Let’s talk about the depiction or representation of God/Christ in Africa. In my observation is that, invariable Christ is represented as a white person. Does that matter? – Mike Siluma (On Karibu – Kaya FM)
It matters immensely, it matters a lot, and it is highly problematic because it has not really been challenged sufficiently, even by us black theologians and part of that is because we were enslaved by Christian church. We continued through and have not innovate to not represent Jesus externally, so to say.
There is a struggle by Black theologians to innovate the depiction and the representation of God in the African image. We assume that the symbols of Christianity that the colonists brought were adequate in themselves; and those symbols were White. They came natural out of their culture, I mean White people will deny that they try to make Jesus’ white, they just thought he was white.
And, it is not clear why black people, if they are thinking like the human beings… meaning the first human being that black people know it is a black human being; and it does not make sense that we were just able to not stay out of the white representation of God and of Jesus. You see, Professor Setiloane in his book, when he talk to the religious world of black people, he says we never created God in our own image. God was a terrible thing.
White people created God in their own image. God was just a supreme white man; however, they will deny that. But that was their own way of looking at it, history demanded of them that they should do that, their history … because according to them there is no other history other than white history. Professor Setiloane says, when it comes to African people in general, God was either somewhere under the earth and we were not able to fathom him or her and represent him or her. You don’t do that, if it is God, you can’t represent him/her; or God was a terrible thing up in the sky somewhere.
And there is a little bit of connection with Jews thinking over that, because when Moses encountered God in a burning bush. He was told to stand off a little bit, not get too close because … to see God means you can’t be alive. But white people have completely colonized God, I mean the colonial trajectory of white people was in their system. So, they thought it is easy you just make God, and they did. You make him white; you give him white hair and you give him starry-blue eyes, stuff like that. That’s way it is, but that is not African spirituality. The only problem is that, because we were successfully oppressed, we couldn’t do it in our own traditional spirituality. But we expected what white people have done is ok, white God is fine. Hence still today, white representation of God is used by black people as well.
