What is the root of racism? Dr. Carl Ellis explains how “creaturism” began at the fall and manifests itself in things like racism.
Creaturism goes all the way back to the garden. In one way or the other, you can say that Adam and Eve—when they decided to eat of the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, or the determination of good and evil—what they were doing in essence, they were not getting the information about being good and evil. They knew what good and evil were; they knew what good and evil were by the word of God.
You have got to get at the root, and the root is creaturism.The real temptation is, how do you determine what good and evil is? How do you distinguish? Do you distinguish these two by the word of God? Do you distinguish them by your own opinion? When they did that, they said, “We will determine what good and evil are by our opinion.” So, in essence, the creature then becomes the standard of judgment and even the standard of judgment of the Creator. So the creature then becomes a standard of judgment for everything; that is creaturism.
Now having taken that, then there are many manifestations of creaturism. There is me-ism: when I judge everybody else by the standard of myself. There is a culturalism: when I judge other cultures by the center of my culture. There is racism: when I judge other races by the standards of my race. There is sexism: I judge the other gender by the standard of my gender.
. . . Racism . . . is one of the manifestations of creaturism.Whenever you judge anything or anybody by the standards of yourself, the other person is inferior by definition because nobody can be me as well as I can be me. No race can be my race as well as my race can be. That is where racism comes. So it is one of the manifestations of creaturism. You go to some other places, it is tribalism. Go to some other places like India, it is the caste system. There is classism like you had in Europe. It goes on and on and on.
All these are manifestations of the same basic patterns. Racism is only one of the manifestations. It is kind of akin to the dead leaves on a sick tree: you can shake the dead leaves off all you want to but you are not going to cure the tree. You have got to get at the root, and the root is creaturism.
