The Chocolate Heart

Don’t tell my husband’s mom, but I bought her one of those giant boxed hearts full of chocolates for Valentine’s Day.  I really can’t think of anyone who enjoys chocolates more than my mother-in-love.  She can detect chocolate in the house more accurately than a heat-seeking missile – after all, she’s had some eighty-plus years to refine her detection technology. Between her and my chocolate-loving husband, such treats don’t last long in our house, but I think I’ve successfully hidden the chocolate heart out of the range of her highly-refined cocoa-radar … so far.

Since the purchase, I’ve found myself reflecting on a poem from Langston Hughes that my mother-in-love would remember, having lived in New York during the Harlem Renaissance.  It echoes in my head every time I think about that chocolate heart, knowing that it contains a diverse selection of candies that will be received by a woman who’s learned to appreciate each one for what it may have to offer. 

Here’s an excerpt from that poem:

“Molasses taffy,

Coffee and cream,

Licorice, clove, cinnamon

To a honey brown dream.

Ginger, wine-gold,

Persimmon, blackberry –

All through the spectrum,

Harlem girls vary –

So if you want to know beauty’s

Rainbow sweet thrill,

Stroll down luscious,

Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.”1

Hughes has spelled out something that could take a lifetime for many of us of color to embrace – that everything about us can reflect God’s deliberate artistry and handiwork, down to the DNA that determines the way each of us is made.

Hughes so easily lauded the great range of beauty in the women around him as he captured Black life in Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood.  Yet in contrast to Hughes’s celebration of color, I am always at a loss when I hear well-intentioned comments that we in the kingdom should ‘look past’ race to pursue reconciliation.  Denying the personal characteristics of entire segments of people discounts a large part of the different races’ ability (or inability) to function in this fallen world.

Consider:  if the Psalmist had said “I choose not to see the sun, the stars, the moon, or the heavens … it’s all just universe,” there would be no Psalm 19 proclaiming the handiwork of God that evidences Him to all who have eyes to see.  Perhaps what these well-meaning folk really intend to say is that they don’t wish to judge people on the basis of their physical appearance – I can get with that. But to have one’s breath taken away by the colors of the sunset, or enjoy the dramatic red of a cardinal, or the odd wonder of a pink-sanded beach hemming in the vastness of the ocean (none of which bears the image of God), while ignoring racial diversity in people seems inconsistent.  Denying the variations of God’s handiwork in people as they walk, speak and breathe before one’s eyes must certainly be odd to the Creator who offered such variety in the first place. 

Much has been written by and for the Church that (rightly) focuses our attention the non-physical attributes that God says make us beautiful.  I’m always greatly helped by discussion about being conformed to the image of Christ, and of transformation by the renewing of my mind; our nature can’t rightly be discussed independent of its internal transformation by the One who loves us. 

Yet I also know that we women of color can struggle with a constant barrage of media messages that tell us we are physically too much of one thing, and yet not enough of another.  Skin, ‘too light’ for one thing, or perhaps ‘too dark’ for another. Hair, too ‘natural’ for Corporate America, or too ‘relaxed’ to be ‘down with the cause,’ and on and on.  How should I answer my daughters about their appearance when this fallen world constantly says that there is something inherently flawed in the way we look?

Black By Design

My husband remembers the beginning of the Black Consciousness movement in the 1960’s.  It was a positive movement in many respects, because it moved our attention away from the accepted Eurocentric beauty standard and gave us a greater appreciation for the variation in our culture. However, the movement left some empty, in that there was no transcendent understanding (that is, an understanding outside of ourselves) as to why Black was beautiful.  Over the years since, we’ve tried to reconcile our cultural norms with our image in the mirror.  Who hasn’t sung along with Whitney’s catchy delusion, “Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all?” 

Yet only looking inward to understand our world and appreciate ourselves leaves us with the first lie in the garden – that we can know and understand our dignity, identity and significance apart from God’s revelation of Himself.  With our own reasoning as a starting point, we’re left with an idolatrous image of ourselves, and we will always tend to think of ourselves with either greater or lesser intent than is appropriate.  We are all prone to set up our own physical ideals of perfection reflected either in what we are, or in what we are not. Self-reasoning always individuates in a destructive way, not in a way that unifies.  When we only focus inward, someone must be the ideal and someone must be less than that ideal – no one is exempt from this tendency.

The secular fallacy of “self-esteem” has simply led us in a circle back to the cultural shackle that binds us.  We must love the One in whose image we are made first; then we aren't merely “loving ourselves,” but are free to appreciate God’s handiwork.  We learn to respect our features – and the features of others – as the intentional design of a transcendent Creator God who has made us for his kingdom purpose.  We realize that no nose can ever be too broad or too keen, no eye too gray or brown, or as Hughes wrote, no skin too ‘merlot’ or ‘too peach.’  When our identity is properly seated in the Creator and His intentions, even on a purely physical level all people can be appreciated as intentionally designed by the Creator, with equal worth and significance.  For this reason, we are free to value anew what we see both of ourselves in the mirror, and in others – we see beauty all around.

Women of Color and Discipleship

In light of the Black woman’s unique history and our culture’s demeaning preconceptions, a key element to discipling women of color must include a plan that integrates the full person, both body and spirit.

Christ Himself was identified as the coming Savior in part by the particularity of His race.  Though many early church fathers affirmed that the image of God in man doesn’t solely refer to the body, they still affirmed that the body and spirit worked together in relationship both in creation and glorification.  Reformer John Calvin attributed the glory of God to the whole person that “extends to the whole excellence by which man’s nature towers over all kinds of living creatures.  Therefore, there was no part of man, not even the body itself, in which some sparks did not glow,”2 once his or her corrupted nature was restored in Christ.  Augustine wrote that “for some mysterious reason …. the soul needs the body”3 both in life and in glory, and the body and spirit interdependence is evident in both Adam and Christ. Like Adam, we currently exist in temporal bodies bearing a distorted image of God; like Adam, our physical bodies will be sown into the ground; and like Christ, those in union with Him will be resurrected in a perfected and glorified body, fitted for the age to come.  

It is a stretch then, to say that we can just ignore the body; without a body, on this side of glory or the next, a soul is not a complete person.  As I look at the significance of Christ’s total personhood here on earth – his race, gender, ethnicity, time and location of birth, it leads me to ask of him in turn, “To what end and for what purpose was I given this particular body, shaped and colored this way, specifically and intentionally plumbed and wired?”  Only the One who created me can explain my body’s kingdom-building purposes for this time, place and space.  Even though race itself is neither holy nor profane, I can still appreciate its redemption by the Creator, to be received with thanksgiving, awe and reverence.

Renewing Our Minds

Woman of color, your body is uniquely, fearfully and wonderfully made with great care and attention. The diverse “packages” in which God has presented all peoples to the world are his intentional handiwork, and our appearance merely contributes to our unique identity and purpose.  There is a world full of other women of color – and an even broader world full of other races – that desperately need to know of this sovereign God who makes no mistakes among his creatures. 

Renewing our minds by focusing on Christ as Creator will not be a one-time event; mind-renewal is a garden that needs constant tending, and we women of color have a long and weedy history regarding our bodies that needs clearing.  Yet once cleared, it must be tended, or the seeds of either dissatisfaction or arrogance over others will sprout, take root, and choke out our view of Christ.  I dare say that given our unique history, we may be among the seemingly foolish things of the world that have power to confound the self-proclaimed wise; empowered with this knowledge, we can guide others to freedom who are still bound in the idolatry that either leads to self-exaltation or self-doubt.

“So if you want to know beauty’s

Rainbow sweet thrill,

Stroll down luscious,

Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.”

 (To hear a rare recording of Langston Hughes

reciting his entire poem “Harlem Sweeties”, click here.)

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1 Langston Hughes, “Harlem Sweeties” from Collected Poems.

2 Calvin, Institutes I.15.3.

3 Augustine, Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.35.68

Follow Karen Angela Ellis on Twitter @KarAngEllis. and also on her personal blog where she writes on dignity, identity and significance.