Jesus Wasn’t White:
Why Christians Can’t End Racism
By Haley Remenar
Almost every artistic depiction of Jesus is white. He’s got long brown hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. Every actor who plays Jesus in movies is white.
But Jesus wasn’t white, He was a Middle Eastern, Sephardic Jew. He probably had olive skin, brown eyes, and black hair. He probably didn’t look like a model either.
Today many Christians are up in arms over racism, while others brush it off as a topic that has already been resolved. Racism has come up again and again in the past year with Ferguson, the Charleston shooting, and several other violent cases that Americans couldn’t ignore. The topic was even discussed at ACU with an Optimist editorial about the war on police and several Letters to the Editor.
But, personally, I found the topic of race to be a little bit…redundant.
I grew up thinking race wasn’t a big issue. I’m Hispanic and white, but that didn’t really matter in Albuquerque. Just like the city, half of my non-denominational mega-church was Hispanic. But when I came to Texas my eyes were opened to a whole new world of discrimination. During my freshman year, my Hispanic friends hurt my feelings, calling me a “white girl” even though I don’t see myself as white. I was shocked to see how bad the problem of racism could be even in the Church.
As Christians, we are supposed to model our lives after Jesus.
In John 4, Jesus breaks racial and gender boundaries by speaking to the Samaritan woman. We know that Christians have freedom from stereotypes in Christ. Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (NKJV) We also know that God loves all no matter what race they are. Acts 10:34–35 says, “In truth I percieve that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by him.” (NKJV)
We even teach our kids a song to stop racism. Red and yellow, black and white. They are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.
So maybe if everyone just started living out these few verses, racism would be over for good, right?
But here’s the deal, Christians can’t end racism.
We can’t force other people to love others any more than we can force them not to get drunk or have premarital sex. We believe racism is wrong because we believe in a God who created and loves all people. But to someone who is not a Christian, who believes their life evolved from animals, who are we to say racism is wrong?
The world will never be free from racism because the world will never be free from sin.
I know I sound a little pessimistic here. But many Christians spend more time arguing about racism than doing the things we are supposed to do: love your neighbor, spread the Gospel, and give to the poor. Many Christians think that we can end racism by changing laws and draining it out of our culture.
Following the Confederate Flag debate that swept America this summer, Mike Huckabee commented on Fox News about this and received criticism for it. He said,
“We don’t need more conversations –What we need is conversions because the reconciliation that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God.”
Some people thought Huckabee was just brushing off the issue of racism. However, I think Huckabee hit the nail on the head when he said reconciliation to God is the only solution to racism.
Jesus wasn’t white but His color doesn’t matter. He isn’t racist, but He didn’t come to earth to end the sin of racism. He came to end ALL sins once and for all. He came to free us from every trap and every chain. The only way we can be free from racism is if we know Him and His perfect love.
Martin Luther King Jr. said in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech: “…we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands….”
How do we speed up that day?
We may not know what color Jesus was, but we can know Him.
We can stop being surprised at the sin of racism and we can stop ignoring it in the church. We can spread the Gospel before we spread our agendas.
