I had a conversation some days ago with an American, "of color" as they say (though I consider myself to be a person "of color" just as much as anyone, the fact that someone recently referred to me as "translucent" notwithstanding!). This man "of color" was fulminating against the "White Jesus" in whose name, purportedly, the Africans were enslaved. Here's what I said to him.
(Since I haven't asked his permission to reprint his name, let's call our American friend...well, Friend. That's what I'll replace his name with where I used it in my reply. As for the reply itself, I have every right of course to repost it; it's my words.)
(Since I haven't asked his permission to reprint his name, let's call our American friend...well, Friend. That's what I'll replace his name with where I used it in my reply. As for the reply itself, I have every right of course to repost it; it's my words.)
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How does your White Jesus Complex theory about why Europeans enslaved Africans correlate to non-Europeans practicing slavery--for that matter, to Africans who practiced slavery and abetted European slavery? Or "white" Europeans enslaving "white" Europeans for thousands of years, Christianity or no Christianity? You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the birth of slavery was concomitant with the advent of Christianity. Which is of course simply wrong. Whatever world that happened in, it wasn't ours.
How does your White Jesus Complex theory about why Europeans enslaved Africans correlate to non-Europeans practicing slavery--for that matter, to Africans who practiced slavery and abetted European slavery? Or "white" Europeans enslaving "white" Europeans for thousands of years, Christianity or no Christianity? You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the birth of slavery was concomitant with the advent of Christianity. Which is of course simply wrong. Whatever world that happened in, it wasn't ours.
I feel no compulsion in the least to apologize for a "white" Jesus.
In the first place, who would I apologize *to*, and in the second place why would *I* apologize?
It makes you angry, Friend, that Jesus was portrayed (from way, way back) as a virtual Scandinavian by European peoples who also practiced slavery and exploitation of other peoples.
Okay, be angry. That's your prerogative. How you'll translate that into constructive, productive, redemptive and transformative influence for the sake of Christ's kingdom is an intriguing proposition to consider.
Jesus has been portrayed as Asian and Black by peoples guilty of other sins, too. There is nothing new under the sun.
(Anyway, my faith isn't in a painting. Come to think of it, I don't even own a "Christian" painting. Have never been into "images" much.)
Nor is the real Jesus guilty for however many ways sinners, unbelievers, "nominal Christians," have exploited and distorted His Name and Gospel. The Gospel is still the answer even to atrocities committed ostensibly in the name of the Gospel.
We can choose to wallow in the imagined, aggregate resentments and bitternesses of all the wronged and oppressed and exploited and subjugated peoples of all times and places in history (though you did leave a lot of them out for some reason) re-living as it were their lives, pains and griefs all over for them (what, there isn't enough in your own life to contend with?), but...you know...somehow it seems to me that that goes right to the HEART of what the Cross and Resurrection are about. Somehow I think HE has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows a whole lot better, and more decisively, Friend, than you can. Or than I can.
At some point we stop manufacturing all the lives of past generations within our own virtual experience and we live the one life God has given us to live, and then the judgement. You'll never expiate it, Friend. You will never ever be angry enough or compassionate enough or socially "just" enough to purge and expiate it. Nor are the dead generations asking you to. Their business is with the Creator and Lover of their souls. You can never extract enough repentance from anyone, even if fantastically you could find the right person you're somehow entitled to demand it from on their behalf, to heal what happened.
And the compulsive, driven quest after just restitution for wrongs done is THE recipe for bitterness. Bitterness is a consuming frustration at the wrongdoer's incapacity (of course!) to undo what was done. Often even repentance isn't enough, when the wronged wants infinitely more than that.
Only forgiveness, a release from debts, is enough. It's the only thing that liberates the wronged from bitterness.
The Gospel has always been the REAL "liberation theology," when understood truly.
