To my Black Brothers and Sisters in Christ
Three days ago, Roger Lamb posted a personal apology on Facebook about our failures as a church family (the ICOC) to address racism. I commended him for the post and posted it to my FB friends. He had called me a few days prior and shared with me his stricken conscience and deep convictions that he needed as an older, recognized leader in our churches to apologize publicly. As we talked, I was cut to the heart and tears began to fill my eyes. I knew immediately that I needed to also apologize personally and publicly.
When I shared that conviction with one of my closest white friends, he noted what I had done to confront racism in our fellowship through my teaching and writing (in my blog especially) and asked why I felt the need to apologize. Here is my answer to that question – to be followed by my apology.
Yes, in the past four years I have been teaching and writing about racial issues a lot. I started my blog (
blacktaxandwhitebenefits.com). I have served on our Diversity Group (the SCUAD – Social Cultural Unity and Diversity Team) for several years until just recently. But I was not the one who initiated this new focus in my life and ministry.
After a Black man killed five white policemen in Dallas, which happened four year ago tomorrow (July 7, 2016), Mark Mancini asked me to come to the Region of the DFW church that he and Connie lead and speak specifically about racial issues from a biblical perspective. After that, many doors started opening and my already present interests in the area quickly became a passion. But whatever else may be said, I cannot take credit for anything I have done in this area. It was God through Mark that got it started and God through many others to keep me going.
Here is why my heart was pierced in my talk with Roger. I didn’t think first about what good I may have done; I thought about the good I could and should have done but didn’t. I thought about my Black friends through the decades with whom I had shared so much of life – ones who had lived with us; ones with whom I had hung out with in virtually every way you can hang out (sports of all types, trips together, countless meals in each other’s homes, etc.) And I thought of all the opportunities I had let pass to ask those probing questions about what their life was really like as a black person, from birth to the present. Tears fill my eyes as I write this.
I am deeply grieved for my failures to be a better friend to my spiritual family of color. I am so sorry for not trying to get into your world with you as best I could to help you carry your burdens of living in a country characterized by systemic racism. I cared, but not nearly enough. I should have done more and done it much sooner. Please forgive me.
Many have thanked me for the work I have done in the past four years, and I have appreciated the encouragement. However, please do not respond to this apology with anything that would lessen the guilt I feel which has moved me to write this or try to console me. I don’t need consolation. I need, and ask for, your forgiveness, especially from those many close Black friends who have loved me through the years.
I thank God for using Mark to help get me into a spiritual battle that I wasn’t looking for. I thank God for using Roger to help me become aware of my own sins and to repent and apologize. As God would have it, in my very last post on my blogsite, I wrote this: “I think of this passage in Proverbs 18:9: ‘One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.’ In other words, an idle person who fails to build is no better than the one who actively destroys what is already built.” When I wrote that, I was pointing fingers at others. Now God has led me to look in the mirror at myself and see my own failures – failures to do more, sooner. I am deeply sorry. Please forgive me.
Given the title, take into consideration that I’m a Christian black man living in the USA. I’m married to but one wife, with whom I have three beautiful children, and we belong to a diverse church home. And I am active in my community as a somewhat successful junior executive in corporate America, mentoring others in that role and in the church. Yet, even I have some racist tendencies, believe it or not. To be perfectly honest, before my conversion to Christ I viewed the white race in very negative ways. Some twenty plus years back when I was a teenager, one of my good friends (also African American) asked me this question:
“Was Jesus Black?”
This question hurled us down a shallow rabbit hole as we began to swiftly blame “the white man” for all the propaganda of a white Jesus. Fast forward to 2020, and I’m honestly humbled to consider my current situation. Beset with recent social injustice, pandemic woes, and political strife, I’ve wrestled to keep my faith in Christ as the center of my life. As much as I strive to love my neighbor, I still fight off that bitter root when it comes to many aspects of Western culture. Perhaps some of you can relate, or you at least may be able to understand a bit of my struggle described in this article.
When I was 18 years old, I began to study the Holy Bible. This led to me deciding to get much more serious about this whole Christian thing, and soon after I found myself repenting and getting baptized into Christ. At once I became overwhelmed with this unquenchable thirst for knowledge, wanting to know more about God’s Word, the history of Israel, and even what the deal was with Islam and Judaism. The more I studied, the more I learned. And one day a memory struck me, a memory from that pro-black Jesus dialogue was stirred as I viewed a DreamWorks movie called The Prince of Egypt.
What a fantastic movie! And I could not help thinking to myself, “Wow. These people are actually brown!” For the first time perhaps, I had a strong yet uneasy feeling in my gut telling me that something was wrong. Something was wrong with me! First off, whenever I had pictured mentally characters like Moses, or Jethro, or even the Egyptian Pharaoh, from childhood had always imagined these Biblical characters as being white. Certainly not brown – I mean they are Hebrews and Egyptians, right? Why were they brown? All the images I had ever seen of Biblical characters in every book, painting, play and movie up to that point were, well, white.
Painfully White
Then an opposite thought hit me soon afterwards. Thank God for geography and good ol’ ancient world history that pointed me to a map. I realized again (even though I had learned this in high school), that Egypt and Israel, along with many other countries listed in the Old Testament were located (and still are) in the Middle East and North-Eastern Africa. Another shocker hit me: Jesus and the Hebrew people were probably not black either! I asked myself a strange question: was Jesus (and all those other Biblical heroes) Middle Eastern? What???
Now at this time in college, I had a handful of Arab and Israeli friends. Most were Muslim or Jewish (by religion), and to be honest, I respected their spiritual discipline. Most of them prayed and fasted way more than I did or any of my Christian friends did. Most of them also served the poor right in their own communities more than I did as well. In a way, I admired their spiritual fervor, although I held fast to my Lord Jesus Christ and my faith in Him being the Son of God – sent to the world so that the manifold grace of God could be given freely to mankind. The means to salvation was our key difference, yet I could not help but love and appreciate my Arab and Israeli friends.
This led me to grow more and more curious about Hebrew heritage – racially speaking. My brown skinned Arab friends would not exactly call themselves black, nor would a handful of my olive-colored Israeli friends (not Jews from America) call themselves white. So, I dove into more Bible study, including both the ancestry and geography of Abraham and the Patriarchs. This connected me to most of the major OT characters right up to the birth of Jesus and his genealogy in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. It was truly an eye-opening study that led me to a firmer conclusion that Jesus (and the Hebrew race) of the Bible were indeed closely related to my Arab and Israeli friends, shared their ethnic roots, and were no doubt of Semitic heritage.
Over time, I came to realize just how much Western culture had affected my image of Christ, and my image of the Bible. At one time as a teen, my black friends and I thought Christianity was the “white man’s religion” since all the players in the Bible were white. As a Christian, it disturbs me deeply to think about people of color being turned off to Jesus by the portrayal of Christianity’s roots as being grounded in people with white skin. This is not simply an academic discussion, as I hope you can see.
What a Deceptive and Divisive Concept!
We would have been more accurate in saying Christianity is a “Middle Eastern religion” that spread to Europe, and then to America later! Now much study and analysis of this Hebrew heritage topic has been done and done again. Most objective history, geographic data, and forensic study point to Semitic origins being shared among peoples of Arab and Hebrew descent. The nations of the Middle East are indeed closely related. I had to wonder why then in America and Europe especially, are these Hebrew people most always depicted as Caucasian?
This pointed me to some famous works from the Renaissance period. C’mon, I’m talking about the likes of Da Vinci (The Last Supper) and Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel ceiling) and many others. It’s a paradox to me: the blessing of artistic genius combined with the curse of racial distortion. How bittersweet – yet when I consider the sociopolitical issues dating back to the Middle Ages when Europe and the Middle East were at war off and on for roughly 400 years (the Crusades), I had to ask a nationalistic question:
Would I want my spiritual heroes portrayed as the people of my nation or like those of my enemy’s nation?
The tension aroused by this question seems to be alive and well today. The majority of people will naturally toss aside history, geography, ancestry, and the like for comfort. Comfort is more important than Biblical accuracy even in American Christianity. I, a black guy, have even been conditioned by this comfort. My goal in stating this is not to offend my white brothers and sisters in Christ, but it is to call uncomfortable attention to the issue at hand (still). Most churches continue to don pictures of a Caucasian Jesus, and European-featured Hebrews: Moses, David, Abraham and Noah all shown as fair-skinned, straight brown-haired characters, some aged with long white beards.
I wonder how many souls inside and outside of America could be brought to Christ if he were viewed as a medium brown skinned male with coarse black hair and Middle Eastern features?
Arguably (even objectively) this image of Jesus is more Biblically accurate. Western culture should not define the racial heritage of the Hebrew people of the Bible – the Bible should.
So, to answer the title question: No, Jesus was not black. Nor was He white.
He and his ancestors were indeed Middle Eastern, much closer to an Arabian person than we in the West care to admit. Isaiah still rings in my ears, “He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
I hope some who read this long for Unity and I hope many long for Diversity.
But I really hope that we, even us Americans, can learn to embrace the Bible and learn to love this truer image of Christianity. It matters, in more ways than one.
A forensic science CGI-produced image of Jesus Christ (in contrast to Renaissance art)
In 2014, the Asaads saw the need for our congregation to celebrate the diversity among us while deepening the love we have for each other. Todd asked the Sagets to help meet this need by looking into a training model on the topic of diversity that would be appropriate for our fellowship. After a traumatic string of unjust killings of black individuals around the country and the unjust killings of police officers in Dallas in 2016, our need to develop a training grew into so much more. We saw the need to establish a team that could help us deepen our love and unity while we processed the harsh realities of the world through a spiritual lens and while still being a light to our communities. The team consisted of Todd and Patty Asaad, Pierre and Shara Saget, and Marcos and Kinny Pesquera.
Beginning in 2016, we were able to use the expertise of Marcos, who is the System Vice-President for Health Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at CHRISTUS Health, to put together a workshop that started the conversation around diversity in the body. This workshop was facilitated by the Pesqueras and the Sagets and was conducted first with the staff of the DFW Church. We then conducted the workshop with all of the Bible talk leaders, the singles ministry, and then with each worship center. In total, it took about a year to complete these workshops. Following the workshops, the entire staff was directed to read Michael Burns’ book, Crossing the Line: Culture, Race, and Kingdom. In June of 2019, Todd invited Michael to come to Dallas to conduct a mini-workshop based on his book. This event was held on a Sunday, during a congregational worship service. Michael also provided a time of teaching the next day to help further equip the church staff in our task of leading a diverse congregation.
To date, we have continued to expand our team to include two representatives from each of the six worship centers of the DFW Church. We did this because we recognized that the work in this area is vast and important, therefore, we needed more disciples involved. We also took on the name Cultural Connection Team because we felt it communicates, in a broad but adequate way, the objective of the team. The team has met regularly since 2020 and seeks to provide educational opportunities that will equip our brothers and sisters to talk about our various cultural and racial differences in a way that promotes greater understanding and value for each other and those we are reaching out to who are different than ourselves.
One of these educational opportunities was born out of a meeting with Dr. George Yancey, Baylor University Professor of Sociology. After reading Dr. Yancey’s book, Beyond Racial Gridlock, and finding out that he lived in the Dallas Metroplex, Todd and Pierre invited him to have lunch with a number of the staff and elders of the DFW Church. We explored his thoughts and ways on helping multiracial churches develop greater love and unity because this is an area that Dr. Yancey is particularly interested in himself. We then asked for a second meeting to discuss the possibility of him presenting some of his research to leaders of our Texas family of churches and leaders of the Chicago, Kansas City and Nashville churches who joined us. Dr. Yancey’s presentation of his research was refreshing and timely as he discussed a viable way for us to fulfill our calling to be like Jesus as we navigate the divisive times we live in.
Our relationship with Dr. Yancey has led to an invitation for the DFW Church to participate in a new research project which will help teach and inform us on how to better love all nations. Dr. Yancey is set to provide a training session that will teach us how to have collaborative conversations with each other. This training will be followed by six separate small group sessions that will test the effectiveness of the training and allow us to put into practice what we have learned. The potential for growth in our fellowship is tremendous as we anticipate each of us learning how to come together and love each other deeply in a way that values the diverse perspectives we all bring to the body. We also anticipate that participation in this research project will better equip us to be about our mission of sharing the gospel with others who are different from ourselves. Our prayer is that God will be honored and glorified as we strive to sincerely love each other deeply and be a light to our world.
Pierre Saget — DFW Evangelist
Todd Asaad — DFW Congregational Evangelist
I began this blog some years ago and made regular entries for several years. However, I have not been actively writing about this topic lately, although I am still very interested in it and consistently seeking the perspectives of Black friends and even persons of color I don’t know yet (until we talk). I have developed some questions that I ask in order to better understand what they are feeling and facing in their “world” (including what they see in me). As I have often stated, I do not expect the world to change significantly, because it is under the control of Satan (1 John 5:19). The condition of the non-Christian world is summed up succinctly in Titus 3:3 when Paul says that prior to conversion, “We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.”
As I am now getting “back in the business” of writing or posting the writing of others, here is what’s coming quickly. First, I spent 23 days in the hospital in 2022 and nearly died. After I recovered enough to leave the hospital, I was filled with insights gained while I was sitting with God on the brink of eternity day after day. I developed these insights into a 20-part video podcast series entitled, “Eternity’s Brink.” This series can be seen on my YouTube channel, “Gordon Ferguson Teaching Ministry.” The last two of those addressed racial issues. They will be the next two blog posts on this site.
Second, I asked a longtime Black friend of mine to write a series of five articles sharing his perspectives and feelings. In the next blog post, I will introduce him and the reasons for the series, after which his articles will be posted one at a time. As I will explain in that introduction, one reason I have not written any articles recently is that I believe Black people need to have the opportunity to speak for themselves. Plus, I know many writers, Black and White, have more expertise on the topic that I do. Yet, I have the obligation to contribute my perspective and thus, along with my friend, can provide a both/and approach.
Thus, I am back in business. Please read the upcoming blog articles and pass them on to your friends. Also feel free to contact me through email to register thoughts or concerns. My email address is on the site, as is a link to my main teaching website.
I am simply awestruck with God’s creation. When we are at our cottage in the countryside of East Texas, I have my quiet times journaling on my laptop, sitting on the porch with the lake across the street in full view. That is what I see. But what I hear are birds, lots and lots of birds. I received a call recently while sitting outside on the porch journaling on my computer. My friend, Walter Parrish (see note at bottom about Walter), the caller, asked where I was. He said it sounded like I was in some kind of bird sanctuary. He was hearing slightly what I was hearing loudly. I also was enjoying a hummingbird who was taking advantage of the sugar water in our hummingbird feeders just a few feet from where I was sitting. Occasionally, one little guy would come towards me and just hover while watching me from about two feet away. God’s creation is wonderful and absolutely amazing. He obviously loves diversity, since he created it as he did.
Speaking of diversity, here are a few interesting facts showing just how diverse God’s creation really is. Although determining the total number of species of living organisms on earth is a challenge and the estimates vary widely among scientists, over two million species have been identified and described. However, total estimates of the true number of species varies. The most widely cited estimate is 8.7 million species, but many believe there are far more than that. Since we were just speaking about birds, know that there are more than 11,000 bird species that have been identified. Estimates of dog breeds are between 195 and 500. Cat breeds are harder to distinguish, but the experts in that field vary between 40 and 70 in their estimates.
But then we get into the big numbers. Scientists estimate that the total number of fish species in the world is approximately 33,600 and more than 3,000 species of snakes exist on the planet. Scientists believe that there are about 435,000 unique land plant species on earth, with tree species numbering 73,300. In the world, some 900 thousand different kinds of living insects are known, by far the largest group within the various types of God’s creatures. That’s almost a billion—nearly impossible to grasp. Even more impossible to fathom are the varieties of colors. It has been determined by people who determine such things that there are somewhere around 18 decillion varieties of colors available for your viewing pleasure. That’s an 18 followed by 33 zeros. Many more facts and figures could be included here, but you get the point—God is the Creator of unfathomable amounts of diversity, showing his obvious love for it.
United Nations?
Why am I including this topic in writing primarily about insights I gained from a challenging three weeks in the hospital last year? (See my series, “Eternity’s Brink,” on my YouTube channel, Gordon Ferguson Teaching Ministry.) I had scores of different medical caretakers during those seemingly endless days and nights. The diversity among them was a bit shocking at first and certainly fascinating. From a racial or ethnic standpoint, it was like entering a meeting of the United Nations. I met people whose countries of family origin numbered in the dozens. As we talked, I found that many of them were second generation and had never been to the country from which their parents came. Since I had been to most of those countries, it was exciting to describe them and my experiences there. As would be expected, the physical characteristics of those serving me varied greatly, including their various shades of color. Some had very light skin and some had very dark skin. The majority fell into categories that we would call people of color. All of them were caring, sensitive, serving human beings, made in the image of a God who loves diversity.
To be very candid, being served by them caused me to think about those of my country who have views that in one way or another could be classified as white superiority or white supremacy. They might not tout it or even realize it, but these thinking patterns are embedded somewhere in their psyche. There are few views of one’s fellow human beings in how they value other people that I disdain more. The concept of white superiority in any form is not only indicative of gross ignorance, it is an affront to God as Creator. It is also the result, as I said, of incredible ignorance.
No Such Thing as Race
In the first place, the word “race” itself is a misnomer. There is no such thing as race as most think of it from either scientific or biblical viewpoints. Regarding the scientific viewpoint, I wrote an article several years ago explaining why people are different colors. Although I am not a scientist nor an expert in the field of racial origins, the facts are quite available for anyone willing to do some research. And many of these facts are not recent ones. A well-known anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, who in the same year I was born (1942) published a book entitled, “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: the Fallacy of Race.” This stuck with me not only because the book was written in my birth year, but Ashley was my mother’s maiden name. Further, the topic of the book was absolutely intriguing to me. Montagu was quite the interesting character, a Jewish atheist, who surprisingly didn’t subscribe to Darwin’s views on race (described in his writings during the latter half of the 1800’s).
Darwin believed that black people were much less evolved than white people, and as a result, less intelligent. Darwin also believed something similar about females generally, regardless of color. But Ashley rejected that part of Darwinism and along with Albert Einstein, spoke out strongly against the views and ill treatment of black Americans by white Americans. A part of that action no doubt came from their common Jewish backgrounds and the racism they had endured personally. But it was far more than that to Montagu – it was a matter of science. His views ended up pretty much carrying the day with his fellow anthropologists in rejecting any supposed scientific basis for race. Experts in that field by and large agree with Montagu’s conclusion that race is a fallacy.
Sunlight and Vitamins
Most living organisms have an incredible capacity to adapt to their environment. Humans obviously share that adaptability. My good friend James Williams, a black brother in our church, spent his entire career teaching Social Studies to 8th grade students in his home state of Mississippi. He has said to me a number of times that our skin color and other physical characteristics trace directly back to the proximity of our ancient ancestors to the equator. The closer they were to the equator, the darker their skin. Not only is that a simple answer, it is absolutely accurate. But why is it accurate? Primarily it is an issue of sunlight and vitamins, of two types.
The melanin in the outer layer of our skin worked over long time periods to allow one type to be absorbed into the body and the other type to avoid being taken out of the body. Vitamin D must be absorbed in sufficient amounts to build calcium. In northern climates where the sunlight is less available, the skin must remain lighter in tone to make sure that enough vitamin D is available. The other vitamin, called folate, a vitamin B complex, is significantly affected by the ultraviolet light from the sun, and dispersed from the body rather quickly if the skin is light. The body’s folate reserves can be reduced significantly in a brief time if the sunlight is intense and the skin is very light colored. Hence, those in the tropics must have darker skin and the melanin takes care of that. Bottom line, if your ancient ancestors lived in low sunlight areas, they developed light skin; if they lived in high sunlight areas, they developed dark skin. You can read the details and find the information sources in my article, “Why Are Humans Different Colors? (Blog 42) on this blogsite.
I also have a segment in that article showing that DNA suggests nothing of the presence of different biological races. I read an interesting article online from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts of Science website. It was written April 17, 2017 by Vivian Chou and entitled, “How Science and Genetics are Reshaping the Race Debate of the 21st Century.” Under the subheading, “New findings in genetics tear down old ideas about race,” the following statement was made: “Ultimately, there is so much ambiguity between the races, and so much variation within them, that two people of European descent may be more genetically similar to an Asian person than they are to each other.” What Montague wrote 80 years ago as an anthropologist aligns perfectly with what geneticists are saying right now. Race is a fallacy.
The Bible and Human Nature
From a biblical standpoint, Acts 17:26 could not be clearer: “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” Although the earth’s one solitary race, the human race, began with Adam, Noah and his family of eight people were the progenitors of all to follow them, as Genesis 10:32 states: “These are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their lines of descent, within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.” Bible believers need to start accepting what their Bibles say, namely that we are all of one race. If we accept that obvious truth, then we will learn to not only accept our human differences but to rejoice in them. The multitude of different cultures and ethnicities contribute so much of value to those of other cultures and ethnicities. Think food, clothes, music, dances, inventions—and the list could go on. In our global age, the societies in virtually all nations have more of a mixture in them than most would imagine. Why not admit it, embrace it and enjoy it? It is an undeniable fact—and an irreversible fact.
My own country, the United States, is more wacked out on racial issues than one can imagine. The political quagmire we are in presently has contributed greatly to the problem. While I deeply regret what is happening in our society, I am not at all surprised by it. In my fairly lengthy article on this topic mentioned above, I have this subtitle for one section: “Haters Gonna Hate!” Without Christ and a commitment to imitate him and thus follow his principles, hating is inevitable. It always has been. “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). What Paul wrote two millennia ago describes our present age perfectly, as do more lengthy passages like Romans 1:18-32. I have another lengthy article on another website of mine asking the question of whether Covid-19 is a discipline of God or not, and in it, I go through the Romans 1 passage in some detail. (See it on gordonferguson.org) The world is the world is the world, and without Christ, it always will be.
Why? Easy answer. “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). As children of God, followers of Christ, how do we avoid Satan’s control? Once again, easy answer, but challenging to apply given the effectiveness of Satan’s deception. “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”
One evidence of loving the world is found in a rejection of the beauty of God’s diverse creation, especially the human part of his creation. Any view, however subtle, found in our heart of hearts, that places a higher value on one skin color over another is Satanic. It cannot be godly no matter how impressively it might be explained. Knowing enough about how racism of all types works and how it makes people of color feel, I cannot see any evidence of white superiority attitudes without it breaking my heart. Such attitudes are an afront to God and call into question his very design of us human beings as his image bearers. God is love; Satan is hate. Where do you fall on that scale in your views of your fellow humans? Thus you have my perspective on racism developed even more intensely from a hospital bed, sitting with God on the brink of eternity while being served by those of many colors and ethnicities. God bless them!
