Jesus lived in a region where people of many languages, ethnicities and religions lived side by side, mostly in peace. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, a Roman province governed by Herod the Great located in the region of Palestine along the eastern bank of the Mediterranean Sea. He grew up in the town of Nazareth in Galilee, the province just north of Samaria. His short ministry took him all around Palestine as far north as the cities of Tyre and Sidon, located in modern southern Lebanon just north of the border with Israel and as far south as Jerusalem in Judea, and west into Perea located east of the Jordan River connecting the Sea of Galilee to the north with the Dead Sea to the south.
Jesus, having lived and traveled among diverse populations of different cultures and religions, was exposed to people speaking one or more languages such as Aramaic (Jesus’ native tongue) and Hebrew, the primary languages of native Jews, as well as Greek and Latin, the official languages of the Roman Empire. We would expect such an outspoken, radical preacher like Jesus to have something to say about getting along with people of different colors, cultures, ethnicities and religions. After all, was he not the one who famously said “love thy neighbor”? (Matthew 22:39)
Yes, Jesus definitely had an opinion regarding peoples of other nations, ethnic groups and religions. But first, let’s go back in time a thousand years or so before Jesus using the Old Testament as our source. According to the book of Genesis and again in Deuteronomy, of all the peoples on the planet, God chose a tiny population of primitive, superstitious, illiterate peoples living in tents and wandering around a remote part of the Eastern Mediterranean, to which he would reveal himself and form a covenant with: The Israelites, the ancient ancestors of modern Jews.
After making such an excellent choice, from that time forward the God of the Old Testament did whatever was necessary to help these, his special chosen people: That was to conquer or exterminate any tribes, nations, ethnicities and races competing for land and scarce natural resources in the area, either by inflicting death and destruction himself or by commanding the armies of his special people to inflict genocide and ethnic cleansing on his behalf.
Centuries later, when God decided to create himself in human form in the body of Jesus, the Christ, the self-proclaimed Son of Man, it was only natural that God make himself a member of his special group, the Jews. This would suggest why Jesus claimed his mission on Earth was to preach the message of salvation only to his chosen people, the Jews, to the exclusion of millions of “inferior” peoples. Like any Jew of his period, Jesus labeled all non-Jews somewhat pejoratively as Gentiles, (not to be confused with the adjective gentle) meaning “anyone who is not a Jew” or to denote any man who has not had his foreskin removed in that lovely Jewish tradition.
Jesus, having been born a Jew, was expected to be well educated in the Law of Moses and to observe the Law. This is verified from time to time throughout the Gospels when Jesus prefaces a challenge to the Law with, “It is written...” and then commences to quote the Torah. His knowledge and faithful observance of the Torah would have included these explicit warnings against dealing with Gentiles:
A gentile midwife was not to be employed for fear of the poisoning of the baby.
The gentiles should be dealt with caution in cases of using them as witness in criminal or civil suit.
The gentile does not honor his promises like that of a Jew.
The laws of the Torah were not to be revealed to the gentiles, for the knowledge of these laws might give gentiles an advantage in dealing with Jews.
Naturally, when Jesus chose his twelve apostles, he did not choose both male and female, Jew and Gentile, from surrounding nations, but twelve male Jews to be his apostles. When Jesus sends his disciples out to spread the “good news”, he instructs them to preach only to the Jews; that his apocalyptic message is not to be wasted on the vast majority of the world’s population, the Gentiles, especially those nasty Samaritans:
“Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel [Jews] and preach as you go, saying: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand [world is coming to an end soon].’” (Matthew 10:5)
Furthermore, Jesus’ actions were consistent with his words. Once, when preaching in the districts of Tyre and Sidon, a crowd had gathered around Jesus. Among them was a Gentile woman, a loathsome Canaanite, who created a ruckus as she was trying to push closer to Jesus, shouting that her daughter is possessed by a demon and is in desperate need of an exorcism. Jesus notices this inferior woman and yet chooses to ignore her pleas. The woman is persistent and now the disciples want Jesus to send her away. He agrees, speaking to the crowd and for the Gentile woman to hear, that his message of salvation was meant only for God’s chosen people, his fellow Jews, so that all non-Jews can leave. But the despairing woman pushes forward, pleading with him to heal her daughter. It is then that ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’ loses his patience and, showing his obvious disgust for this non-Jewish woman, insults her directly, snarking that he will not squander a precious miracle on her as it would be like “taking food from children and throwing it to dogs”. This “dog” then begs him saying that “even dogs deserve the crumbs from their masters table.” With that, Jesus finally relents and heals her daughter. What a guy! (Matthew 15:21-28, Mark 7:24-30)
This tradition of animosity against non-Jews was to be expected from any Jew, including Jesus, as it was commanded by God. Volumes of conservative rabbinical commentary before and after Jesus support this attitude of “reverse anti-semitism”. Even today, each day upon waking Orthodox Jews are to recite the liturgy that begins, “Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who has not made me a gentile.”
Although I was somewhat familiar with the Bible story of the Canaanite woman from my youth, I recall hearing only the Christian party line spin of how this story demonstrated Jesus’ unconditional love of all people. I recall a poster tacked to the wall in our Sunday school classroom showing a bearded, very white smiling Jesus in his signature white robes standing with his arms open wide with children of various races gathered around his loving arms. Together, our class would hold hands and sing:
Jesus loves the little children;
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Yet now, after taking time to actually read the words of Jesus and learn of his actions, I can see clearly that Jesus, although perhaps not qualifying explicitly as a racist, was certainly xenophobic, discriminatory and divisive when it came to non-Jews.
So how do modern Christians deal with these “difficult” words from the mouth of their kind and loving Lord and Savior? As always, they conveniently downplay or simply ignore the bad bits of Jesus’ behavior and promote only the words that fit their current, personal morality. In this case, the popular rebuttal is what Christians call “The Great Commission”. This allegedly occurred after Jesus had been executed and, having been dead for three days, miraculously came back to life, appearing in the flesh to his astonished disciples. In describing this event the writers of Matthew and Mark took the opportunity to correct the Jesus’ instructions given when he was alive. Now, so they say, the zombie Jesus commanded his disciples to “go out into the world and preach the gospel to every nation”. (Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:15) Apparently Jesus had to die to change his mind.
As well, and decades later, Paul of Tarsus, the self-appointed “thirteenth” apostle, makes corrections to Jesus’ disturbing remarks about Gentiles, opening up his ministry to non-Jews. Since then, Christians have happily used Paul’s words as authoritative whenever convenient, even when his words conflict directly with those spoken by the God-man himself. But we’ll save the Paul vs Jesus debate for another time.
To summarize, Jesus preached that the world was coming to an end within the lifetime of his generation. He was sent by his father, the God of the Jews, to save the Jews— and only the Jews—from this apocalyptic event, and to Hell with everyone else.
Here is my question to Christians: Should you not expect that an allegedly divine, half- man, half-god, with the power to save all mankind from imminent, horrific destruction, not to mention eternal incineration, would use his supernatural powers for the good of all, offering salvation to all peoples without racial, cultural, ethnic or religious prejudice?
As we learned in Part 2 in our discussion of slavery, Jews were permitted and encouraged to capture and hold non-Jews in bondage for life. Perhaps Jesus’ spoken disdain for non-Jews; those people of different religion, culture, and ethnicity gives us insight into his disturbing ambivalence toward slavery.
You have now read Jesus’ words and deeds in regards to the highly charged topic of racism. So was he a racist? You decide.