http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/12/13/its-wrong-to-worship-white-jesus/
I am going to address the article that I posted in the link above, but first I want to give you some background of my own theology.
When you try to describe God, what words do you use? Well, obviously, you have to use words from a human language, in my case English. The problem is, our words are best to describe the physical world. God is spirit. God is not a physical being. So if someone asks you to describe God, how would you do it so that they can understand it? Children think in concrete terms, so we have to give a concrete answer. We, in our finite minds, cannot accurately describe God because we are not capable of describing God, even to an adult. We can describe the physical realm from the vastness of the universe, all the way down to the quantum level, but we can’t describe God, because God is too big for our little minds to fully grasp. We have abstract words we can use, like “love”. So we say, “God is love.” I totally agree. But now describe “love”. We can’t do it, it’s not physical. But, we can experience it. Once we experience love, we can say “God is love” and have an idea of what that actually means. But to do it with words, I don’t think so.
Let me go yet another step into how we describe what we don’t have words for, using a great example from the Bible. If we look at the book of Revelation, John was transported to heaven and was told to write down what he saw. Ok, first problem, John experiences images, visions, and feelings that no actual words can describe. So my first question is, how can he write it down? The answer: "the best that he can." If we look at John’s descriptions of what he saw, he uses words that describe the physical world he was familiar with. His own words at one point are “And I saw what looked like a sea of glass glowing with fire. (Rev 15:2)” I paraphrase that to say, “I saw something beyond words and it was sort of like this…, but not really.” He tried to describe it with the only words he had. Some people describe abstract ideas, like emotions, as colors, or textures, or something that relates to our five senses. When I feel “love”, it is “warm”. The person who says that sort of thing relates being warm as a pleasurable experience. Love induces a “pleasurable” feeling, so describing it as “warm” makes a whole lot of sense. John saw heaven, something no one else has ever seen. It was too wonderful for words, so how can he possibly describe it? In terms of his five senses is the only way he can. Look at the English language. All our words work well with the physical world. We have “abstract” words to describe “ideas”, but when trying to accurately define those words, it’s very difficult to fully do so. Only people with common experiences can fully understand someone trying to describe that same experience. If you have never experienced falling in love, you will never actually understand someone’s description of it. I maintain that it cannot be done.
As children, our first concept of God is that He is like our parents or guardians. So if we had good, loving parents, we see God as a loving God. If our parents were harsh, we see God as a punishing God. As children, we understand God to be like those who have authority over us. My first concept of God was that of my grandmother. She would hold 4 of us at a time (myself and my brothers or cousins) on her lap in her rocking chair and sing to us. Whenever I thought about God, I pictured that scene and felt safe and loved. THAT was my concept of God. For those who started with bad experiences of what God was like, will often find it hard to see God as "good" as they mature. On a side note, we need to bring those who do not believe in Christ as the Son of God to that belief. As Christians, we need to be a reflection of God so that others can see what God is really like. When we condemn others, or refuse to help people, or anything that is not God-like, or something Jesus would not do, we project an image of God that is not true to His character. As “light to the world”, people need to see God in us, so that they might come to God and become part of His kingdom. We should “overcome” their old concepts of God with our love for each other and our care for the lost. Help them get passed their old ideas of God, and reveal the truth to them.
Now on to the article: The first line in this article says, “when someone insists that Jesus was ‘white,’ the theological implication is that God is white.” I have a hard time with this statement. First of all, if someone insists that Jesus is white, they have no frame of reference as far as history goes and are quite ignorant of the facts. Jesus was a Jew in the Middle East. As far as I’m concerned (looking from just a logical point of view), and I’m no expert, I will go with Jesus, in human form, had the complexion of someone from our modern day Middle East. I might not be totally accurate, but I’m guessing it’s pretty close. Second, I don’t see how Jesus being white infers that God is also white. God is not a physical being, so color is not part of his makeup. Just like God is neither male nor female. He is described, in the Bible, as being “our father” (a male description) because in the day it was written, fathers were responsible for caring for all those in their charge. God is responsible for caring for us, so again, going back to our ideas about how we describe God is directly related to our own experience, or in this case, the experiences of the writers. Describing God as female, at the time the books of the Bible were written, would not portray God in the best light, because it was a patriarchal society and women were not thought of very highly. So it makes total sense to describe God as a “father.”
Now after saying all this, I have to say, “if it is important to you that Jesus be a certain color, then you have completely missed the boat when it comes to the Christian faith.” How does the color of Jesus’ skin change any part of your faith? Either he was the son of God, or he wasn’t. The amount of melanin in his skin is irrelevant. If you are black and Jesus being white somehow hurts your faith, then you have the wrong faith. Also, if you are white and Jesus being black causes a problem for you, you better check your faith at the door because it’s not a Christian faith you are professing. Jesus came to Earth for one simple reason, to save humankind from their sins, to pay the price FOR us, because we are incapable of doing it for ourselves. He IS God and died on a cross to be the final sacrifice for the sins of the world, not for the sins of whites or blacks or any group you might name, but the whole world, which includes everybody.
A little more on my personal theology: I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. But I also believe that the writers who did the actual writing wrote within their experience and that’s why the “flavors” of the books of the Bible are so different. I don’t believe the Bible was dictated by God, word for word, to the writers. I believe they were inspired with the message of the Spirit and wrote it down, being true to their own style, personality and experience.
Next line in the article is “doesn’t God, in our cultural stereotype, look a lot like Santa? An old white man with a long white beard?” OK, I got another problem here. God doesn’t look a lot like Santa, Santa looks a lot like our concept of God. This was the line that told me the writer of the article doesn’t get the Christian faith, yet she is a former president of Chicago Theological Seminary! I believe our concept of God’s physical appearance is partially due to different artist’s renderings, like Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. We have a human need to visualize God so badly that we are willing to believe other people’s ideas to be the truth, instead of thinking for ourselves. And even when we think for ourselves, we picture God in our own terms. Remember my personal concept of God? It’s my grandmother, holding me and my brothers or cousins on her lap, singing songs to us, making us feel safe and loved. When the book of Genesis says, “We are created in God’s image”, I don’t believe that means “physically” like God, it means our “spirit” is created in the image of God’s spirit. So as far as God being an old white man with a long white beard, I think that all comes from centuries of artist’s renderings of their idea of what God would look like, all based on the book of Revelation passage of what Jesus looked like to John.
What follows is my interpretation of why we see God as the old man with the white beard. When we read John’s words from the book of Revelation, specifically verse 1:14, the coming Jesus is described as having white hair and a white beard. We don’t normally associate Jesus looking like this, but we immediately turn this vision of John’s into our idea of what God would look like. Jesus WAS God, so we thrust this vision of Jesus onto God. Why would that be? My personal take is this: Jewish men of biblical times wore beards. That’s pretty much a given. And white hair is a sure sign of wisdom as is described in Proverbs. God, being all knowing and very wise, would of course be described this way, and would also be described in “our image” as a man. We are created in God’s image, so why do we describe God, “in OUR image?” That is probably the heart of this whole discussion. I once again go back to my own concept of God. My experience of unconditional love given to me by my grandmother, is my same experience of God. Had I not known that unconditional love in human form, how can I understand the unconditional love of God? I’m not saying it is impossible, because some people have come to God BECAUSE they never experienced unconditional love from anyone in their own lives. But I will contend that if you don’t experience it from another human being, it would be very difficult to experience it in the form of a spirit. How many people do you know that came to God without the aid of someone within the family God? I cannot think of anyone personally. If you walk into a church building, and no one welcomes you, or offers you hospitality, or extends a hand of friendship, are you going to experience God’s love within that building? Probably not. I believe that God is seen “in” us and that is how He is revealed to others. If we don’t “show” God’s love to others, they are not able to know God’s love. Yes, God loves those who have not experienced His love, but human contact is the medium God uses to show His love to others.
“Jesus and Santa are enormously powerful images for Americans.” This statement from the article gives me chills. I totally agree with it, but I also see this as a very dangerous road the author is revealing. Equating Jesus with Santa being on the same level is actually the kind of thinking that is destroying the faith of Christians. I have to ask anyone reading this, “As a Christian, is it OK to teach children that an all knowing man, who watches them as they sleep, who knows everything they do, even exists?” When I was growing up, I remember the period of time immediately following my parent’s announcement to me that Santa Claus was not real. I was the second oldest and was told this, by my mom, in the privacy of my parent’s bedroom, with the door shut, so my younger brothers did not hear. I was also sworn to secrecy not to mention it to my younger brothers. A day or two later, it occurred to me, “What about the Easter Bunny? Or the Tooth Fairy? How about anything my parents ever told me my whole life?” I was devastated! That was the first time it ever occurred to me that my parents had lied to me. Up to that point, I never questioned anything they ever said, so now I began questioning everything that ever came out of my parent’s mouths, past, present and future. Some say I’m overreacting, that it’s not that big of a deal. For a child who never doubted anything his parent’s told him, it was a HUGE deal! The next time we went to church, guess what I was doubting now? I had to ask, “Have I ever seen God? Have I ever witnessed God ever doing anything? How do I know adults have not been telling me a lie that God existed? How could I trust anything or anybody older than me, when my own parents have been lying to me my whole life?”
Perhaps I did overreact, but the author of the article talks about the book, “Santa Claus Should Not Be A White Man Any More,” by Alisha Harris. She says, “Harris writes movingly about the dominant culture white Santa and its effect on her as a kid.” If I overreacted, does it not stand to reason that Alisha Harris ALSO overreacted? The author of the article seems to think Ms. Harris is making a valid point because she is black and Santa was considered white, causing a huge conflict for her. How is the magnitude of conflict different from my experience of finding out that adults lie to children? Who actually has the bigger conflict going on?
The remainder of the article is based on the assumption that white people see God as white and how that concept is used to maintain racial superiority over others. That may be true, but why do we argue that we should change the idea of Santa being white to something else? Perhaps the better solution is for Christians to stop teaching their children that Santa exists at all! Let’s ask a few basic questions. As a Christian, how do you justify telling your children a lie? You know that lying is a sin, correct? And misleading a child, Jesus taught, is a huge deal. So why do you think it’s ok to do that? It is culturally accepted to tell this lie, so does that make it right? If your child does not believe in Santa, will he be picked on at school, making it “necessary” to lie in order to protect him or her?
When my first child was born, I told my wife, I do not want to use Santa Claus as part of our Christmas tradition. Now we had an understanding that if we wanted to change any long standing family traditions, we both had to agree to it, or else the tradition was to continue. You need to understand that both my wife and I had been raised with Santa, so in order to change that and NOT use this tradition required that both my wife and I agree to it, BECAUSE we had to go back to our families and tell them we are making a change and they weren’t going to like it. My wife declined to agree with me. So I prayed about it. I asked God to either make my wife see my point of view, or for me to see hers and accept it. Over the course of a few weeks, and as Christmas approached, we began witnessing something we never saw before. Everywhere we went, we would hear other parents saying to their children, things like, “If you don’t behave, Santa isn’t going to bring you any presents” or, “Santa can see you when you’re bad.” What my wife and I came to understand is that Santa was NOT the jolly old man we assumed he was, he was actually a disciplinary tool used to create fear in the hearts of children to force them to behave. Santa was not a fun story in the imagination of children, he was out there somewhere deciding who deserved his love, not based on grace, but based on merit. Santa loves you IF you deserve it. I can see many parents saying, “I don’t teach my child THAT sort of lesson.” Well, all I ask is that you think about the things you DO teach them. Did you ever tell your child that Santa would not bring them gifts because they were misbehaving? If the answer is “yes”, then I believe I have made my point.
In the end, we did not use Santa as part of our tradition. We told our children that they were not allowed to tell others that Santa wasn’t real. It was OUR secret and we would pretend with the other children who didn’t know the truth. My parents told me that I was robbing my children of their childhoods. I made my announcement to not use Santa on a phone call to my mom. She said that telling my children about Santa was no different than telling them about God, saying I am telling them about some invisible being that I can’t prove existed. My reply was that the difference is that God is real and Santa is not. My mother-in-law actually cried because my children would never have any fun at Christmas because I was taking away the whole point of Christmas. What we DID have, is an Advent wreath, complete with candles that we lit each day and read stories about Jesus from the Bible and taught our children WHY we celebrate Christmas. Every night, starting with the first Sunday in Advent, we would talk about Jesus and God and pray and worship them and thank them for the Christmas season. On Christmas day, we had a birthday celebration for Jesus, complete with a birthday cake. We sang happy birthday and ate cake for breakfast. We opened gifts like the “normal” families did, but we thanked each other for the gifts instead of Santa. The most fun part for my children? When people would ask, “What did Santa bring you for Christmas?” They could laugh inside that these adults, had no clue that Santa wasn’t real. THEY (my children) knew the truth, but adults were just plain silly for believing that story. The best outcome of our new found traditions? My children never thought that when we told them something, that it might be a lie. They knew without a doubt that we told them the truth about everything.
I don’t think arguing about whether Santa and Jesus are white merits any sort of news article to be written. Those of the Christian faith should be so far beyond this way of thinking that it shouldn’t even be a blip on our radar. When you are brand new to the faith, yes, it may be an issue at first, but experiencing God’s love, will wipe out this meaningless nonsense very quickly. Racial prejudice can run deep, but God’s love will conquer that in His children. Those who believe there is a difference in human beings based on skin color do not know the love of God. Being Christian by its very nature will tear down that sort of thinking. No one can love God WITHOUT loving their neighbor. So if someone professes “Jesus is white” because it is “culturally acceptable” to believe that, they are not professing any sort of Christian belief that I am familiar with. So if it offends you when others believe Jesus and Santa are white, perhaps you need to take inventory of your own beliefs. Because when we stand in God’s love, what others believe cannot hurt us.
