replaced the word “multicultural” with “multi-ethnic,” then both of their statements would have been correct. And while oftentimes culture is linked with ethnicity, we must remember that correlation does not always equal causation. Multi-ethnicism is a biblical concept. A church that exists in a multiethnic area—one that is functioning as a true church and preaching the true gospel—can and likely will result in a multiethnic congregation.

While multiethnicity is not the goal of the gospel, it is a natural byproduct of the gospel that is being preached to all tribes, tongues, and nations. However, while these people with different backgrounds can come together, the fact that it works isn’t that the church has become multicultural. It is that the people of this church have abandoned their culture to embrace one culture far superior–the culture of Christianity.

On the other hand, churches that embrace multiculturalism tend to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on racial issues, have embraced secular ideologies such as Critical Race Theory, and seek artificial diversity through “racial reconciliation” efforts grounded in these secular ideologies.

So then how does this tie back into violence, mass shootings, and other forms of hatred outside the walls of the Church? The Church, as a whole, has always acted as a mitigating voice of reason, almost like a “conscience,” if you will, in a nation. The Church speaks to the conscience of the nation, even if the nation is lost. Often, the common grace that is bestowed on a nation comes through the conduit of the Church. And when the Church abandons biblical principles and begins to embrace the ideologies of the world, there no longer exists a national conscience.

So can we really blame mass shootings and other forms of violence and hatred on multiculturalism? No matter how we want to slice it, sugarcoat it, or wrap it up in various levels of nuance or ambiguity when people groups of varying cultures are constantly pitted against each other, disunity is bound to flourish.

There exists one culture in the Church, the culture of Christ. But, in the United States, the national culture was largely influenced by Christian culture resulting in a more evenly-yoked set of morals, values, and traditions. When you force people with differing values and morals together while the Church preaches that this is “good,” it really isn’t a stretch to conclude that when examined under a biblical lens, enmity between competing cultures will persist.

We have created an atmosphere in our nation that is ripe for this kind of enmity. We have removed prayer from schools and replaced it with secular humanism, another religion in and of itself. We have replaced the Christian culture with a multi-religious culture that embraces and makes from for all forms of God-hating false religions, and we teach that this is good. We have replaced a Christian work ethic with various forms of socialism. And we’ve allowed all kinds of sin to flourish in our public and private institutions—all in the name of multiculturalism.

So, what’s the answer? Of course, the gospel is the answer, but the Bible tells us that most will remain hostile to the gospel. There may not be a perfect answer, and I don’t claim to have one. We can never stop all forms of sin or violence, but one thing we can do is support biblical principles and allow them to guide our politics and national policy—and, of course, pray for Christ’s return.

To hear our most recent podcast on this subject, click this link: https://thedissenter.substack.com/p/podcast-school-shootings-and-other