Last night, I was flipping through channels and landed on ABC. They were airing The Ten Commandments — for the 52nd consecutive year.
In 1973, that film had me awestruck. The spectacle. The history. The majesty. I saw the people I’d learned about in Bible school come to life. I accepted the story as fact.
Assimilation told me that Charlton Heston was Moses. That Yul Brynner, the Russian-born actor playing Pharaoh, was somehow Black. That the Nubians in the film didn’t fit.
For the next 20 years, I watched that movie religiously — pun intended. I could recite the lines from Dathan to Nefertiri, Joshua to Baka.
When I paused on the channel last night, it was the scene where Seti learns of the foretelling of a Messiah and orders the execution of all first-born Hebrew boys.
Flash forward to this morning. I’m on the treadmill, mid-Sunday workout, 3 miles in. Then KRS-One’s Higher Level blasts through my earbuds. Eighties and nineties hip-hop always stays in heavy rotation during my runs.
“The white Jesus deceived us awhile ago
And Pope Julius the Second paid Michelangelo
I know this happened in 1519, yet
This is the image we can’t seem to forget.”
I knew that bar was about to take me down a rabbit hole.
Now, historically speaking, KRS is in the ballpark. Pope Julius II did commission Michelangelo — but to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, not a portrait of Jesus.
Leonardo da Vinci painted Salvator Mundi (“Savior of the World”) around 1500, portraying Jesus with unmistakably European features — straight brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. The Last Supper? That was between 1495 and 1498. Same pattern.
So where did the definitive white Jesus image come from? That credit goes to Warner Sallman, whose 1940 painting Head of Christ became the most reproduced Jesus image in the world. For Western civilization, that face became gospel.
Then I asked a question that’s been sitting uncomfortably with me for a while — the kind that feels like blasphemy in some circles:
What color is God?
And yeah, I asked ChatGPT. I was honestly a little nervous about the response. Here’s what I got back — unedited:
In most major religious traditions, God is not described as having a color — because God is not a physical being. In Christianity, for instance:
John 4:24 says: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) often describes God with metaphor, not appearance — as fire, light, wind, or a voice.
So, from a theological standpoint, God has no color — at least not one that can be tied to human skin or race.
Sounds like a safe, scholarly answer. Respectable. Defensible. White Christian Nationalists — you may want to stop reading here.
But here’s the reality:
Scripture may not assign God a color — but culture has. And that color is usually white.
European art, especially during the Renaissance, consistently portrayed God as an old white man with flowing robes and a long beard (think The Creation of Adam).
These images weren’t just artistic choices. They were exported globally through colonization, missionary conquest, and Christian education — embedding the image of a white God and a white Jesus deep into the spiritual imagination of the world.
And that matters.
Because when God is imagined as white, whiteness becomes divine.
And if whiteness is divine, then Blackness, brownness, indigeneity — everything else — becomes “other.” Profane. In need of saving.
Reclaiming the Divine Image
Black, Indigenous, and other non-European cultures have long reimagined the divine in their own image:
- Black Liberation Theology says God is Black — not because of melanin, but because God aligns with the oppressed.
James Cone said: “God is not color-blind. God is Black because Black people are being oppressed.” - African spirituality sees God in many forms: male, female, ancestor, animal, spirit.
- Womanist theology, Indigenous traditions, and liberation theology across Latin America all reject the whitewashed God of colonial power.
Bottom Line:
God is not white.
God is not Black.
God is not male.
God is not a being you can Photoshop.
But in a world that has weaponized whiteness and called it holy, asking “What color is God?” becomes a political and spiritual act.
It’s not just about skin.
It’s about truth.
It’s about reclaiming what was stolen — including the divine reflection in ourselves.
Maybe that’s the real question — not what color is God, but whose God is winning?
In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler wrote, “At least three years ago, my father’s God stopped being my God.” I remembered the line again yesterday written in the book published in 1993. The same year KRS-One dropped Higher Level to remind us that we’ve been sold an image that was never ours. The same spirit Erykah Badu channeled when she sang, “Most intellects do not believe in gods but they fear us just the same.”
And I think about Invictus — “I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.”
Maybe the gods we’ve inherited were never meant to liberate us.
Maybe it’s time we stop fearing their gaze and start recognizing our reflection.
If the divine lives in all of us, then it’s long past time we saw ourselves as sacred.
