God is now black and our evolving consciousness

One of the best articles I have read of late is “God is Black” by Michael Kinsley. Aptly, it appeared in Time Magazine’s inauguration preview issue of Obama becoming president (January 26 print edition), an issue which focused on the new US president’s policies and “the burdens that await him”.

It was a delight and a pleasure to discover that many voice-overs, ranging from CNN to the narratives of best-selling audio CDs of the Christian Bible are all done by black celebrities like Samuel Jackson and Cuba Gooding Jr. James Earl Jones does the VO for CNN’s “THIS … is CNN” and I kind of wondered if he gets a royalty for each time his booming voice is heard before we see the world’s news through the media’s Cuba Gooding Jr. Nah, it was probably a once-off fat check, and I wonder how much each rich, resounding word CNN decided his magnificent voice was worth.

Look at the lexical items above: rich, magnificent, booming, resounding … there is a very special quality to that kind of voice which only some blacks seem to have, no one else, and definitely gives their singing and acting a unique quality.

Kinsley is so right when he says President Obama is a fine orator but he ain’t worth a dime when it comes to VOG (Voice of God voice-overs or biblical narrators) as his voice just does not sound “black” enough. That voice is powerful, arresting, cutting through to the soul. Arguably the best example is Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech.

Whites just can’t seem to do the God thing at all any more. For example, we have yet another prophet of the apocalypse to come, Ronald Weinland, grandly appointed as God’s emissary, who has had countless divine revelations about how the world is going to end but he has to give his books away for free. Whatever James Earl Jones got for three words from CNN would have Weinland eating his heart out.

To me some of the most magnificent voices come from black singers, and a personal favourite is John Lee Hooker. My wife, the Chook, hates it when I spend hours listening to him grinding out the blues. His voice has the depth of a double bass, several octaves down, resonating through my being. The likes of Hooker capture the soul of what it means to be alive, the richness and bluesiness of life in a way that whites by and large just cannot put together.

There are a few exceptions to prove the rule, and one is the Irish musician Van Morrison, whose duets with John Lee Hooker on songs like “It serves you right to suffer” gets the hair hackling on my back (yes, personal confession, I have a few tufts on my shoulders and upper back). Mind you, if anyone could compete when it comes to singing, it is the Irish. I know, I am one and love singing and some of my best memories are sessions of soulful singing with my ancestral countrymen in pubs in Ireland. They also have that indefinable soul.

Samuel Jackson is easily one of my favourite actors. His role in Pulp Fiction as a Bible-quoting gangster was superb. The VOG that he did, when quoting from the Bible and the piercing prophetic gaze on his face were just perfect. And Will Smith can act in anything, from a send-up comedy to thrillers where he saves the world to reality dramas like The Pursuit of Happyness. Morgan Freeman was superb as God in Bruce Almighty and in the follow-up, capturing the patient, infinite wisdom and wry love of God as He is often presented in contemporary church teachings.

Increasingly, on a global level, be it the president of the US, VOGs or basketball stars (ask any basketball-mad Chinese student here in Shanghai, China, where I live who give themselves English names after huge, African-American slam-dunk heroes), at a subconscious level we are being conditioned to believe that the black voice (THIS … is CNN) and the black face represents leadership, guidance and role models.

This ties in with the evolution of our species, which, as the likes of Eckhart Tolle eloquently argue is the Power of Now, has to happen if we are to survive as a species. Evolutionists often argue that organisms need to take quantum leaps that morph the entire structure of the organism within weeks or even less if that species is to survive.

The spiritual American philosopher Ken Wilbur elegantly argues that point in his brilliant A Brief History of Everything. He says that a walking species that needs to learn flight cannot walk around the jungle for eons with its upper limbs half-arm and hand (a fight mechanism) and half wing (a flight mechanism) while the new limb evolves. Every day, because it can neither fight or take flight, the basic survival responses, the hapless creature becomes dinner. A limb that is neither wing or fighting claw or foraging tool is useless. It therefore follows that the evolution required for the limb was miraculously almost immediate. We see this happening in species that rapidly undergo sex changes in order to survive.

This kind of sudden evolution is surely going to happen to us. Perhaps it has already begun. Now I don’t mean stuff like the X-Men, though I would love to have Wolverine’s self-healing ability and adamantium skeleton and claws. Just imagine if someone attacked me, I raise my fists, and (to use the Marvel comic sound for Wolverine’s claws appearing) snikt! My claws are as long as my forearms and sharper than razors. My attacker flees. Way cool.

I am talking about an evolution of our consciousness. Einstein said, “the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”. Our consciousness has to evolve if we are to survive what we are doing to this planet. And our other biggest problem is that we just cannot get along with one another. We have been proving that for millennia. Again and again we have to blast one another to smithereens, indulge in regular ethnic cleansings, form groups based on skin colour or creed to protect that group and so forth. Racism is clearly one of the biggest behaviour patterns in this very human problem. Thus, the change in perception of God, increasingly using black people to depict God could be the beginning of our new consciousness.

I just can’t wait to see that evolution starting to take place at a leadership level in South Africa. Hah, bet you some readers were wondering when I was going to throw in that punch line.