The Color of Christ

On November 19, NPR's Fresh Air ran an interview with Edward Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. I don't know Mr. Blum's theological training, but he offered a profound insight into idolatry when he said,

And so when the Klan wants to justify violence, when they want to justify exclusion, they don't have Biblical texts for it. They just don't have written texts. So they have to turn to image. And so the belief, the value that Jesus was white provides them an image in place of text.

In the American South, the white majority needed a version of Christianity which permitted it to oppress racial minorities, and used images, or more precisely idols, to create it. In medieval and contemporary Roman Catholicism, images of the Virgin Mary have promoted a popular Mariology utterly without support from Scripture. Of course, the phenomenon isn't limited to Klansmen and Catholics. As any presbyterian pastor who's removed images of Christ from a Church building can tell you, those pictures have a profound grip on all Christians' theological imagination.

In God's providence, an answer I recently wrote in my role as a doctrinal correspondent is featured on the hope page of opc.org this week, in which I discuss why God no longer gives supernatural revelations. That argument is firmly grounded in the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, which doctrine, it seems to me, also rules out any need for images. Just as new "revelations" tend to lead people away from the truth of the Gospel, so do idolatrous images of our Savior.

As Hebrews 1:1-2 says, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world." Since the Son has spoken, and since his Word is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, what need have we of images?

Another dystopia averted

I subscribe to the BBC news feed so I can stay informed on topics the American media is afraid to cover, and boy, am I now relieved I do. I have had some sleepless nights since Mrs. Curmudgeon picked up a used Roomba from eBay, but now I, with Philip K. Dick's androids, can blissfully dream of electric sheep. The Cambridge Project for Existential Risk will, in the words of the BBC, study the "risk of a robot uprising wiping out the human race." Let's hear it for bold, and absolutely necessary, scientific inquiry.

As Mrs. Curmudgeon is prone to ask, how do I get any work done?

 

The Million Puppet March

For those in need of a whimsy fix the day before the U.S. election, courtesy of Ma Curmudgeon.

What Would Lincoln Do?

Somebody at Time no doubt thought themselves very clever for having put that question on the cover last week. (Perhaps not surprisingly, it wasn't answered between the covers; as the brief discussion of Lincoln was merely a pretext to run a fawning piece on Daniel Day-Lewis, the cover which appeared in the rest of the world would have been more honest. Who knew that shouting all one's lines makes one a great actor? Other than Sean Penn, I mean.)

However, I actually ask that question with some frequency. Ma Curmudgeon once told me it's unreasonable to expect every politician to be Abraham Lincoln, but I don't know why. Lincoln's greatness was abetted by his savvy political instincts and an astonishing mastery of American rhetorical craftsmanship, but it was grounded in a clear understanding of the American experiment in maintaining civil liberties through representative government, as articulated by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. For all their elegance and eloquence, neither of those documents is particularly hard to understand. In that sense, in comprehending and furthering just what this country is all about, anyone could have Lincoln's clarity of vision and purpose. And frankly, anyone running for national office should.

I voted on Tuesday, instead of waiting for Election Day, mostly to put myself out of my misery. I didn't listen to the presidential debates because I'm working on not screaming at the radio so much, and I expect that I'll also take a pass on the victory speech delivered by whoever. I'll wager two things about that speech, though: it will make reference to Lincoln and/or his words, and will reflect a complete inability to grasp his understanding of this great country of ours.