If Santa Is Not White; then God is Not a Christian

The hoopla over the statement that Megyn Kelly from Fox News made concerning the racial appearance of Santa Clause should not cause alarm.  The statements which she made should actually cause us to think more intently about ourselves, because it’s not just Megyn Kelly that sounds ignorant, many of us suffer from the same disease.

It’s the disease of microcosmic thinking. 

Why, as a nation that was birthed out of the pains of diversity, do we as Americans have such a microcosmic mindset.  The way we encounter life is based upon our cultural, ethnic, environmental and religious connections and then most of us turn these small connections into the way which we believe the world should operate as a whole.  When it does not happen in such a way, we criticize, judge, and disregard the so called “other” because we feel ultimately that our small little world is right.  Then, when our little world is challenged, we become frightened, offended, and instead of trying to understand we close the door.

 I am not agreeing with anything Megyn Kelly stated, but the reason why it caused such an emotional upheaval is because many were offended at how someone could claim ownership over an entity that holds humanity’s universal goodness in its pocket.  A cultural icon that represents hope, promise, and innocence…and saying only one ethnic group could represent such characteristics is a slap in the face to the democracy of America.

But it’s amazing how we do this same thing with the image of God.  Many Christians believe that they have the one true God and many Muslims regard the way they worship God as the light of what Allah truly embodies.  God is neither Christian nor Muslim, but like Santa, we want God to be what we are because we have attached our very self to the nature of who, what, and how God is portrayed.  For instance, it’s like a child that sees their mother for the first time offer love to another person and that child can’t believe that their mother can offer love to another person that is not them.

But God is God all alone without the help of any human being.  If every Christian, Jew, and Muslim vanished, God would continue to be God and operate as God. 

What am I saying?

We, as human beings whether American or not, must not believe our own hype and importance so much that we lack understanding and compassion for the ways of another.  We must stop looking at the world through a mono-colored lens that coats another’s experience with judgment and criticism and began to put on multi-colored stain glassed lenses which would help to develop us into the humanity we are so fighting to become.

We can talk about Megyn Kelly all day long, but why, when I am sure many of you do the same thing. Maybe it’s not about Santa, but maybe it is about God, homosexuality, education, economy…you have placed your foot on something and claimed it to be only one way while disregarding the voice, experiences, and humanity of another.

Now that does not represent the holiday spirit.  Does it?