JESUS CHRIST'S RACE NO LONGER MATTERS TO ME

JESUS CHRIST'S RACE NO LONGER MATTERS TO ME:

I HOPE HIS COLOR & RACE DOESN'T MATTER TO YOU EITHER.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

"For unto us a Child is Born, unto us a Son is given." Isaiah 9:6

On today December 25th we celebrate the Birth of JESUS CHRIST.

Even though JESUS was actually born in the month of SEPTEMBER, due to the Judeo-Christian calendar we celebrate his Birthday on December 25.

We all know JESUS was a real Human Being, born in the Middle East to JEWISH parents.

As a curious Christian, I used to be caught up in Foolish arguments about JESUS' race, his Skin color, Eye color and Hair texture.

But no more!

I no longer care what Color JESUS was because such arguments keep Human Beings divided and at odds about Race Relations.

I now only care about the Truth of JESUS' Birth, his Ministry on Earth, his Crucifixion, his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven where he now sits beside his Heavenly Father GOD Almighty.

Hallejuah!

~ Insisting Jesus Was White Is Bad History and Bad Theology

In trying to police his depiction, Megyn Kelly is wrong on both the facts and the essential universality of the Christian message.

Fox News television host Megyn Kelly told viewers on her December 11 broadcast that Jesus and Santa are both white men.

"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"

Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus.

The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA.

The myth of a white Jesus is one with deep roots throughout Christian history. As early as the Middle Ages and particularly during the Renaissance, popular Western artists depicted Jesus as a white man, often with blue eyes and blondish hair.

Perhaps fueled by some Biblical verses correlating lightness with purity and righteousness and darkness with sin and evil, these images sought to craft a sterile Son of God.

The only problem was that the representations were historically inaccurate.

Modern Western Christians have carried these images over into their own depictions of Jesus. Pick up a one of those bright blue “Bible Story” books in a Sunday School classroom and you’ll find white Jesus waiting for you, rosy cheeks and all. Or you could survey the light-skinned Jesus in any number of modern TV or film portrayals, including History Channel’s hit series The Bible.

Interestingly, the Bible is far less descriptive on the matter of Jesus’ skin color than we are. Christian scriptures say very little about Jesus’ physical appearance. They do not comment on his nose, eye color, skin pigmentation, or hair.

The glaring exception is Isaiah 53:2, which prophesies that the messiah won’t be much to look at, another fact that places the Bible at odds with the “well-groomed surfer-dude Jesus” who's often put forth.

If the Bible is silent on the matter of Jesus’ skin color, does it really matter that Megyn Kelly says Jesus is white?

Yes, actually.

As some historians and theologians have posited, the silence of the Scriptures on the issue of Jesus’ skin color is critical to Christianity’s broad appeal with people of various ethnicities. In a world where race often divides communities and even churches, the Biblical depictions of God’s son positions him as one who can bridge those divides.

For this reason, one American Presbyterian minister in the 1880s warned his flock not to trust popular images of Christ:

If He were particularised and localised—if, for example, He were made a man with a pale face—then the man of the ebony face would feel that there was a greater distance between Christ and him than between Christ and his white brother.’ Instead, because the Bible refused to describe Jesus in terms of racial features, his gospel could appeal to all.

Only in this way could the Church be a place where the ‘Caucasian and Mongolian and African sit together at the Lord’s table, and we all think alike of Jesus, and we all feel that He is alike our brother’.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Advice for Living” column for Ebony in 1957, the civil-rights leader was asked, “Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?” King replied, “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence” because what made Jesus exceptional “His willingness to surrender His will to God’s will.”

His point, as historian Edward Blum has noted, is that Jesus transcends race.

Those warnings hold just as true for believers today. Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice.

It's important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers.

And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” can worship God together.

Until that day arrives, though, can someone please tell Megyn Kelly that Jesus is not white?

Sources: The Atlantic, Fox News, YouTube