The Color of Jesus Doesn't Matter
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There is an obsession today with the race of Jesus Christ. People are critical of old portraits with rosy cheeks and tell tales of forbidden statues, hidden from the world, with wide noses and dark skin. Leftists will call Jesus “brown-skinned,” normally followed by an inaccurate rant promoting socialism, to trigger white conservative Christians. Many cite scripture in Revelation describing Jesus’s feet like brass/bronze, even though it’s in reference to the metal and not the color. John was painting a picture of a precious and powerful God, yet we’ve given ourselves permission to minimize our savior into something as mundane as pigmentation. God is eternal. Should it matter to us what he looked like for 33 years?
CNN’s Don Lemon said on The View, kids must be taught Jesus was “black or brown,” and this could help end racism. But why would it? Jesus was a Jew. That didn’t stop the horrors of the Holocaust or the spread of anti-Semitism around the world. It didn’t stop the Pharisees from challenging Jesus and wanting him to be crucified. Being a follower of Christ doesn’t stop persecution. As a matter of fact, Jesus guarantees it. Why would a shade of color grant you something Jesus never promised?
Do men like Lemon care about Jesus? In this same interview, he criticized Christianity. He claims to respect people’s right to believe in their God, but if you “believe in something that hurts another person” or restricts their freedom, Lemon believes that is wrong. He said, “God is not about hindering people or even judging people.” This is absolutely untrue.
If Jesus returned today and walked the streets of Manhattan, darker than Mr. Lemon, I imagine many might share a shallow sense of excitement. But if Jesus starts to preach about denying yourself, giving up sexual immorality and sinning no more, and how the obsession of your riches and possessions will make it harder to enter into heaven, I imagine the excitement would die off. I don’t think men like Mr. Lemon would appreciate when Jesus teaches what marriage is supposed to be, and neither would divorced Christians who hardened their hearts. By the time he offends abortion providers by saying God hates hands that shed innocent blood and rebukes Americans for our covetousness, he’d be called a bigoted coon and thoroughly canceled.
We only care about the color of Jesus’s skin because we don’t understand the content of his character. Jesus came with a very specific mission. He preached the kingdom of heaven and came to be the lamb that was slain, so we could receive salvation. He operated in signs, wonders, and miracles to raise up disciples to carry on the work, telling them they’d do even greater works.
Yes, we are all fearfully and wonderfully made. I believe every part of my design is meaningful, including my skin. We live and operate in the world, among people who worship the flesh. It plays a part in my life, though relatively smaller than it did for my parents, grandparents, and so on. But Christians are meant to crucify their flesh. We are meant to look beyond the natural.
When my father was a young man, he used to share a sentiment that black activists have today. It’s important to see color and if you deny it, you’re ignoring their identity and racial struggles (this was even pushed recently to children on Cartoon Network). But over time, God dealt with him about putting away his carnal thoughts and to see no color. We’re all brothers and sisters in Christ. That doesn’t mean we ignore injustice, but the heart of injustice is sin, and it crosses all borders, tribes, and ethnic groups. Racism is evil. Why should believers create a divide while we fight against it? We shouldn’t separate ourselves by whites and nonwhites like the Princeton theological seminary recently did. A house divided against itself will not stand.
God is no respecter of persons. You can’t take your “privilege” to the throne, and your struggles don’t earn you extra brownie points. The Hebrews who couldn’t get beyond their slave mentality were left in the wilderness. God didn’t allow Jonah to go about his business when he refused to preach to Nineveh; He sabotaged his servant until Jonah preached deliverance to a people he despised.
God is about God’s business. We wear our racial divides around our necks like medals, but our obsession with flesh is the obstacle we’re meant to overcome. After all, what does it matter how we were born when Jesus wants us to be born again? We are to be new creatures, children of the living God.
Was the Passion of Christ a perfect representation of what Christ looked like? Maybe. Perhaps not. Does he look more like Jim Caviezel than Idris Elba? Probably. Should it change your perception of Jesus or your Christian walk either way? Absolutely not. It may make for an interesting theological discussion from time to time, but in the span of eternity, a blip of meline is meaningless.
