Shaun King’s Christian-Face Minstrel Show
"The Sermons and Deeds of the Antichrist," (detail), by Luca Signorelli.
The apparently white leftist named Shaun King who gets away with identifying as black produced quite a document for Easter. Every thinking Christian should read it, for the same reason every aspiring doctor should have to perform some autopsies. You need to see where diseases come from and how they work. You especially need to understand how cancer spreads throughout the body.
And the creed that King promotes is exactly, clinically that — a mutated, cancerous parody of Christianity, just as a tumor-ridden arm, or leg, or breast, is a grotesque and deadly mockery of the healthy, original organ. It deserves the same fate, too: getting poisoned by chemotherapy, blasted by radiation, or hacked off with a scalpel. Better to go on living without such an organ than let it drag you down to the grave.
Progressive, leftist, “Woke” Christianity is worse than atheism or paganism. Its rites are less like a secular festival than like a Black Mass, complete with goat’s head, scarlet candles, and orgiastic “communion.”
I trust I’ve made it clear here that I am not a fan.
King Already Has His Reward
With that in mind, I feel it’s safe to reproduce the whole of Shaun King’s text. I invite you to read it self-reflectively. That is, as you scan its lines, examine your emotions. Study how your heart responds to it. Be aware of how the text manipulates your feelings but dulls your thinking, like “medicinal” marijuana. Consider how it taps into tribal resentment and smug self-congratulation. Realize, finally, that it’s not meant to generate real reflection, but to rally a mob’s resentment.
And through it all remember the Pharisees, whom Christ accused of blowing trumpets whenever they’d help the poor. “They already have their reward.”
To see the post on Facebook, click here. For convenience’s sake I reproduce all the text below:
My whole life has been inspired by the Jesus I see in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The white man’s Jesus has always been a farce designed to give them power and take it away from everyone else.
But the Jesus I see in the Bible was a man of the people. He touched the untouchables and healed them.
His friends were outcasts.
He spoke truth to power and broke traditions anytime they got in the way of helping people in need.
And in the end, he became a political prisoner and was ultimately executed by the state.
Nearly half of the world believes that this man rose from the dead. And today we honor this.
But I have long since believed that we BEST honor the living Christ by living how he lived.
How, you may wonder? It’s spelled out in the Book of Matthew. Plain as day.
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, “I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
——
That’s why I have always had side eye for those who celebrate today, but refuse food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, comfort for the strangers and immigrants in strange lands, clothing for those with none, and presence and friendship for those in prison.
Because Jesus, AFTER HE ROSE AGAIN, said when you ignored THEM, you ignored him.
Like an Angel of Light
Powerful stuff, isn’t it? King’s claims pick up just enough DNA from healthy tissue found in the authentic Body of Christ to fool the mind’s immune system. To paint this white-faced “black” man as a pious angel of light. Cancer cells rely on the body’s own functioning blood system to spread themselves from one organ to another. That’s why it’s crucial that we keep a keen sense of smell, not just for B.S. but for brimstone, which is what King’s writing reeks of.
Before I get into the really divisive, insidious sentiments that King expresses himself, let’s address his use of scripture. As the Word of God (and words spoken by Jesus) we’ll find nothing objectionable in the text of Matthew’s Gospel. But we must consider what King means by quoting them here, in this specific context. The Enemy can cite scripture with the best of them, as Jesus attested on His return from the desert. (How else would the Gospel authors know what happened there, if Jesus didn’t tell them?)
Is Shaun King calling for us to perform the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, based on the words of Jesus? Really? With our own time and treasure freely given, out of obedience to Christ? If he were, we ought to applaud him.
But we know from the rest of his (far-left) writing on politics that he isn’t. King uses the words Jesus used to call us to acts of compassion to endorse … political acts by the State, which uses police and prisons to shake down every citizen for taxes, to buy the votes of the poor for the pro-abortion Democrats. When Jesus met with Pilate, did he demand such programs? Did He issue these injunctions then, as a means for Pilate to purchase support from the masses with bread and circuses? Maybe my “white man’s” Bible doesn’t include that chapter.
Charity, Like Marriage, Requires Consent
A stark and absolute chasm marks off voluntary acts of charity from state-managed transfers of wealth (performed on the pain of imprisonment for tax fraud). They’re superficially similar. Each involves moving goods or services from one person to another. Their effects in some cases are comparable. (Although government-sponsored entitlements often do more harm than good.) But then, one could say much the same about the marital act and an act of rape: they are biologically similar, and can cause the same results. The Church had to spend a century teaching the newly baptized Germanic barbarians the difference, by the way. Their pagan customs considered a successfully kidnapped young girl the man’s legal wife.
What about the forcible baptism of Jews? Is that a good idea? If state-enforced charity counts for salvation, why not state-imposed faith? Some Christians of King’s school used to think so. The Church had to step in and insist that such baptisms were wicked, illicit, and utterly invalid. Nor does “compassion” we offer the poor at government gunpoint amount to what Jesus asked for. It won’t get you into heaven to impose taxes on your neighbor, or masses of unskilled immigrants on his community. But it might help you gain political power, which is what King seems to care about.
Still, we haven’t even gotten to the most offensive aspect of King’s reflections, where he indulges himself in race-baiting.
The White Man’s Jesus
I freely concede that millions of white people have been hypocritical Christians. Examples abound. Christ warned us that many would call on His name but not be heard because of how they had lived. It’s easy and fun to denounce the dead and confess other people’s sins (especially when they belong to some other group than our own). So I can comfortably call out the Roman Christians who attended gladiatorial games. I also freely concede that some Spaniards and Portuguese bought black slaves from the Arabs. I will even courageously admit that some white churchmen in ante-bellum America tortured the Bible to justify slavery as God’s intended order.
No skin has yet come off my nose.
But isn’t the message of Christianity that all of us sin? Surely King is not so theologically ignorant as to deny it. (If he is, I invite him to watch a well-made movie called Hotel Rwanda, and get back to me.) So then what does he even mean by the phrase “the White Man’s Jesus”? If he were referring specifically to pro-slavery sermons from the early 19th century, or pro-segregation sermons from the 1950s, I’d agree with him.
Of course, King isn’t. He’s spreading a smear, using tribal resentment to seek political power, and virtue signaling to Woke companies like Nike and Apple whose products depend on slave labor in China today that he … is on their team. Available for corporate retreats and mandatory diversity training sessions at a very reasonable rate.
You know, just like Jesus.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”
