Past Reparations/A Dangerous Precedent.

The Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville has utterly succumbed to “wokeness.” Feeling the guilt of that august institution’s slave owning founders, the seminary has recently announced that it will pay five millions dollars to black students over the next fifteen years. Let us be clear. There is nothing wrong about setting up scholarship programs to the disadvantaged. The seminary can do whatever it wants to do with its money. Rather, it is the seminary’s motive for setting up this program that ought to raise the eyebrows of every self-respecting evangelical. Without explicitly saying it, the seminary is granting these scholarships to African Americans not because of any innate love for their black brethren but because the seminary feels it must make reparations to blacks for the school’s role in sustaining the institution of slavery in America. One can see a secular institution which has no category of forgiveness for doing such a thing. But a Christian seminary? Let us never forget that the central message of the Bible is not for people to make reparations for their past sins but to celebrate the total forgiveness of God of all sins past, present and future. When a sinner is forgiven he need do no more than rejoice in that blessed forgiveness. Since Southern Baptist Seminary celebrates the gospel, why does it not apply the principles of that gospel to this situation? Why is it feeling guilty for the sins of its forefathers and paying back the offspring of the offended parties? Has the seminary missed the freedom in the gospel? True, the seminary did some dastardly things 150 years ago. But haven’t we all? Haven’t the black men and women whom the seminary is trying to help also done some horrible things against a holy God? Maybe they have lied or cheated or committed sexual sins. Does God seek reparations from them? No. God does not ask for reparations for anyone who has wronged Him. He only asks for repentance. God freely forgives men of all their sins upon their profession of faith in Christ. Period. In God’s economy there are no reparations, only forgiveness. Shouldn’t the seminary emulate God’s ways since she is a school that claims to teach about Him? Wouldn’t the gospel be better served if the seminary repented of her sins and then asked God for the grace to treat all her students the same, whether they be black or white, male or female, rich or poor? And wouldn’t that cause us all - including those black students - to rejoice in the seminary’s change of direction? Let’s be blunt. There is no gospel in paying reparations. It is another of many legalist systems that tries to earn the favor of God by doing something. It is a system that will damn a soul and, in the long run, an institution. Let’s take this idea of reparations a bit farther. What if everything an individual or a group did wrong required reparations? The world would become a schismatic mess. What if the U.S. government were to pay reparations to woman for not letting them vote? What if the Catholic Church was required to pay reparations to the children of those who suffered under the inquisition? What if you, the reader, were to pay reparations for all the times you said untrue words about your neighbor? What if a man were to pay reparations to his company for all the days he did not work hard? Your head spins thinking about it. Were this the universal principle of life, the world would simply implode under the weight of trying to fix every past wrong. We thank God that Christianity does not demand that we go back and fix the past by throwing money at every inequity. Christianity implores us to repent and “to go and sin no more.” When a man or a woman, a black or a white, a rich man or a poor man, repents of his or her sins, God covers all that person’s transgressions as a thick cloud and never looks at them again (Isaiah 44:22). It would be well that the Southern Baptist Seminary stop feeling guilty about all her past sins because they have long been forgiven by God. What the seminary ought to do is begin at once to treat all students the same. This would demonstrate a deep repentance. By repenting, the school would adorn the gospel message that it purports to teach instead of promoting a legalistic message that says when one messes up one must pay. True biblical justice is served not when someone makes up for past sins, but when one repents of those sins and then feels the freedom of the gospel. God paid all the reparations ever needed on a hill outside Jerusalem. To try to make up for sins already forgiven is to undermine the very cross itself.