Columnist – John Sammon
Racists believe that God is a white man who looks like John Wayne.

But is he?

Is God white? In all the art over the centuries, including his representation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he is portrayed as white, in the case of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, a grey-bearded, fierce-looking giant floating on a cloud.

If God is truly a Caucasian, then racists and Southern Confederate fundamentalist Christians can take delusional heart thinking that they were created in God’s image, and thus are better than people of color. If you look like God and somebody else doesn’t, you must be better. Feeling better than someone else is important to a racist. Very important.

But is God white?

Adam was white according again to representational art. God created Adam. It follows logic that God would create the first man patterned on what God himself looked like. If God is white, and if God is a man.

It begs the question. If God is white and a man and created Adam in his own image, why did he (God) branch out and create so many other people who look very different ie. Africans, Indians, Eskimos, and so on? There are only two possible possibilities. Either God wanted to create non-God-looking people for his creation so Adam’s descendants could feel superior to them (you don’t look like God, I do). In other words, to promote racism. Or, he was dissatisfied with his look-alike doll, and created other types of people in a desperate attempt to find the right mold.

In that case, people of color could feel superior to whites. God didn’t like you. I’m Plan B.

All of this of course ignores the fact that science has proven that the first walking-upright ape-like creatures originated in the gorges of East Africa eons ago in pre-history. It’s always entertaining to see the reaction of religious zealot fundamentalists to the possibility that God looks like this first ape-like hominid.

That begs another question. Does God have to look like Charlton Heston? Very few people questioned would say that he in fact looks like Tiger Woods. Very few would disagree that God has to look impressive, and powerful. And white. No one has ever portrayed God looking like Woody Allen.

But what about women?

They got a bad rap. First of all, God created Eve for Adam, and then kicked them out of the garden because Eve listened to a snake and picked an apple. I mean, I need to eat something big guy. Excuse me for living.

God made a woman the same color as Adam. No one has ever suggested God created Adam and then gave him a black Eve, a mixed-race union. Adam swinging with a black chick? That would have been way too liberal and progressive for the Old Testament.

If, according to the New Testament, Jesus is the son of God, then God must be a man who looks something like Jesus, according once again to artwork, a pale-skinned, bearded Jewish man of the First Century who must have carried an ad-mixture of black blood in his veins. The Levant-area of that time was a polyglot meeting place of cultures and a mixture bowl of races through tribal interbreeding, trade route swaps and other contacts (exchanging your daughter for a prize goat).

This fact has always been a distinct disappointment to pink-skinned Nazis and Klansmen. To them, God looks better like John Wayne. Somebody you can either be impressed with, or afraid of.

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