The way we equate black with sin is not a biblical concept. What got me thinking about this is when I was in Philly and singing this Sunday School song that goes something like this:
If I had little white box to put my Jesus in... Then the second verse goes like,
If I had a little black box to put the devil in...
And while singing this, surrounded by african-american kids it made me realize the apparent negative connotation. The american culture (as well as Brazilian from my experience and likely in Europe as well) the races are wrongfully divided into colors. Somehow we equate white as being clean and black as being dirty/unclean.
What does the Bible say? If you do a search on the color BLACK (or lack of color technically) you'll find that it is never used as sin, but only described as the color of hair, sheep, etc.
So what color is sin in the Bible? You might be familiar with David's Psalm where it goes "white as snow~ white as snow~ though my sins, were as BLACK" ... no, not black but SCARLET. Sin in the Bible when given a color is the color SCARLET (a dark red) and not Black. God already knew the "color" issue involved in race.
I know I'm just barely scratching the surface of this but I'll mention another point. Until the 19th century MOST of the tension in modern world were Social Strata, and not racial (skin color) issues. It was about the Rich and the Poor, the Royalty and the Peasants, the Knights, the Farmers, the Pharisees, the Laymen.
anyhow... something for us to think about as Christians regarding the color of Sin.
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3 comments:
I agree... I felt really uncomfortable when I was singing the Sunday school song in Philly, too, thinking this might give the African-American kids the kind of thinking that they are naturally more vulnerable to sins because their skin color is black. I don't know from when we began to associate the sin with black color.
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You write: "Until the 19th century MOST of the tension in modern world were Social Strata". How about the tension due to religious differences? Faction fights erupted within the Christian church almost as soon as Jesus ascended, and have hardly stopped since.
Nice blog BTW, and congratulations on being so open about your faith.
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