Black Lives Matter

A Christian Looks at Black Lives Matter: How Does This Well-Known Movement Look in the Light of Christian Truth?

Black Lives Matter has become one of the best known social and political movements in America and has spread around the world. In what ways is it consistent with biblical doctrine? And in what ways is it inconsistent with what the Bible teaches? Let’ take a look.

Hello, everyone. One of the questions I get a lot today is how a Christian should view a new and well-known social movement, Black Lives Matter. Make no mistake, this is a powerful movement and is attractive to many Christians. So we need to understand it. I want to define what BLM is, what its appeal is, how it reflects Christianity, and how it departs from the Christian faith.

BLM is not really a social movement, or a political movement. You will not understand it unless you see that it is a religious movement. It is a religious competitor to the Christian faith and other faith traditions.

Thirty-five years ago when I began teaching at the University of Colorado, I found that my deeply held Christian beliefs were off limits in the classroom. I could not talk about the Christian heritage of the West, I could say very little about the influence of the Christian church, to say nothing of how to have a personal relationship with Christ. 

But my left-wing colleagues felt no such limitations. They felt perfectly free to preach their vision of what society should look like, how a person should live, what the future held, what was right, what was wrong, and what a person should believe. They felt free to preach their religious doctrines in the public school forum, and for 60 years that is exactly what they have done. The burning of our cities this summer is a direct result of their religious instruction.

At that time I realized that I was confronted with a competing religion. The idea wasn’t new. When I was a college student in the sixties one Christian writer called Marxism a Christian cult. Incidentally the founder of BLM, Patrise Cullors, has stated unapologetically that she and her colleagues are trained Marxists. They see BLM as a Marxist movement. I knew that my left-wing colleagues had embraced a religion. One law review defined religion: “A comprehensive belief system that addresses the fundamental questions of human existence such as the meaning of life and death, man’s role in the universe, the nature of good and evil, and gives rise to duties of conscience.” That’s a good definition of religion. That described the Left to a tee and it describes Black Lives Matters.

Can a Christian find anything to agree upon with BLM? It’s fundamental doctrinal belief. The basic doctrine of BLM and of Marxism in general is the equality of all mankind. All human beings have equal worth. All human beings deserve social justice. All true Christians agree with that. Where did BLM get that idea? From Charles Darwin? No, they got it from their Christian heritage, specifically from Genesis 1:27, which says God created man in His image. In Western Christian culture we have always believed that all human beings have infinite worth and value, because our God says they do. And we are the only culture in the history of the world to believe that. Did the Romans of Jesus’ day have a “slaves lives matter movement”? Did the Greeks have a “Barbarian Lives Matter” movement. Of course not. BLM got their fundamental organizing principle from Genesis 1:27.

BLM has a powerful attraction for young men and women, a religious attraction.  Our youth have grown up without God, they have been told in our public school classrooms that they are the accidents of evolution. Countless public intellectuals have told them life has no meaning. They have been taught that there is no such thing as truth. That reality itself is a construct of the human mind. It’s no wonder they are staggering about looking for meaning to their lives. Men and women are created by God to be His worshippers. G.K. Chesterton said that when men stop believing in the true God of the Bible they do not then believe nothing. They believe anything. And that’s what we have now. Young men and women who believe anything. BLM fills a religious void. It gives a sense of meaning and purpose to existence. 

BLM, like the Marxism that spawned it, holds out hope for equality and justice. It promises heaven—a heaven on earth constructed by men. And so young men and women flock to this God-substitute—a religion that makes big promises. We must understand its appeal. It is appealing to what is good in humanity, not what is evil.

So BLM squares with the Bible on its fundamental doctrinal premise. In what ways does it depart from Christianity? That’s the topic of our next video.