Well, Rachel Dolezal is in the news again.
You might recall her story from a couple of years ago. Dolezal was the civil rights activist and the former head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA. But, there was one little problem.
She wasn’t black.
Although she presented herself as African American–a bit of a prerequisite for heading up a chapter of the NAACP–it turns out that she was not black after all. Indeed she was a blonde, freckle-faced white girl born to two white parents. She had merely changed her outward appearance.
Not surprisingly, objective facts regarding biology, genetics, and ethnicity were not a deterrent to Dolezal’s insistence that she was black. “I identify as black,” she told Matt Lauer. In other words, I get to decide what is true. Reality is what I make it.
Of course, the idea that you can create your own reality is nothing new. Dolezal is simply acting out the worldview she has learned from the Western culture within which she was raised.
No doubt she has heard, from her earliest days, that there is no objective truth. She has probably been told (repeatedly) that there are no absolute realities “out there” beyond ourselves. Over and over she has gotten the message that truth is simply a construct of the self.
In other words, the voices around her, for nearly 40 years, have given her one clear message: you determine your own reality.
So, who can blame her for just living consistently with what she was taught?
Well, it turns out, just about everyone. The very culture that taught her that truth is relative has now turned on her. What it gave to her with one hand, it has taken away with the other.
According to the story mentioned above, Dolezal has struggled to find a job since her true race was revealed (having been rejected over 100 times). And to add insult to injury, she has now been publicly dis-invited from a book festival where she was going to present her new autobiography. All because of protests over her identifying as black.
So, what’s the lesson here?
At the most basic level, Dolezal’s story exposes the absurdity of postmodernity, and its accompanying commitment to relativism. It shows–perhaps more clearly than any other recent example–that postmodernity simply doesn’t work. It shows that we can’t create our own realities after all. We can’t make something true just because we want it to be.
Any person with common sense simply knows that saying you are black doesn’t make you black.
But, the Dolezal story has an even more profound lesson than this. It not only shows that postmodernity is false, it shows that it is deeply and inherently hypocritical.
Postmoderns claim one thing, and yet do another. They say there is no absolute truth, but, when push comes to shove, they concede there is absolute truth after all. They pretend like reality is a construct of the self, but it turns out they don’t really live like that.
That’s why Bruce Jenner can be called a courageous hero, and, at the same time, Rachel Dolezal can be lambasted as a heretic. Apparently you can determine your own gender but you cannot (for whatever reason) determine your own race.
Postmoderns are comfortable saying people get to determine their own truth–but only when it’s convenient.
All of this simply reveals what the cultural elites have always known (but won’t admit), namely that they are inevitably selective about the way they apply their relativism.
When it comes to who a person sleeps with, they are relativists. When it comes to evidence in a criminal trial, they are not. When it comes to sexual identity, they are relativists. When it comes to global warming, they are not. When it comes to gender identity, they are relativists. But, unfortunately for Dolezal, when it comes to race identity, they are not.
Or at least not yet.
And there is a reason for such (obvious) inconsistency. No person could really live as if reality were entirely determined by ourselves. Such individuals will always, and inevitably, keep bumping into the real world.
And the real world has an irritating habit of getting in the way.
This hypocrisy–which is inherent to postmodernity–tells us something very important. It tells us that we humans make lousy gods. That’s what postmodernity is, after all. It is the human attempt to be god. It is the human attempt to control our own reality and determine our own truth.
But, in the end, we fail miserably. We just can’t pull it off. Our hypocrisy shows that we are only fake gods. Bad fakes.
And, as fake gods, our own “creations” are fake too. Bruce Jenner has tried to make himself a woman, but he is just a fake woman. Rachel Dolezal has tried to make herself black. But she is a fake black.
Postmodernity, then, has led to a culture of fakeness. That is the only kind of culture a fake god can create. We stride around proclaiming ourselves to be the lord of our private universes. We put on a good show. But, in the end, we are frauds.
We are like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. We project a facade of power and control–as if we were the creator. But, in the end, we are just a weak and scared creature.
We have to recognize, therefore, that the postmodern project, at its core, did not start fifty years ago. It started at the initial fall of Adam and Eve when they took of the fruit because they wanted to “be like God” (Gen 3:5).
The only solution is for humans to abandon the quest to be God; to abandon the quest to make our own reality. The only things that aren’t fake are things that the true God has made. And God made some male and some female. And God made some black and some white. “And God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:9).
John says
You’ve explain the term cognitive dissonance superbly. Thanks!
Hire says
Absolutely, you are right. It’s a relativism of convenience; yeah, postmodernism of ‘pick and choose’ lifestyle. Jesus is the absolute Truth. Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life…” John 14: 6. Life without God is a shattered dream, full of vanities. If the world had accepted transgender, it’s too late for the same world to reject transrace. It’s horrifically an act of injustice to accept one and reject the other. If transrace is not acceptable neither should transgender under no pretext! In real fact, society is already relatively inter-racial through marriages, reproduction, culture, language-learning, education, and religion. Let’s live and let others too! Tolerance!
Dean says
As a man thinketh, so he isnt, or woman for that matter.
Matthew says
I think there’s more to the story and this was a little oversimplified. Society didn’t accept transrace in this instance because it was using that as a weapon for an agenda. Similarly if man were to use his gender as a weapon over a woman. Those who identify as a race, gender or sexual preference identify as such because they don’t conform to what society deems as “normal”. I’m not aware of any verse that directly talks about transrace or transgender issues specifically, however when it comes to verses that discuss sexual preference, there is much to be debated.
For example Romans 1:26-27
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Rom.1.26-Rom.1.27&version=CSB
26 For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women[a] exchanged natural sexual relations[b] for unnatural ones. 27 The men[c] in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons[d] the appropriate penalty of their error.
Paul is very precise that the sexual activity in this passage is motivated by lust. His description is similar to an ancient idea that people exchange opposite sex for same sex relations because they are driven by incredible desire, not because they have a different sexual orientation. Paul labels same sex behavior “unnatural,” he uses the same word to criticize men with long hair in 1 Corinthians 11:14, which nearly all Christians read as a synonym for “unconventional.” Christians should continue to affirm with Paul that we shouldn’t engage in sexual behavior out of self seeking lust. But that’s very different than same sex marriages that are based on self giving love.
Michael Kruger says
Thanks, Matthew. Appreciate you leaving a comment. However, I think you are confused on a number of issues:
1. You mention that trans-race is different because there is an “agenda.” But, not in the case of many folks, including Dolezal who was actually working for the rights of blacks! Moreover, are you suggesting that transgender folks NEVER have an agenda?
2. You’re not aware of a verse that addresses trangenderism? How about, “God made them male and female” (Gen 1:27), and then created the first marriage between a male and female. Seems pretty obviously speaking to the transgender issue. And Jesus upholds this same sexual norm in Matt 19:4.
3. Your interpretation of Paul is simply parroting back the standard revisionist thinking on this passage. On the other side stands generations of scholars who say otherwise, not to mention thousands of years of church interpretation. See Robert Gagnon’s treatment of this verse and others you mention. The issue in Romans 1 is not just lust but men and woman swapping God-given sexual norms for unnatural and perverted sexual norms.
4. Name me a passage in the Bible were sexual intercourse outside of heterosexual marriage is approved. There are none. On the contrary, such behavior is widely condemned. So, the claim that all one needs is a relationship based on “love” and not “lust” simply doesn’t work. And even if it did, where are all the homosexual marriage advocates like yourself who condemn the widespread lust in the homosexual community? There is only silence on that point despite the insistence that you are taking the moral high ground.
Pamela says
Spot on! Thank you for speaking truth!
Anthony Pizzuti says
Thank you for explaining biblical truth in a clear manner. You are a much needed voice in our day and time.
Jeremiah says
I found Rachel’s background of a Christian upbringing and foster care of black children to be quite fascinating in regards to the outcome of her life events. It seems that her inability to practice the Biblical morals she had been raised to believe, the reaffirming lie of liberal higher education, and the struggle of disillusionment in her marriage pushed her to let go of previous restraints and embrace the delusion of a constructed identity. I think that makes it easy to pin her as a symbol of cultural decline/irrational worldview, but I can’t help but feel sympathetic to her in many ways. I think there are a whole lot of Millennials in that same predicament. We were raised in nominal Christian circumstances, brainwashed in higher education, and, now, struggle to maintain mental stability in the resulting wasteland of a reality that doesn’t match the fantasy world we were encouraged to construct. We are then seen as immature/irresponsible by older generations as we struggle to overcome the victim mentality we were bred to exhibit. What a mess! How hard it is for this generation to accept responsibility and be honest in the midst of identity crisis.
Michael Kruger says
Thanks, Jeremiah. Actually, I am very sympathetic towards her. In many ways, she is just living out what she was taught by our postmodern world only to have that very world turn on her. It’s a sad picture of what damage an unbelieving worldview can do to someone.
JERRY JENNINGS says
Jeremiah,
Thanks!
And Michael K., thank you as well. Spot on! “It is a sad picture of what an unbelieving worldview can do to someone.”
Pick 10 people at random, people who can read and write and ask them to write down what they believe. ow many do you think could do it?
Also, regarding “postmodernity”. At the core of that issue is the unwillingness to acknowledge that there IS a “created order” and a total unwillingness to honor it.
Jerry J.
Jeremiah says
Yes, I pray God might show her mercy and open her heart to the truth. Without Him, we have no hope.
Gene Donaldson says
I just love when someone tells me that they do not believe in Absolute Truth, to which I then ask, “Do you believe that absolutely?”
B Jones says
I am not certain how I feel about this comparison. The social sciences and even hard sciences don’t really recognize race any more. Biologically, there’s just the human race. This fact, rather than postmodernism, is why there is a real debate about what “race”/ethnicity means. The concept of “race” (as in a black race, a Hispanic race, etc) proved to not be scientific. I wholeheartedly agree with the overall point you are making. I appreciate you raising it. I am just raising the point that from a scholarly perspective (sciences), the comparison you are making between transgenderism and race is not apples to apples.
Michael Kruger says
I hear what you are saying, but think you might be confused. Essentially you are arguing that race is more “fluid” and sex/gender is more absolute. Fair enough. But, given that reality, how is it that our culture accepts people choosing their own gender (which is supposedly absolute), but not choosing their own race (which is supposedly more fluid)? If anything, wouldn’t we expect the opposite? That simply shows that science has nothing to do with it. It’s just a matter of what is socially acceptable. If things were driven by science, then it would be obvious to everyone that gender is not self-determined.
Charles Glendinning says
This is so much discussion over ethics and morality that doesn’t (or at least hasn’t) allowed for the scientific community to weigh in. What do you do when the the doctor tells the mother and father that their child has been born with two sex organs? …and he asks them “Which do you want?” Or of the ongoing understanding of what makes our brains male and female? At a point in the development of the embryo, if the fetus is a male, there is a wash of testosterone that floods the brain forever altering its chemistry. We live in an imperfect (cursed even) creation. What happens if the wash isn’t complete, but he/she gets a penis/vagina anyway? Please. The character of the person is so, so, SO much more important to Jesus than the legalistic wrangling that people get so deeply involved in concerning “truth.” Jesus IS the truth and whether the person is bleached white and calls themselves black of they have burly testicles and like to wear chiffon… if they LOVE Him… and seek and save the lost FOR Him… and lose theirselves IN Him… THAT is what touches His heart. All the rest is such a waste of precious time that could be used SO much more constructively.