Source Material:
The Color Purple by Alice Walker:
"Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ____s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall.
Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere.
Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.
But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don't want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it."
Until I take the time to really think about it, it surprises me how the constant picture of God in my head is an Old White Man. When I picture God, I consistently picture an old white man with a long white beard in robes. Probably really close to Gandalf or Dumbledore, just brighter and more glowing and standing on a cloud or something like that.
White Jesus I've been decolonizing for at least a decade, so when I'm presented with the idea or a picture of White Jesus, I am automatically aware that it's not real. That Jesus was not white. He was a Palestinian Jew, and since the Bible tells us he had no real distinguishing physical features, I have to assume he looked like an average Middle Eastern man with brown skin and dark eyes and curly hair. Even his name at the time was equivalent to "Bob". I wonder if people back then had to ask "Jesus who?" because there were so many Jesuses walking around.
Around Easter I came across this painting:
I haven't verified this, but based on where I came across this painting, I'm assuming this is a painting of Black Jesus. I think it's a beautiful painting. I think this is probably a step closer to truth than White Jesus, other than the fact I happen to find this Black Jesus quite attractive, which I would consider a distinguishing physical feature, but maybe that's just me. :) I think it is safe to assume, though, that Jesus was not East Asian like me, and certainly not a woman. So I feel no temptations to visualize Jesus physically in my own image.
God on the other hand is a whole nother whirlwind. If I'm honest with myself, I absolutely picture an Old White Man. And the struggle for me is that I really love God and I find a lot of identity in my relationship with God. He's been my friend for quite some time. So there is part of me that finds a lot of comfort in this image because it's familiar and we've been together for so long and every step of the way I have pictured him as an Old White Man. And even though I know intellectually that this image isn't accurate, there is a certain panic I start to feel when I try to get rid of it because then what do I replace this image with? There is nothing there. And picturing nothing is a lot more unsettling to me than picturing something familiar, no matter how inaccurate or oppressive.
Genesis 1:27 (NIV) says: "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." So recently I've been playing around with thinking of God as a woman. If I can picture God as a man, then isn't it fair to also picture him as a woman? Usually this woman is a black woman or brown woman. Definitely not a white woman. But honestly, not even an East Asian woman either. I probably subconsciously consider black or brown to be more "universal". We don't need to get into that now. Anyhow, I've been throwing some gender liberties around:
Our Mother, who art in Heaven
Hallowed by Thy name...
or
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Her all creatures here below...
The inner response when I do this is startling to me. Immediately I perceive God to be far more nurturing, comforting, and the source of life. Maternal power. Birth. Basically a mom. "Give us today our daily bread..." conjures images of cooking three tasty meals a day rather than manna falling from Heaven. Very relatable. And her anger comes from a place of love and protection, likely because someone is messing with her kids, rather than a place of violence. And my relationship with her has much less to do with picturing how she looks than the way she makes me feel because she's always embracing me in a big bosom-filled hug and it is so much the feeling of home. Mama. But if I'm honest, while this idea is really cool to me, I still struggle believing that it is "real". I think this is definitely a symptom of how my faith has been colonized because I should be as comfortable picturing God as feminine as I do masculine. If one, why not the other if both were made in his image? A layer of this struggle is that the Bible consistently refers to God as masculine, and while I have no problem calling God "him", calling him "her" is a little outside my comfort zone. And it's possible that the use of these gendered pronouns is just the result of language and translation, but do I need to go to seminary to figure this out?
And then John 4:24 (NASB) says: "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." So really God is neither man nor woman, he is spirit. And this is also hard for me because then I just picture this gaseous blob and it is pretty much impossible for me to imagine having a meaningful relationship with a gaseous blob.
So you can imagine the predicament I have spinning in my head. Who is God if he ain't some Old White Man? I don't know! Who are you God????
God reminded me of the story in Matthew 16:13-18 (MSG) where Jesus basically asks Peter the same question.
When Jesus arrived in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?”They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
He pressed them, “And how about you? Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter said, “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus came back, “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am.
Everybody is saying Jesus is this and that and it's getting confusing so Jesus is telling his disciples to discover their own answer.
"Who do you say that I am?"
or for emphasis,
"Who do YOU say that I am?"
Because in the same way God is telling me, uh hello, you know me. We've been together for a long time now. Don't you know who I am? Why you gotta be stuck on what I look like and what other people are saying about me? Just cause you heard I changed my hair or got a tan or grew breasts, or you heard someone else say that they think I'm like this or that doesn't change who I am. We didn't just meet. You know me. Who do YOU say that I am?
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I say that you are my best friend. Thanks for sticking it out while I get my shit together.