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God created inequality, and cultural differences that matter
A few days ago reader Lindsay W. sent two quotes from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, with this comment: “I am not sure that you are aware of these passages. They sure blow a hole in the opinion of the day. There is not a single church, Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic that mentions these texts. It undermines everything these people say.” Here are the quotes:
And all men are from the ground, and Adam was created of earth. In much knowledge the Lord hath divided them, and made their ways diverse. Some of them hath he blessed and exalted, and some of them hath he sanctified, and set near himself: but some of them hath he cursed and brought low, and turned out of their places. As the clay is in the potter’s hand, to fashion it at his pleasure: so man is in the hand of him that made him, to render to them as liketh him best. (Ecclesiasticus, 33.10-13.)These passages are certainly are out of step with liberal notions, which deny, on one hand, spiritual distinctions and inequality, or what could be called the “vertical” axis of human reality, and, on the other hand, cultural/racial distinctions, or the “horizontal” axis of human reality. The first passage, 36:10-13, refers to the vertical axis, saying says that God created some men higher, closer to himself, more like himself, and others “lower” and more unlike himself. The second passage, 13.15, relating to “horizontal” differences and similarities, has a double meaning. First it refers to each beast loving his like, meaning loving his own species. But then it switches to “every man loveth his neighbor.” The neighbor, with all due respect to the late pope, does not mean all humans on earth, but those who are particularly connected to ourselves, either through inherited or cultural likeness, or through special acts of kindness such as those performed by the Good Samaritan. The same duality of meaning is contained in the second sentence of 13.15. The “kind” in “All flesh consorteth according to kind” refers to the various animal species, but the “like” in “a man will cleave to his like” obviously does not mean all members of the human species as distinct from other species, but some men, those men who are like oneself, while other men are not like oneself. In effect, the passage establishes an analogy between the species of animals, each of which naturally groups together in distinction from other species, and subspecies or races or cultures of men, each of which naturally forms a group distinct from other human races or cultures. The passage thus bases the natural human attraction that we have to those who are racially or culturally or spiritually similar to ourselves on the natural order and distinction of species. As the members of a species naturally adhere together, so the members of a particular subspecies or ethnicity or culture naturally adhere together. This is God’s natural order, as also seen in the story of tower of Babel, discussed in the second part of my article, ”How liberal Christianity promotes open borders and one-worldism.” Ecclesiasticus, by the way, is one of the best known of the Apocryphal, or “hidden,” books of the Bible. They are called such because, though they were never part of the Hebrew Bible, they were included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and thereafter in the Latin Vulgate, which was the Authorized Bible for Catholics for a thousand years, as well as in the early Protestant Bibles up through the King James Version, though they are no longer included in modern editions of the King James.
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