Acting White: Black Jesus

I have always loved science, but in 9th grade Dr. Guptil looked over his scientific methodology class and pronounced that we would spend 90 minutes proving, beyond a doubt, that Jesus looked closer to me, the lone black kid at the end of his wagging finger, rather than any of my white classmates. I thought to myself, ‘just wait until the folks hear about this'.

It is really pretty simple to ascertain the look of the people of Jesus’ day in his part of the world, what we now call the Middle East. They looked like Africans whose skin was a bit lighter due to the need to produce Vitamin D from lower sunlight intensity. It’s also easy to understand that people around the globe re-wrote and illustrated the bible to match themselves rather than indigenous Middle Easterners of biblical times.

This raises two issues at the minimum. How did skin color change? How could the bible be wrong? To the first, skin color is genetically adaptive to the intensity of the sun. It quickly lightens or darkens as humanity migrates northward and southward on the globe. This adaptive ability is required for humanity to survive. To the second, while the bible may be inspired by God, it was written by men who interpreted its events in their selfish favor, as in portraying its characters with white skin, beginning with Adam and Eve through Jesus Christ et al.

People, white, black and in between who do not understand the science of skin take the depictions in the bible to be literal and a sign of being God’s chosen over others of lesser depiction. While this allows some to feel superior, this feeling is based in ignorance and is the best reason for education, as it relates to genetics, heredity, and evolution.

It's not so much about rejecting a white Jesus I know to be wrong, but rather understanding the opportunity for God's directives to get mangled in the translation.

James C. Collier

HT: Black Jesus.com

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