Lloyd W. Duncan
I had the opportunity the other day, could say I took it, to express, in brief, my opinion about certain prejudices. A young man I knew when he was a child, now in Bible College, posed a question on his Facebook page. “Would a human clone have a soul?” Fair question, I suppose. Some of the responses were what any reader might expect, while others, from a biblical point of view, seemed totally lacking in spiritual understanding. It wasn’t until I read those responses that I felt compelled to put in my two cents worth. And since, I feel, my guidance comes from the Lord on things that I’ve studied and prayed about, and barring error on my part, I would suggest its worth a lot more.
One response I want to discuss in particular simply stated that a soul would be automatic if there were life in the clone. I agree. But, then they dropped the bomb. “How would a man-made soul react with all the God made souls?” Duh…WHAT?? Now, I would ask that you not try the childish challenges and ask me, “Oh! So you’ve studied and prayed about human clones?!?” Of, course not. But, I have very much done so toward prejudices, relating to Gods’ creations and people He has given life to. That would be all of them. What I hope to show is that if there were a “deeper, core understanding” of the one, you would know how to respond to the other.
You need to know that this is not a subject I take lightly. This post will be extremely brief compared to the space this topic deserves and, indeed, commands. I am only going to give you what was revealed to me by the Lord during a particular time deep prayer and Bible study, therefore I can’t offer book references other than the couple of scriptures you’ll see. After you have an understanding that all this racial prejudice doesn’t come from God, you’ll realize it does come from man. For an in-depth study of all the lies that have been perpetrated on people of color, ANY color, I would highly recommend the well prepared book by Dr. Frederick K.C. Price: Race, Religion, and Racism. There are many others, but I reference this one as a means of bringing some attention to his work.
Let’s start with my personal experience with racism. I was raised in a southern extended family that tried their best to raise me and my generational equals to be racially prejudiced. Somewhere along the way, thank the Lord, the teachings began to break down at their foundation. During my life the family stance started being hidden from the kids. This was due to, among other things, a desire to avoid confrontations that came up because the kids did not comprehend, and therefore could not exercise, discretion. I recall an incident or two where one of us blurted out racial phrases in public, without restraint and simply because it was the language of the home(s). There was no embarrassment, nor malice, on our part, for neither was there any connection between these phrases and any black person. They were just words. We had little else to “contend” with in our area. So, those kinds of remarks began to disappear from the adults but, it wasn’t a change of heart or new-found enlightenment, it was to protect us from conflict in the now “ruined” school system.
I started first grade in 1968. The national demand for desegregation had been law for a while but, it was rejected, fought and just ignored in our part of the world. They, the southern establishment, did the same thing when the slaves were freed. They simply did not tell the slaves, or “owners”, that by law of the Emancipation Proclamation, they were free, and/or had no slaves. As a result, we have a holiday in the south that, though it should be celebratory for all, is mostly observed by the black population; Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, the recognized freedom date a full two and a half years after the fact. So, when I started school, there was an all-black school in town. All other schools were all white or, at least, had no blacks. Each year on the first day of school, and occasionally a few days during the year, a black kid would be seen walking to the office of my school to enroll, because they had moved into “this side” of town. Those attempts never succeeded. It took a lot of giving in, acceptance of defeat, to get the schools desegregated. I was in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades during this time and certainly not privy to the details but, most certainly affected by the conversations that were not discreet; “If they close the black school I’m takin my kids outta school!”, “They can’t learn regular school work, why are we mixing with them?”
