How Does Christ Want to be Represented In The Black Church?

As surely as Abel’s blood cried out to God from the Earth, so does the blood of slain Black ancestors in America and within the path of the sea from the motherland cry out to Almighty Yah.

Some were fallen with a fist held high shouting and singing “Let freedom ring!” While others were slain while slanging poison to their own brothers, sisters, mothers, sons, and daughters. But their blood cries aloud for an Abba! A Father!

A Father who hears. He hears the cries of the slain while He searches the hearts of the living.

In our own communities these tragedies take place. Our governments poison and murder our people as they have been for the last four decades and our blood has cried aloud but has been buried under the weight of soundproof buildings and warehouses for major corporations.

Those of us who remain gain employment from these gentrifiers, but those who have fallen still weep.

Where is one to go outside of one’s own community? As the blood stains still remain on the concrete though it is being bulldozed up to make room for more important industries, Yah lends His holy ear even from his holy throne in heaven seated next to His Son whose blood he sent to join together the oppressed and their oppressors.

And he put together a master plan outlined by the Apostle Paul’s ink pen from which he would build his church with no separation, joining together both Jew and Gentile, but we have missed the call by a longshot.

First to the Jew, He promised. A calling too big for his own people to hold dear. First to the Jew, but who is the Jew? A race of lost identity?

A people who are unaware that their lineage comes from another land from the one which they were kidnapped? A nation of lost tribes who believe what is said about them from those who indoctrinate and lie?

And as the liars searched the scriptures to tell their story, accepting they are not the people of the book of Exodus, but deciding who fit the identity with no factual evidence, they lied. They painted portraits of a false, flamboyant savior who could not save them, but liberated whites as the mascot of White supremacy and the whip that marks the backs of many lost Jews.

They called the image of the white god “Jesus” and many white theologians set it high as any idol of Baal.

White theologians, ministers, and charismatic preachers of the word grew their congregations on the foundational principles of what this image portrayed, (whites are god, or God is white), while simultaneously projecting the unfactual belief that Black skin was a curse from Ham, the son of Noah. Thus, white supremacy was birthed in the church.

Black Liberation Theology and Christ’s Representation in Modern Black Churches

To counter this white supremacy theology and racist doctrines, Black evangelicals brought Black Liberation Theology into their churches and taught some separate ideas from what the white theologians of the 1960s were teaching.

In the words of its founder, the Reverend James. H. Cone, Black Liberation Theology was a way of teaching people how to be unapologetically Black and Christian at the same time.

The Black church of the 2020s is most definitely far removed from its civil rights roots and anti-slavery foundation. That is not to say that Christ wants to be represented in His church as the leader of the weak and oppressed as Black Liberation Theology suggests, but as the Shepherd of submissive and obedient sheep.

Sheep follow the voice of their masters and will follow no other voice. In the words of Christ, “My sheep know my voice,” but in the Black church today, we have learned to follow man and not Christ. We have become loyal followers of our pastors, reverends, and bishops, but are deaf to the voice of our only savior.

Submission to the leadership of Godly men and women can be a good thing, but only when those people are submitted under the authority of a sovereign God and conquering Messiah, not under the hand of their oppressors who have pulled the strings of Black leaders for every decade during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and after.

How can we, the people called by the name of Yahweh abide in the truth of His law while embracing the shackles of Egypt?

Even as our ancestors cried to the God of Israel when they were enslaved, we must cry until our voices are heard in Heaven and the shackles of oppression are loosened. With one voice and one mind to the One who can save us.

If we look any way besides up after we see our slain brothers and sisters bleeding on the ground, we are no better than Cain who was deaf to the cries of his brother’s blood and when they Lord Almighty asked Cain “Where is your brother?” Cain replied “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

We living and free Black Americans who turn from the cries of our murdered brothers, those unfairly and excessively imprisoned, aborted Black babies, fatherless Black children, struggling single mothers, and our poor Black brothers and sisters who are unable to escape the system of poverty are no different from Cain who had no regard for his own brother and turned his ears from the cry of Abel’s blood.

Do we worship God in our churches and not think of them? Do we sing songs of praise with joy in our hearts as though our community’s problems are not our own? Do we watch as they bleed but find peace that it is not our problem since our white fellows in Christ will take care of them on their own terms?

When we sing while they cry, we knowingly sing to a God who is able to do all things while doubting He will. We worship a savior who paid the ultimate price for us all, while assuming He does not care for the present afflictions we face as a people. We have a form of Godliness, but deny its power, limiting it to our feelings and emotions and living for an emotional-high Christianity, and not a power-driven, life-giving faith in a loving Messiah.

When we begin to understand the love Christ has for us, we begin to understand what He truly cares for. We begin to carry the burden He has for the blood of the innocent.

True Christianity is not following leaders who follow whites. It is getting to know the One who saves and who has saved us time and time again. It is understanding His heart for those who are defenseless.

Our turning away from the cries of the blood of the innocent has come from our wicked oppressors who do not even have to show much regard for us because we are so used to watching them as if watching them is watching God, and waiting to go when He says go.

When issues arise in our community, we move only when they say move. We go where they say to go. They profit from Black Lives Matter memorabilia and lead our movements without sharing the wealth attributed.

Our loyalty to them has been a poor representation of Christ in our churches and community. The Black church has always led the Black community, whether it has led us to freedom or into a burning house, we have religiously followed, sometimes marching, sometimes praising with our hands up.

We do not only throw our hands up to Christ in surrender, we have thrown up our hands to the ones who have ruled over us since the days on the plantations. In those days, our spiritual leaders were either working for the system that oppressed us, or they worked against it. Today, we see some of the same, but the vast majority of our churches work for that system and not to destroy it.

Even in our hymns and worship, we sing songs of oppression. While some are Christ exalting, they do not exalt Him as the victor over the enemy of white supremacy. We have sung our way into comfort through oppression rather than victory over it.

Conclusion

We have taken on a spirit of apathy that gets passed down to generations who rebel against attending Church because they do not see the victorious Christ like the One of the book of Revelations, whose eyes were like fire and who will rule and reign in the earth.

Many Christians consider themselves to be Christ’s representatives on the earth, but many of us are representing him improperly. We are keeping him on the cross, though he has risen. We are praising him as a baby, though he has grown up. Because He has said “It is finished” we have stopped doing the work. He has freed us, but we remain willfully enslaved, begging at the feet of our oppressors for what we have the means to obtain by our own strength.