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One of the great tragedies of progressivism is that its zealots are in the grip of – to borrow William Blake’s phrase – “mind-forged manacles.” Perpetually aggrieved by social injustice everywhere (real or imagined, past and present), leftists are hindered from finding selfless joy, spiritual transcendence, and wonder in the world by ideological blinders that allow them to see only a world of oppression, exploitation, and existential misery.
Take, for example, the famous image above – Italian Renaissance genius Michelangelo’s glorious Sistine Chapel vision of the moment God sparked life into the First Man, Adam. Whether you are Christian or not, no matter how you believe the world came into being and life began, when you look at this iconic work of art – especially when you are in its actual presence – are you not awed by Michelangelo’s humbling talent, and the painting’s majesty and beauty and power? Are you not drawn to ponder the miracles of creation and life depicted in this meeting of the human and the divine?
When Robin DiAngelo, author of the woke bestseller White Fragility, looks at this masterpiece, what she sees are the scourges of racism and patriarchy.
DiAngelo, who is white, is probably second only to Ibram X. Kendi in terms of name recognition among the more academic race hustlers of so-called “antiracism.” Her 2018 book White Fragility sat on the New York Times Bestseller List for over three years. She commands speaking fees of $40,000 or more to lecture self-loathing white progressives about their “unearned privilege” and “racial arrogance.” Her work or interviews, as her website notes, have been promoted in every left-wing media outlet imaginable, from The Guardian and CNN to NPR and the BBC.
White fragility is a condition DiAngelo has diagnosed afflicting white people who resent being called inherently racist, especially by actual racists like DiAngelo and Kendi. White fragility means if you don’t like being falsely smeared as a racist, then your denial is evidence that you are racist. If you are white, your worldview – whether consciously or unconsciously – is racist, and defending yourself against that hateful charge is just your fragility talking. “Antiracism” has made millionaires out of DiAngelo and Kendi.
DiAngelo argues that “White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions.” And “the single image I use to capture the concept of white supremacy,” she declared on a recent podcast, “is Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel God creating man.”
She elaborated: “You know, where God is in a cloud and there’s all these angels and he’s reaching out and he’s touching — I don’t know who that is, David or something — and God is white and David’s white and the angels are white.” She added, “That is the perfect convergence of white supremacy, patriarchy, right?”
DiAngelo’s fields of expertise are Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis. They certainly are not in art history or theology, as is revealed by her stunning ignorance of whose finger is stretching toward God’s in Michelangelo’s painting. The biblical King David was not the first man. The Garden of Eden was not inhabited by David and Eve.
In any case, DiAngelo explained that “I was raised Catholic so I saw many images like that as a child. So I’m sitting in church and I’m looking up and I see these images. I don’t think to myself ‘God is white’ but in a lot of ways that’s power. I don’t need to. God reflects me.”
What DiAngelo’s blinkered vision is excluding from consideration is the fact that artistic representations of God/Christ do not reflect only DiAngelo’s whiteness. Christians in every culture, not just Renaissance Europe, have always adapted their picture of Jesus to reflect themselves and their cultural norms.
Yes, the biblical figures in Michelangelo’s painting are depicted as white. This does not make it racial propaganda. We all know Jesus was a Levantine Jew, not a white man with blue eyes and sandy blond hair like actor Jeffrey Hunter, who portrayed Jesus in the 1961 Hollywood epic King of Kings. “The reason we see Jesus depicted as Caucasian,” according to an article at the Catholic Exchange, “has less to do with white supremacy and more to do with theology”:
The universal nature of His mission historically enabled every culture to see Christ according to their own unique cultural imagery—including race. Since Christ came for all men, people naturally depicted His physical characteristics after their own image and likeness. Since we in the West happen to live in a society grounded in European culture, we have viewed Christ as European. But if we were to travel to other cultures, we would see the opposite—Christ would be depicted according to each respective culture’s ethnic norms.
The images displayed below, helpfully collected and described at the aforementioned Catholic Exchange site, demonstrate this truth. The Christians of ancient Rome, for example, viewed Jesus as a Caucasian, beardless youth:
A Syrian image of Christ from the same era found in what is now Turkey shows a Syrian-looking Christ:
The Armenians viewed Jesus as a traditional Armenian father figure:
The Christ of the 9th century Irish Book of Kells appears distinctly Gaelic:
Here is Christ as an Indian sage from 9th century paintings found in China:
Another Chinese image from the 12th century portrays Jesus dressed and posed as a Buddhist holy man:
The Chinese depiction of Christ as a Chinese sage and his disciples as Chinese students was conventional down through the centuries. Here is a 19th century Chinese image of Jesus and the rich man:
The most popular image of Christ among Filipinos is the Santo Niño:
A Vietnamese Mary holding the Christ child:
A black Christ from Ethiopia:
An image from the Copts of Egypt shows Jesus and His disciples as dark-skinned, some Semitic and some black:
The oldest image of Christ produced in the Americas was created in 1539 by Aztec converts as a gift to the Franciscans of Mexico City. It contains Aztec iconography:
Christians the world over, throughout history, have visualized Christ from their own cultural perspective, no matter their skin color. At the same time they also recognize that Christ came to redeem all of us, and thus His racial identity – and ours – is of no significance.
But the “antiracist” racists view everything through the distorted lens of identity politics; hence, someone like Robin DiAngelo chooses to see, in Michelangelo’s magnificent painting of the Creation of Man, nothing but the white skin the left hates so much.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
I couldn’t even finish the article, I was getting so upset. Why aren’t we sh oot ing? It’s time.
Any artist – Michelangelo included – cannot portray God . No one has seen God at any time, so how can an artist depict Him? Even paintings of Jesus are wrong and they didn’t have cameras in His time on earth. Paintings give us the wrong impression of God and Jesus.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…” (Exodus 20: 4a).
Numbers 21:8-9.
8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.
Exodus 25:18-19
18 And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat.
19 Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. – To be affixed to the Ark of the Covenant.
Here is the verse you pasted with an explanation:
Exodus 20:1-6
And the Lord spoke all these words: 2 I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME. (emphasis mine) 4 Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. 5 THOU SHALT NOT ADORE THEM, NOR SERVE THEM: I AM THE LORD THY GOD, (emphasis mine) mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me: 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Clearly, God only forbade images that are adored and served/worshiped.
The Biblical definition of “idol” is false God.
The first two of the Ten Commandments are:
1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall make no idols.
Worship of false Gods is forbidden and so are images of them.
And that’s that. Depictions of God and Jesus are perfectly acceptable.
Paintings of Jesus are only “wrong” when you see His painted image as being an accurate copy of His physical appearance.
Every culture portrays Jesus reflecting that culture’s own image. This is not wrong. God has given Himself to His people in every nation, tribe and tongue. He came for ALL of us – first to the Jews and now to and for all of us.
The only thing said about Jesus’ appearance is in Isaiah 53:2. His earthly form has no beauty or majesty to arouse our attraction. But Jesus is the desire of all nations (Haggai 2:7). We are not wrong to see Jesus as “one of us” because He is one of us. He is the God Man, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Let all the earth praise Him.
You seem like an moslem.
Paintings and statues are expressions of the artists’ creativity, even when models are used. The same goes for landscapes and objects. Have you ever heard of symbolic representation? Religious iconography brings pleasure, comfort and even joy to people around the world. It can be inspiring.
Since when does a painting have to be based on what’s seen? It can and often is based on what’s imagined. Who’s to say what a wrong impression is? Who’s to say what can be represented in art? You? That fiend Mohammad, who may not even have existed? The unholy Koran?
I prefer Michelangelo’s representation over an empty command not to portray God and so do untold millions of people who aren’t interested in censorship of religious iconography. And the reassurance and contentment that iconography can give isn’t restricted to the Sistine Chapel. I have a candle in a glass cylinder next to me right now that has a painting of Jesus on it with red and white light gleaming from his heart. He’s white but his ethnicity is indeterminate in the painting. The depiction looks like Israeli Jews I’ve seen on TV but he also looks like he could be European, American or any other white nationality. I like it and it brings me comfort. I bought it at a Mexican supermarket nearby so obviously it’s good enough for them, too.
I just lit it and I don’t feel any wrong impression of God or Jesus. It smells nice, too.
I sure don’t care how Christians of different cultures and races around the world depict him. He has worldwide appeal and so does God.
DiAngelo’s stunning ignorance and stupidity extend beyond race and basic Biblical knowledge known to Christian children. God and Adam are white in Michelangelos painting but the angels are bronze skinned.
I wonder if she’d be as bitter and hateful about black Jesus depictions? Nothing seems to cure baseless anti-white racism.
I think I remember how I got my dog to appear with my pseudonym. Go here:
https://gravatar.com
Create an account and access the platforms that allow commenting through it.
Reminds me of a teacher asking his student to point at the moon. Then tells him to not focus on his finger for he will miss all of the moon’s heavenly brilliance. I see this argument over the images of God and Jesus being similar wastes of time and spiritual
focus. The race hustlers are nothing but idol worshipers obsessed with and monetizing skin color and not content of character. I believe I’ve heard that somewhere before.
Her knowledge is limited and she attempts to make fictions into truths. She is not qualified in any way, unless she’s a doctor, to diagnose anyone. And she, clearly, doesn’t really understand the nature of of what all religions teach at their most basic level
So fat the Climate Nutballs haven’t tried to mess these because they cant reach them and those two jerks who tried to mess up the U.S. Constitution I would like to ferment their stupid Climate Revolution by stranding them in the far north away from any signs of Humanity and we have two Wilderness Areas
It’s called “having a chip on your shoulder”…
But it is hopelessness and helplessness….and poisonous
True, so true, and black bitterness month gives them all the vehicle to express it.
Leftists will claim we are both racist for saying what is true.
Every month is black bitterness month.
“GOD is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in SPIRIT…and in TRUTH”
The anti-racist cannot see the spirit that is in a man…they see only skin cells….as if a cell represents the essence of spirit. Yet one skin cell represents an evil murderer and another skin cell represents a Redeeming Saviour. How myopic, indeed blind, is the anti-racist. Like the blind man trying to describe an an elephant by feeling its tail. Pity the worm that must live in the dirt.
“MILLIONS are still watching Black and White TV’s so they only see the World As Black and White. Those same millions are constantly playing with the Knobs trying to take the WHITE PART OUT!” SC
Wasn’t GOOGLE just caught playing with the Knobs?
Why is it that they never do this Color and LGBTQwxyz Change to Mohammad or Islam?
“To the defiled, all things are defiled.”, declares the spot on New Testament psychological evaluation. The reprobate mind guides much of American ‘social thinking’. Without moral plumb line or spiritual compass America is in a quick time march to the dumpster already full of failed nations.
St. Paul gives a perfect analysis of the descent into perdition/reprobation in the first chapter of his gem, “Letter to the Romans”. 1: 18-32. Snowflakes, alphabets, and the “Jesus Gets You” liars need not look it up.
Poor Robin DiAngelo. She is wasting away her life whining about something she can’t change. Race obsessives like her are a monumental waste of time.
Hey Di, if you have a problem with Michelangelo’s white Jesus and a white god, go to the hobby store, buy some paint, some brushes and canvas, set up shop on a park bench near the Brooklyn Bridge and paint to your heart’s content.
No one will notice or care but at least you will be out of our hair. Nice life you have carve out for yourself. At $40,000 per speech the phony race issue is good for the grifters, especially the white ones. After all we can aways use more self-obsessed self hating white women and men.
PT Barnum said, there is a sucker born every minute.
My Robin DiAngelo prediction is that fourty years from now no one will even remember her. Michaelangelo, on the other hand…
She won’t even last forty.
“Is God a White Supremacist?”. God has no body. Cannot be white. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” – John 4:24
Good collection of images. Really liked the Vietnamese Mary and Jesus.
The black racists are an overgrown hateful and ignorant criminal gang.
The death, misery and destruction they’ve caused is out of control.
Their contribution to civilization, humanity, , science, arts and culture = zero
They make their living by demonizing everything they can never be.
Well as we know there are those sorts of people who actually work hard at being unhappy, and they always succeed.
It always appalls me how ignorant academics can throw out a few word triggers and turn it into popular left wing agitprop. But I’ll give DiAngelo credit for her marketing savvy. She knows her product, and she knows her audience. There’s big money in pseudo-intellectual junk food for the mindless left wing masses who eat this stuff up.
It is natural that any large group of people visualize a figure they worship as being like themselves. It is NOT racist. It is simply a quality of belonging to the human species.
It is the message that carries importance, it is not the carrier.
Robin DiAngelo is the secular equivalent of the crackpot ministers on TV promising you a “Get Out of Hell Free” card if you send him a “love offering”.
She’s preaching to the hopeless idiots who want redemption for the sin of being white. Certain sheep deserve to be fleeced.
Like so many in our society today her adherents find it easier to let someone else do the thinking. Why bother going into a church or reading a Bible to learn about all that God and Jesus stuff when Robin can offer you redemption by just admitting you’re a racist.
Thank you Mark
BTW at the time that Michelangelo was painting this image, white Europeans were being enslaved by Muslims, including Muslims from Africa.
A personal recollection: When I was around 7 years old, my father and I were walking through an ethnic neighborhood, and we passed a strore selling religious goods. There was a crucifix in the window whose corpus was Negro, and I said something like, “Don’t they know Jesus was white?” My father just said, “He died for all of us. Let them have their Jesus.” This wisdom was from a blue-collar man with dirty fingernails and no fancy degrees. Snobs like DiAngelo could take a lesson.
By her own admission this DiAngleo menace was raised Catholic. I get tired of people having the benefit of a Catholic church upbringing, and for many, even parochial school, but all they do is complain. No one in my parents house read the Bible, but I did learn some creative was to curse God. Not complaining just stating the facts.
This reminds me of something I saw on Facebook recently.. A guy is trying to sell his “white privilege” card because he hasn’t gotten anything for it. He still has to work hard to make a living and pay taxes to support all the people who won’t work. In it’s place, he’ll gladly take a victim card as that one will afford him many benefits. Seeing yourself as a victim will get you nowhere. No matter your race, life on planet earth is difficult for everyone. Also, it seems these people are raking in a lot of money to push this woke nonsense. Doesn’t that make them “Privileged”
The justification for existence of the Left is the politics of envy of those who would achieve betterment and aspire to freedom of thought and speech.
With so much suffering in the world,
maybe God is a sadist.
One must do a lot of intellectual philosophical acrobatics not to come to that conclusion.
Free Will. Would you rather we were all automatons?
It is difficult to reconcile or explain away all the individual personal suffering and evil in the world throughout history.
If God is a sadist, then it makes some sense.
Why has God tolerated such evil as that of depraved psychopathic murderous Islam for 1400 years ?
Is God sleeping ?
1400 years of Islamic depravity and insanity and murder and suffering could give a sadist deity some pleasure.
Most people do not deserve the suffering being imposed on them.
If God enjoys seeing this suffering, then God is a sadist.
If God does not enjoy seeing this suffering, then why hasn’t he done something to mitigate or stop it ?
If God can not do something about suffering, then it would seem that he is not God.
Therefore, God is a sadist. Q.E.D. …. Quod Erat Demonstrandum
Domenic:
Multi praesumis
You sound a little bit like an angry atheist.
Bad things have been happening here on earth for as long as anyone can remember. Would you have God to intervene all the time to protect us from ourselves and each other, plus every natural disaster, so as not to be called a sadist by the likes of you?
Looking at the big picture, perhaps God has eternity in mind for the crown of His creation. And, if that be the case, all of our suffering and toil ultimately serves to improve each of us spiritually. This type of – “the glass is half FULL” – outlook comes easily to Christian believers who are secure in the knowledge that they will be living forever with God and will witness a final judgment and sentencing of the evil ones from all of earth’s history.
Please consider:
Romans 8:28
Romans 2:5-8
Kent
Kent …
Your point and references are well taken for further consideration.
However, you are incorrect about my being an atheist.
There is a great mystery out there.
Whether that mystery is a good personal God may be debatable.
But to me, observation and the physical evidence, and history unfortunately do not
suggest the existence of a good, personal God.
That is where belief and faith come in.
You’re blaming God for the actions of people.
Besides, the body dies but the spirit is said and written to be eternal. The people who suffered will be redeemed and the evil people who caused suffering to others in life will suffer in spirit in the afterlife. It’s also written that spirits will be imprisoned until they repent and their sins have been absolved. “Purgatory” is the word used to describe that state of being. As far as I know the word was conceived by the Roman Catholic Church.
That’s what’s written in the Bible repeatedly. You can believe it or not but it’s sophomoric to blame God for what people do. He isn’t Superman coming to the rescue, he’s our creator who gave us free Will, and according to the Old Testament and the Mikra, he’s punished wicked humans many times.
Besides, your premise is flawed and false. What you describe is indifference, not sadism. There’s nothing in life or writing to suggest God enjoys human suffering. According to your own false argument, God would directly cause human suffering if he enjoyed it.
I have noticed that so many of these anti racists types who call Donald Trump a racist are all very interested in and speak all the time about his skin tone.
Do these idiots have a Mirror in their house I wonder.
Orange is the new black, right? Orange man bad!
And where will we be when Artificial Intelligence takes over and rewrites history?
We’ll be in Fantasyland, because there is no such thing as an artificial sentience capable of thought and there probably never will be. There is no Skynet to become self aware, take over all the world’s computers (which would accomplish nothing even if it were possible) and build Terminators to hunt us all down and kill us.
Only retards believe A.I. is anything other than a computer program, like the voice “recognition” programs on phones and facial “recognition” programs used by law enforcement agencies. Data in and data out. It’s only stored information, that’s it.
Leave it to computer dorks to have come up with asinine terms like “menu,” “recognition,” “A.I.” and so on for real descriptions like “settings,” “simulation,” “program,” and so on.
We all know God is racist. He loves the whole human race and gave it dominion over the earth and all its creatures. So He favors the human race over whales, bears, bugs, birds, and bass. Racist.
If God hasn’t already committed suicide, he most likely became an alcoholic.
This is excellent writing. I’ve been over the world. I’ve seen this very thing Mark Tapson demonstrates here. Besides, skin color is all varying brown shades. Per the color spectrum- No one is white not even an albino, and no one is black. I haven’t seen one ever. People have glorified God according to their own understanding since the beginning of their creation. This is how human beings process information- with images not words on a blackboard.
IIf DiAngelo had done her homework, she could have pointed out that Adam is depicted as WHITE when he should be RED. The name Adam comes from the Hebrew אדמה, “adama,” “earth,” which comes from the Hebrew “אדום,” “adom,” which means “red.” The soil in Israel is reddish brown.
Genesis 2:7 CPDV And then the Lord God formed man from the clay of the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
I seriously doubt he had red skin.
If God made Adam out of Georgia clay he was red, lol.
You want me to send you some photographs of Israeli soil?
Adama comes after Adam, and not the other way around. The earth is Eretz –
ארץ
In the text, the earth is only named adama after God formulated the plan to create Adam. Previously, it was called eretz.
Also, there is a Jewish tradition which states that Adam and Eve had skin covered with nails.
— “A Midrash (Berèchith rabba 20, 12), playing on the resemblance of the words עור (“skin”) and אור (“light”), tells us that Adam and Eve, before the sin, were covered in light, and that Afterwards, only the skin remained.
According to another midrashic tradition, their bodies were entirely coated in a hard material (keratin?), and all that remained after the sin was that which covered the fingers.
This is why we have the habit, on Saturday evening after havdala, of contemplating our nails in the light of the candle, as if to express our regret at having to leave the delights of Shabbos.
” – Rav Jacques Kohn
Cool, thanks for the info. I didn’t know any of that.
You’re right. It does say “ארץ” in the text. In modern, spoken Hebrew, of ,course, “ארץ” means land, in the sense of a country, and “כדור הארץ” is the plamet earth. “אדמה” means earth in the sense of “soil.”
1-25 : God [thus] made particular species of beasts of the earth, particular species of livestock, and particular species of animals that walk the land. God saw that it was good.
Vaya’as Elohim et chayat ha’arets leminah ve’et habehemah leminah ve’et kol-remes ha’adamah leminehu vayar Elohim ki-tov.
1-26 : God said, ‘Let us make man with our image and likeness. Let him dominate the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock animals, and all the earth – and every land animal that walks the earth.’
Vayomer Elohim na’aseh adam betsalmenu kidemutenu veyirdu bidegat hayam uve’of hashamayim uvabehemah uvechol-ha’arets uvechol-haremes haromes al-ha’arets.
///////////////////////////////////////
It’s in Genese 2-7 that we can read : adamah. I post 2-6 too :
2-6 : A mist rose up from the earth, and it watered the entire surface of the ground.
Ve’ed ya’aleh min-ha’arets vehishkah et-kol-peney ha’adamah.
2-7 : God formed man out of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life. Man [thus] became a living creature.
Vayitser Adonay Elohim et-ha’adam afar min-ha’adamah vayipach pe’apav nishmat chayim vayehi ha’adam lenefesh chayah.
But there is discussion about all this.
Best!
Sorry … adamah is also readable in 1-25..
I read too fast…
Rabbi Marc Meyer : “What the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman) says about the words: Erets and Adamah, and the words: Afar and Adamah.
Regarding the first, he says that Erets is rather the Medinah, that is to say the country, like Erets Kenaan, the land of Canaan, Erets Pelischtim, the land of the Philistines.
Adamah, he said, are the fields.
As in Yeschayahou chap. 1, verse. 7:
ספר ישעיה פרק א
(ז) אַרְצְכֶם שְׁמָמָה עָרֵיכֶם שְׂרֻפוֹת אֵשׁ אַדְמַתְכֶם לְנֶגְדְּכֶם זָרִים אֹכְלִים אֹתָהּ וּשְׁמָמָה כְּמַהְפֵּכַת זָרִים:
Afar is the loose earth, as opposed to Adamah, the hard parts of the earth, such as rocks and stones.
ספר בראשית פרק ב
וייצר …. אֶת הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן הָאֲדָמָה
Human beings are made of flesh (including muscles and all organs) and bones. This is the main thing, because the tendons connect everything and the skin covers everything. Flesh was created from loose earth and bones from rocks and stones.”
Watch a little Babylon 5:
Delenn : That is why Kosh cannot leave his encounter suit. He would be recognized.
Capt. John Sheridan : Recognized? By whom?
Kosh : Everyone.
That was a pretty good show, I watched it when it came out and again not too long ago. They tied the whole thing together.