Posted May 12, 2026
Late Monday afternoon, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to use a new congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The high court set aside lower court rulings that had blocked the state from using the GOP-drawn map, which would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. The ruling followed the Court’s April 29 decision in a similar case from Louisiana.
Apart from the Court’s ruling in Dobbs that returned abortion legislation to the states, I cannot think of decisions in recent years that have been interpreted in more disparate ways.
For example, the Wall Street Journal editorial board hailed the April 29 ruling as “a victory for voting rights.” In their view, the decision “took a large step toward ending the partisan abuse of race to carve up Congressional districts in a way that violates the Constitution.”
The New York Times editorial board, by contrast, claimed that “the justices acted as partisans” in their ruling. In their view, “in the name of disentangling race from politics, the Supreme Court has given white voters more power at the expense of racial minorities.”
My purpose today is not to explore the legal intricacies of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark federal statute that outlawed racial discrimination in voting, or its application to congressional maps over the decades. Rather, it is to take a step back and consider our response to this news on a more visceral level.
I’ll begin by restating a truth I have proclaimed many times over my decades of public ministry: racism is a sin. In my extensive article, “What does the Bible say about racism?” I analyze racism in American history and today, then discuss slavery in the Bible, racism and the Bible, three common questions on the subject, and practical ways we can advance God’s unconditional love through our personal and public lives.
To the degree that congressional maps promote racial discrimination, they violate the biblical declaration that “God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:11). However, the matter is not as simple as it might appear.
To some, congressional maps drawn to heighten representation by racial minorities are a necessary response to systemic racism in our country. To others, when such maps are drawn to advance racial agendas, they are themselves racist.
Voting maps should not advantage or disadvantage any of America’s citizens. Political, legal, and cultural leaders have been debating this issue for half a century, however, with no resolution in sight. You and I could join the debate today however we wish.
What we cannot do is see it through eyes other than our own.
I am writing this article as a white male who has faced no racial discrimination in my sixty-seven years of life.
I have no idea what it is like to be followed around in a pharmacy by employees making sure I’m not stealing from their shelves. I have no idea what it is like for my teenage daughter to knock on a neighbor’s door selling tickets to her school play, only to have the homeowner call the police on her. I have no idea what it is like to enter a jewelry store with my wife, only for employees to usher us to the less expensive merchandise in the belief that it is all we can afford.
But one of my dearest friends knows just what all of that is like, because it happened to him for the simple reason that his skin color is black.
I don’t know how he feels about congressional maps, because we’ve never discussed the subject. But whatever his views, I know that they come from a world of experiences different from mine in ways that should not be but are.
The closest I have come to approximating his experience has been my travels to China, Russia, and Cuba, where I was viewed suspiciously as an American by people who assumed they knew me because they knew my nationality. I do not understand what it is like to feel insecure in a dark parking lot because of my gender, or at risk in a retirement home because of my age, or in severe danger in a foreign land because of my faith.
As a result, it is vital that I write, speak, and otherwise respond to cultural issues in ways that offer biblical truth with personal humility. What God says is what matters, not what I think. And what I think comes from a finite, fallen mind couched in experiences that limit my perspective and understanding.
Given the existential differences that exist in a culture as disparate as ours, can we find hope beyond humility and unity beyond tolerance?
Consider the Jerusalem church, consisting of people from fifteen different language groups scattered across the Roman Empire (Acts 2:9–11). When “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” as a consequence, “all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:42, 44).
This miracle wasn’t just a matter of spiritual location, moving closer to the Lord and thus to each other. It was also a matter of spiritual transformation, as Jesus changed their hearts so that they came to love each other as he loved them (cf. John 13:34–35).
Since love is a fruit of the Spirit available to all who surrender and humble ourselves before him (Ephesians 5:18; Galatians 5:22), you and I can love everyone Jesus loves. And he loves everyone.
The Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond wrote:
God, the Eternal God, is love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the universe when all the other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be useless and unhonored.
What “coinage” will you “covet” today?
“If God should have no more mercy on us than we have charity to one another, what would become of us?” —Thomas Fuller (1608–61)
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