It goes without saying that Jesus was not white or black. He was a Semite, born in the Middle East. Yet how strange for some to affirm that he was white. The significance of Jesus is not the colour of His skin but the blood that He shed for people of all ethnicities.
The Critical Race Theory idea of racism currently advanced by secular Western academics and filtered through the mainstream media, movies and books has affected race relations in largely negative ways. So Christians of African descent around the world desire to remake Jesus in their own ethnic image; just as most world cultures that adopted Christianity have. Europeans have painted Jesus as a blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian – some as a harmless, cultural expression; others out of a false sense of white supremacy.
Voddie Baucham, a pastor and apologist, affirms that the term “race” is a Darwinian concept based on hierarchy. But the Bible describes people as “ethnos” or nations. The scriptures are clear that God created all ethnicities from one man, Adam (Acts 17:26) and that they are all equal in God’s eyes. It is important for Africans not to identify with the suffering of their own ethnicity to the extent of reinterpreting Christianity in light of perceived oppression by white people, or out of a sense of African inferiority.
Thank God that when anyone can be united to Christ: Hispanic, European, African, Middle Eastern, Aboriginal etc. We are all God’s new creation in Christ, the old is gone and the new has come. As the apostle Paul reminds us.
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” -Galatians 3:28
We ought to rejoice in the diversity of our different ethnicities as a celebration of God’s creativity. Let us also be careful not to hate white people, they are, after all, our brothers and sisters for whom Christ suffered and died.
“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”-Revelation 7:9
References | Jude3Project
