Boy did I feel stupid when wandering around in a utopian floating city I am suddenly confronted with absurd violence, for this is the plot line of Infinite.  I wasn’t aware this was a first person shooter and part of a franchise of such games. I’m not opposed to violence as such, or accurate portrayals of good vs. evil, those often make for good stories, but this is ridiculous. You start out being launched to the utopian floating city of Columbia, as I mentioned before.  Only to wander a bit and to be welcomed to the festivities, some sort of fair.  Their game consists of a raffle, the winner of which get’s to cast the first stone as it were at the local interracial couple.  But before you can throw they discover that you are the false shepherd. And we know the only thing a bunch of backwards religious hicks hate more than black people, is a false prophet trying to wreck their utopia. So, of course, you must start bashing the heads of cult police to save yourself. But this is nothing compared to bashing of US history as racist. This theme is present through the whole game, which again is no surprise, it is forced on us by the media an academia constantly these days.

Of course banning marriage based on skin color is silly, and mocking people for doing so is easy.  But the the historic reality in the country is much more complex.  There were laws banning interracial marriage but they might just as well have banned intercultural marriage or interreligious marriage, because that was the issue.  I know I’m treading on thin ice, but that’s because we have all been programed to react every time race is brought up.  Everything is viewed in terms of race with no real historical context or biblical understanding being allowed.

At stake is not the happiness of two star struck lovers who happen to have different colored skin, but the health of a whole nation.  At least that’s what I draw from the biblical texts.  So there are quite a few verses about marriage. The first few are rules for priests, then in Numbers 36:3-6 an issue of case law comes up.   God commanded his people to keep the land he had given them in their respective tribes.  But if a female inherited land and married someone from another tribe that land would be transferred.  This was decided to be correct, so from now on God said women with inheritance were only allowed to marry within their on clan.  God is clanist, he just hates diversity. Or if we assume that God is right and we are wrong, the property and livelihood of God’s people was more important than romantic attachments of teenagers.

Also in Deuteronomy 7 he lays out the rules for when Israel enters the land he had given them verse 3 says “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” So we learn that intermarriage will turn the people of Israel away from the one true God to the gods of these nations.  We are quick to bristle and reject Old Testament rules as if they were written by Muhammed but we should stop and think.  This is part of what we believe to be sacred scripture, we should pause and let this teach us.  God was a racist by the modern definition, but which is right the definition or God’s word?  It is clear the issue was religion and not race.

In addition the same idea is repeated by Paul’s command in II Corinthians 6:14-18 “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.”   We are a people in the same sense as Israel was, we may not be tribal or racially linked but we are set apart. “For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God”   Then he appeals to the Old Testament, with a combination of verses:

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty”

I think it is fair to conclude that Paul has more respect for the Old Testament than we do.  His point is almost the same; don’t marry unbelievers, it is the most intimate thing a person can do, why would you want to corrupt the church by being one flesh with the world?

So, lets look at the historical context of early America, which is the intended target of this mockery by Infinite.  Interracial laws were first passed in the 1660s, yes that’s right before we were even our own country, that means that British colonies passed laws banning interracial marriage.  Perhaps this is a British problem and we should just label them racist and walk away.  There were primarily three groups of people in the colonies at the time, white protestant europeans, native indian pagans and black pagan slaves.  The first laws banning intermarriage were specifically against marrying black slaves.  (There were also many white slaves, indentured servants who sold themselves into slavery so they could get to America. Slavery wasn’t about race either.) Later laws would ban marriage to Indians as well. In light of the scripture above this makes perfect sense.  It also sheds a lot of light on the issue of voting and the 3/5ths compromise.  These were issues of culture or we might say religion and not of race.   You can’t allow pagan influence into your bed and expect it to remain Christian.

It doesn’t mean they are not people whom you must love with the love of Christ, it just means you don’t marry them.  And it’s not an issue that goes away instantly.  Even pagans who are converted to Christianity don’t assimilate instantly.  And groups that stick together often never do, as was the case with the Amish, Indians and Africans. As George Washington said “The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”  And as he knew you can’t have two groups of people bound by two different ideas living together at peace, this leads to strife and even war.  If we judge these groups by the content of their character they are often found wanting, as was the case with the blacks in this country, which lead to todays’ racism. As Thomas Sowell, also black, points out in his excellent book Black Rednecks and White Liberals.  Animosity towards blacks, which was worse after the Civil War, was often the result of their deviant behavior, which happened en masse to the point that their race got a bad name.  Essentially they remained pagan.

God’s theory of intermarriage is bourn out by a simple study of geography.  In North America we generally did not intermarry, either the pagan slaves or the pagan Indians.  Our faith has remained fairly robust, economically we have prospered, blessing the entire world.  South of the Mexican border in Latin America, the story is different.  They were colonized by Catholic Christians in much the same way as the Protestants here.  Yet they intermarried, there were no intermarriage laws passed and today it is difficult to tell a Spaniard from a native.  Latin America is known the world over for it’s hollow Catholic religion and it’s disastrous governments, the banana republics.  Prosperity today is directly related to how close these people live to the Protestants.  You don’t have to take my word for it.  Even wikipedia trumpets the virtue of intermarriage in Latin America as unprecedented.  They think it’s a virtue, I guess like most people today they feel good about their morality without looking at the reality or God’s word.   A recent study found similar results, if social research floats your boat. 

This is the dangerous work of being in the world but not of the world.  Jesus said:

“Ye are the salt of the earth:but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven

These are the two ditches we can fall into. We can marry the world and lose our saltiness or we can hide under a bushel and not do the world any good.  I would say our forefathers did a very good job of preserving the balance.  Believing the lies of Bioshock Infinite will only ensure that our future is saltless.