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After their Kind

#badtheology

Racism in American didn't die away when slavery was abolished or when civil rights bills were passed. It permeates the lives and philosophies even of those who are not aware of its influence. One of the keystones of perpetuating racism in the church has been the prohibition against interracial dating a marriage. I can think of two bible colleges that were guilty of this: one ended its prohibition in 2000 while the other which I will talk about down below still holds to this position to my knowledge.


Personally, I never heard someone teach the "curse of Ham" theory that I wrote about in my last article which you can find here. I have heard the heresy that I will be talking about today publicly taught on a course on marriage from Genesis by Pastor Mike Holloway of Baptist College of America in Indiana. This theory is the "after their kind" theory. According to those who teach this doctrine, White people and Black people should not date, get married, or have kids together because they would be violating the rule in Genesis where each "species" was commanded to reproduce after their kind.


And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Problems with this theory


There are two main problems with this theory based on the text. The first error proponents make is that they look at a command given to the animals and apply it to mankind. If you look through verses 26-31 of the same chapter where the story of man's creation is given, you will not find the phrase after his kind. Neither is this phrase found in chapter two when Eve is created. The reason behind this is that all mankind are on kind. Acts 17:26 follows up with this thought:


And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation

It is impossible for mankind to violate this law with another human being because we are all of the same kind. We are all created of one blood and find our ancestry in a common ancestry. The idea that divides human's into different species actually has more to do with evolutionary teaching than it does the bible.


The second problem with this theory is that they have a wrong definition of kind. From a creation science perspective, "kinds" are officially classified as Baramins. According to Dr. Bodie Hodge and Dr. Georgia Purdom a Baramin:


... is commonly believed to be at the level of family and possibly order for some plants/animals (according to the common classification scheme of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). On rare occasions, a kind may be equivalent to the genus or species levels.

The key to defining a Baramin is understanding which species of an animal or plant can breed. When the scriptures say that these animals would bring forth according to their kind, it wasn't saying that if they brought forth according to a different kind they would be violating their purpose before God. Rather, bringing forth according to their kind is an inviolable law. No matter how much they want to, a cat and a dog will not produce offspring. This is because they are different kinds.


This law is important to our discussion about interracial marriage because of the fact that white, black, red, yellow, brown or blue: all humans can reproduce. I have seen so much hypocrisy when it comes to this philosophy such as a white person being allowed to date an Indian of white skin color but not one of black skin color. It is time that we repent of false teachings like these.


Hodge, Bodie, and Dr. Georgia Purdom. “What Are ‘Kinds’ in Genesis?” Answers in Genesis, 16 Apr. 2013, answersingenesis.org/creation-science/baraminology/what-are-kinds-in-genesis/.


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