So I sit here… wondering how we all
go to the point of looking down on others, sidelining one another and having
these myriad dissentions. How did we get here? From whence do we get the
audacity to state that one colour, race or tribe was superior, better or
smarter?
And so I ask this question, what if
Jesus was black? Yeah, like dark-skinned, walking the African soil, being
beaten by the blazing African sun kinda black… would He have black disciples?
Would He tell His followers to keep their hair kinky, to drop the drum beating
or would He let them be comfortable in their skin?
What if Jesus were black, would He
be found chanting #BlackLivesMatter? Would part of the reason He would be
crucified be because of His skin colour?
Would He let our elders preach in
their shirts only, without requiring a jacket? Would He tell the white and
black sisters too, to shun from braiding their hair and work on the inner man?
Would He allow a few brows off on some, and tell others a little lipstick makes
you look like Jezebel sister?
Would He encourage the payment of
lobola, without calling it too barbaric?
If Jesus were black, would He mix
with white fellows? Would He still sanction that the gospel be preached to the
ends of the earth or that it just be kept in a little calabash? Would He dance
to the African beat? Would He have Christmas celebrated in the northern
hemisphere, yet call it a pagan feast in the south?
You see, it would make no
difference if Jesus were black, because I am persuaded that a black Jesus would
be as loving and as empathetic as a white one too. Because Jesus is the same,
yesterday, today and forever, I am persuaded that He would do away with all
these disparities between the blacks and whites!
Am almost certain that if Jesus
were black, life would still be the same as we know it now! So maybe the
problem isn’t the history of Christianity, the problem is with the Christian!
There is need to step out of our race, skin colour, intellect, career strata and
see people for who they are, for what they are because in the end it all won’t
matter, except do you have the Son?
Do you have the Son? Not the black
Son, not the white Son, but the Jesus Son, the one that came to seek and save
the white, black, poor, rich lost! Because if Jesus were black, the Bible would
still have 66 books, with the same words, and the same message- the message of
love, and salvation!
So, is it a black Jesus we need, or
an experience that rises above the strata we have created?
