Does Jesus' Skin Color Really Matter? (Yes. Yes It Does.)

by Dave Mantel

First, this happened:

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Then, this happened:



Then something like this:

And I saw people say things like (all sic):

"Jesus decendant from David, tribe of Juda, an Israelite, the Europian white people today are the Israelite migrants over the cacus mtns, hence cocasians, we can conclude he was white."

"Jesus may have been middle eastern but I'm pretty sure his father wasn't lol. So his skin color could have been anything."

"A divine entity. He no longer has a cultural heritage. Let's allow Jesus to save people instead of using Him to advance our own agendas"

"Jesus is NOT middle eastern. Jesus WAS middle eastern. For 30 some odd years 2000 years ago. Jesus IS the eternal God and heaven is his address. He is so hard to describe that those who have seen his true glory use only symbols: "white as snow", "pure light", "flaming fire". They all shuddered at his sight and felt as they were as good as dead. It's hilarious that we should all debate to describe someone who by his very essence is beyond any description." 

All of those just lived on ONE Facebook post. I haven't even started on the blog posts yet... anyway, as you can see, there's a pretty wide range of ideas here in opposition of the idea that the race of the historical Jesus matters. As it happens, James already posted a very helpful introduction to this "historical Jesus" a few weeks ago here on the blog. Read that HERE. But in case you don't want to do that, let me just share this tiny bit with you:

A minority of Christians think and read about the historical Jesus, but most of us avoid this question [of who the historical Jesus really was]. Some of us just don't care, basically saying "Christianity is what we have now. It doesn't matter exactly happened back in Jesus' day. What matters is my faith today." But many of us are genuinely afraid of what we might discover about the historical Jesus. What if we find evidence that Christianity just doesn't make sense? That Jesus wasn't who we thought he was, and our religion is just...silly?

These are things that can keep Christians away, but refusing to look at the historical Jesus is a little intellectually dishonest. We're essentially saying saying that the truth doesn't matter. What's more, though, if we avoid these big questions about the historical Jesus, we risk missing out on answers that can enrich and help our faith. 

So that's what we're dealing with right off—there is a large group of religious people who just do not care to know anything about the historical roots of Christianity—i.e., Jesus—and because of that, have mutated this religion into something other than what it started out as; in this case, transforming Jesus from a man who actually existed in space and time and history to some strange caricature in the name of timeless divinity. But why is it important that Jesus be a man tied down by such things as ethnicity and skin color? Isn't he beyond all of that now? I hear you asking those questions. And my answer to them is this: it's important because if we pluck out the bits of Jesus that we want to use today, leaving behind all the perceived uninteresting or irrelevant bits, we're creating a new, hollow religion based on something wholly unreal. White American Jesus is not the Jesus in the Bible, and thus (if you claim to believe the Bible) not God. He is a construct of our minds and our times, and an idol.

Secondly, by creating a god in our own image, placing him in our culture and time, we're missing out on so much of the actual richness and meaning to be found in the Bible. Reading scripture through 21st century, western eyes is difficult to begin with, but it is even harder when we are indoctrinated with the idea that the actual context of scripture is irrelevant because Jesus has transcended all of that.

"So Dave," you may ask, "what skin color did Jesus have? Just so I can be straight on the issue." And the answer to that question is: nobody actually knows! I know. Crazy.

I personally hold the idea that he probably looked like Sayid from LOST, but the Bible never mentions Jesus' skin color. We know he was Jewish, grew up in Egypt and Nazareth (the hood), but that's pretty much it. Is that important? It's super important.

Remember LOST?...Never mind. I don't want to talk about it.

It's important because, on the one hand, we have this historical context to place Jesus in—he had a family, friends, a home he grew up in, a place in history...he was a person. But he also transcends that. Theologians love these kinds of both/and situations. So Jesus was a person tied to an ethnicity, gender, skin color...but, being God, he also transcended those things for us—most clearly in scripture, through his words. The kinds of people Jesus taught us to be when he said, "Follow me," are the kinds of people who are beyond ethnicity, beyond culture, and beyond every other thing that divides. Yet, those things still make up who we are, just as they made up who Jesus is. It's amazing!

There's a cool paragraph at the end of a good article that appeared in the Atlantic this week on this very subject, which reads like this:

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.