One of my favorite paintings is Christ, The Universal Saviour by Hsu San Ch’un. It depicts a scene many will be familiar with: Jesus initiating an interaction with a Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob and revealing to her his message of grace. In first century Palestine, the Jewish people considered Samaritans enemies, yet, Jesus “openly challenges and breaks open two boundaries in this text: the boundary between ‘chosen people’ and ‘rejected people,’ between male and female.”¹ The interaction informs us that Jesus is radically inclusive. He is not just for one group but all peoples.
In my opinion, the real beauty of the painting is this: Jesus and the woman are not depicted as first century Palestinian Jews but as individuals of Chinese descent. I do not think Hsu believed the historical Jesus was ethnically Chinese. Rather, it may be in representing Jesus as his kinsman that Hsu taps into a Christological truth and why the painting’s title is so fitting: if Christ is one with the God who created all peoples in his own image, then Christ can be seen in all peoples.
I remember when this idea finally clicked. Years ago, I was staring at a painting of Jesus: light brown hair, stubble, bright blue eyes, and rosy, Caucasian skin. I looked at the other paintings in the gallery and, aside from one or two historically accurate representations, the other thirty plus paintings were the same. There was no Black Jesus, no Asian Jesus, no Hispanic or Indigenous Jesus. If I could be ethically represented here, why not others? I was in an echo chamber. Creation felt muted in this space.
As I criticized the gallery for its lack of diversity, I questioned if I was any different. My mind jumped to my favorite hobby, reading. I scanned the mental images of my bookshelves at home. At the time, over ninety percent were authored by white men. While this may speak just as clearly to the historic injustices towards non-white peoples in academia and the subsequent preferential treatment towards authors of Caucasian descent, I had unconsciously surrounded myself in a thought bubble of people like me. If such a large part of my life was so uniform, what other aspects of it were the same?
In my service industry experience I saw racism and prejudice in many forms. From under the breath comments to a superior accused by a customer of prejudice saying, “I’m not racist my wife is black,” when this wasn’t the case. Whether for job security or the fear of losing someone’s affirmation, I wouldn’t push back. Through the relationships I would build and lives I would learn from, I slowly understood that by not actively supporting those who have been oppressed and marginalized by my country, ethnicity, generation, or religion, I became complicit in their subjugation and blinded myself to Christ in them. I wanted to become someone who stood against injustices.
Learning from writers like James Cone, Austin Channing Brown, Cornel West, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Jr., opened my eyes to what was happening around me. However, in seeking perspective, insight, and wisdom from friends, coworkers, and churchgoers, of different sociocultural or ethnic backgrounds, the greatest change took place. My friends and former coworkers Hind, Tamala, Zandra, Roderick, and others gave me grace as we explored together the 2016 election, Syrian refugee crisis, #MeToo movement, and the racial tensions building in the United States. Living through life experiences with our neighbor and her children has begun to help me break out of a homogenous community as moments of our shared life resonate and reshape my understanding. Cookouts, basketball, teaching her kids how to play four square, mourning the loss of her firstborn son from gun violence, learning from her lament at how hard it is to raise her children as a single mom, and celebrating with her when she opened a hair salon; without these intensely personal experiences I would have a very narrow view of the people around me.
Today, I still have a lot to work on. I’m trying to be more mindful of who I support when I spend money, advocating for change, and listening and empathizing instead of interjecting when I disagree. I keep pushing myself to embrace diversity even when it’s difficult because when I fail to do so, I am not taking seriously the Christian vocation to embody heaven here and now.
Revelation 7:9 (New International Version) gives a description of God’s end-time throne surrounded by a diverse “multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language.” Esau McCaulley points out that of those gathered from all peoples, “we do not find the elimination of difference. Instead the very diversity of cultures is a manifestation of God’s glory.”² When I embrace diversity by intentionally supporting and building relationships with people who are different from me, I acknowledge God’s glory manifested in them, and together we experience New Creation in a tangible way.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s wrong for anyone to seek the opinions and thoughts of people like them. Nor do I think it’s wrong to portray Jesus as Caucasian. White people are also made in the image of God. Nevertheless, I’ve learned when one representation of Jesus becomes his dominant image, either in our lives or in culture, it appears to those who are being underrepresented – or unrepresented – that society has welcomed and embraced a savior of exclusion rather than radical inclusion. Likewise, when Christ followers don’t embrace diversity we become less like Christ, The Universal Savior and more like the gallery in which I found myself, muted and unmoving.
-Ben Higdon
1 Gail R. O’Day, “John,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015), 8:486.
2 Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2020), 115.
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