I have carried this thought for years, and it will not leave me.
I look at history — real history, not the rewritten kind — and one thing stares back: from the ending of the Dark Ages through the Renaissance, Reformation, exploration, science, law, and the carrying of the gospel to every corner of the earth, one branch of humanity — the European peoples, the white race under Christendom — rose and reordered the entire planet in a way no empire, no civilization, no people ever did before or since.
They ventured where no one dared.
They built systems of order, trade, and governance that still run the world.
They translated the Bible into languages no one had touched.
They curbed horrors once widespread — sati, foot-binding, temple prostitution, widespread human sacrifice.
They brought hospitals, schools, abolition movements, and the message that every soul bears the image of God.
And I ask, quietly but persistently: Why them? Why this one race, in this one window of time?
Many shout “coincidence,” “geography,” “stolen ideas.”
Others whisper “superiority.”
Both miss the deeper truth.
I am not white. I do not write from pride or from pain. I write from awe. Because when I look with open eyes, I see not supremacy, but “stewardship”. A temporal office. A grace poured out for a season. A vessel — broken, flawed, often sinful — yet chosen by God to bless all the families of the earth, just as He promised Abraham (Genesis 12:3; Acts 3:25).
And in seeing this clearly, something beautiful happens: the complex falls away. The resentment quiets. The false guilt lifts. Every people, every color, every temperament finds their true worth — not in dominating history, but in being infinitely loved by the God who writes history.
Let us speak plain.
No honest eye can deny the pattern.
China invented gunpowder, the compass, paper, printing.
India gave mathematics, ancient councils, vast wealth.
Africa built mighty empires of gold and wisdom.
Islam preserved Greek knowledge and ruled half the known world.
The Americas raised cities and calendars of astonishing precision.
Yet none — none — broke out to reframe the entire globe the way post-Reformation Europe did. The speed, the scope, the combination of restless exploration, organizational drive, scientific curiosity, and missionary fire was unmatched.
The modern world — its laws, its universities, its hospitals, its engines of progress, its very idea of human rights rooted in divine image — bears the deep mark of Christendom’s European children.
Even the global confession that Jesus is Lord reached nearly every tongue because missionaries, mostly from this one stream, carried the Word to the ends of the earth on a scale never seen before.
This is not opinion. This is fact.
Some take this fact and twist it into hatred: “We are supreme forever.”
That is poison, condemned by the same Bible those missionaries carried. God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34–35; Romans 2:11). All nations stand equally guilty before Him and equally redeemable by grace.
Others take this fact and bury it: “It was just luck, theft, oppression.”
That robs God of His sovereignty and leaves us with a random world and no peace.
There is a third way: to see it as “providential stewardship”.
God raises up instruments for seasons.
He used Assyria as His rod, though they did not know Him (Isaiah 10).
He used Persia to free His people (Isaiah 45).
He used Rome’s roads and peace for the early gospel.
He used Israel to bear the oracles and the Messiah.
And in this present age — this dispensation between the cross and the return — He sovereignly used one particular branch of Adam’s family to prepare the world and carry His final message globally.
Not because their blood was purer.
Not because others were lesser.
But because in His mysterious freedom, He gifted them — through culture, timing, temperament, and perhaps even subtle dispositions shaped by grace — with what was needed for this temporal office.
Scripture teaches two truths the modern world hates to hold together.
First: In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female — we are all one, all equally image-bearers, all equally heirs of eternal glory (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11).
Second: In this present, sin-infested age, God ordains order through distinction and roles — husbands and wives, parents and children, rulers and citizens, diverse gifts and offices in the body (Ephesians 5; Romans 13; 1 Corinthians 12).
These are not contradictions. They are different spheres.
Spiritual worth and eternal destiny → absolute equality.
Temporal function and providential order → stewardships, seasons, graces.
The European role in framing this modern world was a temporal stewardship — like Israel’s unique election, but not covenantally permanent. Like the apostles’ authority, but not eternal.
It does not make them greater before God.
It does not make anyone else lesser.
In fact, it reveals the opposite: the master serves not the worthless, but the deeply beloved. The fact that God used certain vessels to serve and bless the nations shows how precious those nations are to Him.
So when the weight of “white supremacy” presses on your heart — whether as resentment, shame, or confusion — stop wrestling.
See instead the hand of a sovereign God who chooses weak, broken vessels to display His manifold wisdom (Ephesians 3:10).
See that every people has its season, its grace, its distinctive glory to bring into the eternal city (Revelation 21:24–26).
Today the fire of the gospel burns brightest in Africa, Asia, Latin America — the same Spirit, the same zeal, new vessels rising.
One day every tribe and tongue will stand before the throne, not as servants and served, but as co-heirs, bringing the redeemed honor of their nations into the New Jerusalem.
Until then, rest.
You are not behind.
You are not above.
You are loved beyond measuring — exactly as you are, exactly where you are in His story.
And that is enough.
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