Rejecting Jesus

The eurocentric Jesus has brought despair, disenfranchisement, and death to communities of color. For the sake of their own salvation, these communities must reject the genocidal Jesus who destroyed Indigenous peoples who refused to bow to the European white God; the capitalist Jesus who justified the kidnapping, rape and enslavement of Africans; and the neoliberal Jesus blind to the impoverishment of most of the world so a privileged few in the global North can call themselves “blessed.”

The Jesus of present-day presidents and politicians—conservatives and liberals—procures the maintenance of U.S. global hegemony.

This U.S. Jesus is an angel of shadows that disburses theft and death in its wake. This white Jesus, as James Cone reminded us, is satanic. This MAGA Jesus is the patron of empire.

To bow your knee to the Jesus of the United States is to embrace a nationalist, authoritarian, militarized figure. Such a Jesus is incapable of saving anyone.

This is a mute Jesus, lacking the capacity to utter a sound of protest over the conditions of the dispossessed, supporting policies that are death-dealing. Such a U.S. Jesus is, in reality, an anti-Christ.

As long as communities of color submit to a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus who is silent about what it means to live on the margins of EuroAmerican power and privilege, they will continue worshiping the symbolic cause of their oppression.

The purpose of engaging in religious and theological critical thought concerning the personhood of Jesus is not to perceive the mysteries of the metaphysic, nor to deductively ascertain a list of dogmatic truths and ethical acts to unquestionably follow. It is to serve humanity by transforming normative oppressive social structures into the more justice-based reality Jesus preached.

After all, we all approach the biblical text through the lens of our biases and prejudices. Because all Christologies are contextual, not all contexts in which Jesus is constructed are liberating for disenfranchised communities. Jesus may be desirable, but not all Jesuses are beneficial.

There is no one true Jesus that can be objectively known; there exist only subjective interpretations of Jesus. The social, cultural, political, and global economic power of EuroAmericans allows them to impose their subjective interpretation of Jesus as the objective Truth (with a capital “T”) upon everyone else. 

What would happen if, rather than denying that we do indeed create Jesus in our own image, we embrace this methodology? What if we recognize that there is no such thing as a universal Jesus upon which every Christian can agree? What if we radically employ a hermeneutical suspicion of Christology—not simply to debunk the normative Eurocentric understanding of Jesus, but to construct a new Jesus?

Reading the biblical text from the margins has the potential to free the scriptures from the institutionalized Eurocentric church. It does this by reinterpreting the text through a more liberative lens.

For centuries, EuroAmericans have created Jesus in their own image. Why, then, can we not embrace a liberative Jesus created in our and our communities’ images? The difference is that while EuroAmericans claim objectivity, I recognize that my Jesus—or better yet, my Jesús—is definitely subjective.

To say “no” to oppression and its symbolic representation—the Eurocentric Jesus—becomes the first step toward saying “yes” to self and “yes” to liberation.

Liberation has never been given. No oppressive system has ever voluntarily abdicated its power, possessions, or privilege. The Jesus of the oppressed—who signifies liberation—can inform strategic political praxis that requires implementation for humanity’s struggles.

But in the matrix of Jesuses, which one is closer to the true Jesus of liberation?

I will argue for an epistemological privilege concerning reality that is unavailable to those who have no need to know what is occurring among those relegated to their underside. Any interpretation concerning who Jesus was and what his character was that emanates from the margins of society is probably closer to whatever we choose to define as truth (always with a lowercase “t”).

This means that in the many biblical interpretations concerning Jesus that exist, I make a preferential option for minoritized communities. This isn’t because they are holier or smarter, but because their understanding of Jesus, rooted in their community context, resonates.

Living on the underside of white supremacy means we can read and understand the biblical text better. We know what it means to be marginalized people attempting to survive within a Eurocentric social context designed to benefit whiteness at our expense.

For Jesus to be congruent with the quest for liberation from oppressive structures, the Jesus of the United States must be rejected. In its stead, we, who are Christians, must unashamedly embrace Jesús who is Latine, or the Black Jesus, or the Indigenous Jesus, or the Asian Jesus, or the queer Jesus.

Only a Jesus from the underside of history, then and now, can save. If EuroAmericans wish to pass through those pearly gates, then they must put away their white Jesus idol and learn also to worship the Jesus of the dispossessed.

Whoever this Jesus ends up being, it is a Jesus whose mission is to give life—and give life abundantly (John 10:10). Jesus, as the symbolic representation of Emmanuel (“God with us”), resonates with the existential experience of disenfranchisement and commits, in solidarity, to walk toward a more just social order.

I recognize that not all minoritized communities are monolithically dispossessed. Still, I am simply disinterested in writing or making excuses for ontologically “white” people of color complicit in the marginalization of others from their own community.

The Jesus I am constructing is a woke Jesus focused on the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the immigrant, the infirm, and the incarcerated—a Jesus who stands in solidarity with the disenfranchised, including those EuroAmericans seeking their own liberation and salvation from the structures designed to privilege whiteness, yet nonetheless devour the poor.

Only the Jesus of the oppressed saves.