When God Was Black

WHEN GOD WAS BLACK By BOB HARRISON With JIM MONTGOMERY ZONDERVAN PUBLISHING HOUSE GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN WHEN GOD WAS BLACK © 1971 by Zondervan Publishing House Grand Rapids, Michigan Second printing November 1971 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 70-156250 All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publishers, with the exception of brief excerpts in magazine reviews, etc. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS 1. When God Was Black 2. The Walls Come Tumblin' Down 3. Who Would Room With a Negro? 4. When Black Was Green 5. A Little Black Boy Goin' Nowhere 6. Growing Up Wasn't Easy 7. When God Was Sneaky 8. Up Off the Floor 9. Pre-Fab Walls 10. Africa the Beautiful 11. With Billy Graham in Chicago 12. Five Fantastic Years 13. Joseph in Egypt 14. How It Could Have Been 15. What Do Blacks Really Want? 16. Who, Me, Lord? 17. lt's a Brown World After All 18. The Devil Didn't Like It 19. Gideon's Army 20. But What Can I Do? 21. Once Around Jericho When God Was Black Not too long after our Lord's ascension, an Ethiopian believed on Jesus Christ and was baptized. And God became black. In the nineteenth century white missionaries went to parts of Africa knowing that their life expectancy was only a few months. They came and they died and many Africans put their trust in Jesus Christ. And again God was black. In a rough-hewn, crowded shack in America, a black slave, having nothing in this life but hopelessness and chronic, bone-weary fatigue, found his release in Jesus Christ. From being a miserable slave he became the child of a King. As the Scripture had promised, the lowly slave was filled with the Spirit of God. God took up His residence in the black slave. The black body became the temple for the Holy Spirit of God. God's exterior was black. So God was not only white. Or brown or yellow or red. God was black as well. In the segregated streets of the South, in the ghettos of Watts and Hough and Newark and Detroit, and in a few - a very, very few - wealthy and influential homes, wherever Jesus has found a home in the heart of our Negro citizens, God is black. What's it like when God is black? Are the prejudices swept away, the doors flung open, the awesome power of God just as effective? I think I can tell you. Because I am black and God lives within me, too. I'd like to tell you my story of what it's like when God is black. The Walls Come Tumblin' Down I also happen to be a musician. So occasionally I'm asked to sing the spiritual about Joshua and the walls of Jericho. It's not hard to sing this number with "soul." The song always reminds me that walls have come tumblin' down in my life, too. Economic walls, social walls, walls of ministry for Jesus, and yes, walls of my own making. Walls of frustration and hatred and prejudice. Don't think that these walls just disintegrated. The battle scars are there. And it has not always been a boost to my ego when "Jericho" has been requested. Sometimes facial expressions in the audience say this: "Isn't that a picture? That cute little darkie singing a Negro spiritual." But the walls have come crashing down. By now I've sung and preached on every continent. I've rubbed shoulders with, I've prayed with, I've ministered with the great and near-great of the evangelical world. I've gone where no other or few other evangelicals of my race have gone. The walls - that have kept most Christian blacks from evangelical schools, pulpits, camps, mission societies, Christian organizations and other places automatically open to those of white skin - have all broken down for me. Along the way I've frequently been told, "Bob, it would be all right if all the blacks were just like you." I know this is meant as a compliment, and I accept it as such. But no black appreciates such a remark. I know I don't. Every time, it hurts. It cuts to the bone. It grieves me deeply. For I know that I have made it only because by the grace of God I have many things going for me. There's that musical talent. I've also been a college athlete. The Lord has given me an outgoing personality as well as extraordinary physical energy and drive and perseverance. And most of all, I was brought up in a godly, loving home that protected me from many traumas which others of my race have suffered. So what my well-meaning white Christian brothers are really saying is this: "Bob, we would accept all Christian blacks in our churches if they were all extremely gifted and personable and free from the scars that have marred their childhood and youth. But because most black Christians are the product of their environment (as of course most whites are, too), we don't want them in our churches and in our pulpits and in our schools." This hurts me because I can't leave behind my many friends and relatives who haven't bad the same advantages that I have enjoyed. If I am accepted only because I am a triple threat, as it were, and my friends and loved ones are left behind because they are quite ordinary, in reality I'm still not accepted either. The walls have come tumblin' down for me, for which I can only praise God. But for hundreds of thousands - even millions - of my fellow black American Christians, the walls are still there. For them, when God is black, God is Jim Crowed into a corner. As I write this, I want to make it plain that I'm not just talking about integration in our churches. It might be that in some places integrated congregations would be useful and helpful and a wonderful testimony to the power of Jesus Christ. In other places, such integration might be completely pointless. What the black wants is to feel that his place of worship is not being dictated to him. He wants to feel that he can enter any church he chooses, black or white. But integrating congregations is relatively beside the point. What is really significant is that millions of black Christians in this country represent a vast potential for the cause of Christ. Here is a host of believers who can have a vital and significant part in the evangelization not only of the blacks and whites of America but also of a great throng of people around the world. More and more, it is becoming a disadvantage to be a white-skinned American overseas. More and more, a black exterior is a passport to effective ministry among the world's two billion non-white peoples. This potential has been largely untapped, primarily because the color of the skin of these American Christians has kept them from the places and the organizations and the experiences whereby they could learn and grow and mature into effective witnesses and servants for Jesus Christ. When God the Holy Spirit is black, He is quenched. The black Christian (with token exceptions) is told by the white believer: "You can't study the Bible in our schools." "You can't go to the camps where white kids are challenged to give their hearts to Christ, to enter the ministry, and to go to the mission fields of the world." "And certainly, Holy Spirit-with-a-black-surface, you can't minister and teach and preach outside of your ghettos." When God the Holy Spirit is black, He is accordingly grieved. So I am writing this book in the first place to white Christians so that they might understand what they can do to take advantage of this potential. So that they can understand what has been denied the Negro Christian and why so far he has been unable to take his place alongside his white brother in the great cause of fulfilling our Lord's commission to us all. So that they can see wherein they are sinning and thereby grieving and quenching God who dwells in the black man. I am also writing to my black brothers in Christ. Why do we cry over discrimination and poverty and blackness? Why do we grieve and quench the Holy Spirit by our self-pity and self- deception and even by our unconcern and laziness? God lives in us, too. God is black. I’m black, too. So I hope and pray that this encounter with my own crushing defeats and ultimate victories - and the account of my own struggles to let God live through me - will wake us all up. Blacks and whites. There's a big world out there hungering to know Jesus Christ. Let's allow God to use all the forces He has available. Let’s quit believing that God is second rate when He is black. Who Would Room with a Negro? Just to show you how naive I was, I was over twenty years old before I realized it made any difference among Christians that I was black. I don't mean in the secular sense, of course. When I was a lad growing up in San Francisco's Fillmore district the ghettos were just forming.

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