My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is

“My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, then in your imagination God is supposed to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.” Thus spoke John Henrik Clarke, the great historian, teacher, and prophet of the African spirit. His words strike not merely at the intellect, but at the very soul of identity, for they challenge the deepest captivity — not of body, but of the mind. Clarke speaks here of spiritual freedom, of the divine necessity that every people must see God within themselves, not as a stranger’s reflection, but as the living image of their own humanity. In these words is both a warning and a call to awakening: that to see divinity through the lens of another’s power is to surrender the sacred mirror of one’s own being.

From the dawn of civilization, men have created gods in their own likeness, and rightly so — for the divine is the reflection of the human heart at its highest. The Egyptians carved their gods with dark skin and noble faces, radiant as the Nile; the Greeks sculpted theirs in marble, fierce and perfect; the Chinese painted the heavens with ancestors whose wisdom shone eternal. Each people looked upon themselves and saw God smiling back. But when conquest came, and one people’s gods replaced another’s, faith was turned into a weapon, and imagination became the battlefield. Clarke’s wisdom reminds us that domination begins not with the sword, but with the image — the shaping of what the mind believes sacred.

Consider the tragedy of the enslaved African, torn from his land and his memory. He was stripped of his language, his names, and even his gods. In their place was given an image — pale, distant, foreign — and told, “This is your God.” And in that moment, the chains that bound his wrists were not the cruelest; it was the chain placed upon his imagination that cut deepest. For as Clarke says, when a man accepts another people’s image of the divine, he becomes their spiritual prisoner. His soul bends toward the likeness of another and forgets the divine within himself. His prayers rise to a heaven where he cannot see his own face reflected.

Yet history also bears witness to the power of liberation through self-recognition. When the poet and prophet Harlem Renaissance thinkers — men like Langston Hughes and women like Zora Neale Hurston — began to reclaim the image of the Black divine, they restored to a people their spiritual dignity. They wrote, painted, and sang that God walked among them, in their skin, in their rhythm, in their struggle. They showed that to imagine oneself as holy is not arrogance, but restoration — the return to truth. For every soul must see itself as sacred, else it will bow to another’s image and forget its own.

What Clarke speaks of is not limited to race or creed; it is a lesson for all humanity. When you allow another to define your divine ideal, you surrender the highest realm of your being. Every culture, every people, every individual must find the God within — the form, the light, the presence that speaks their language and bears their image. To see divinity as foreign is to live as a stranger to yourself. But to see it reflected in your own heart is to become whole. This is the essence of spiritual sovereignty — the freedom of the imagination to define what is sacred for itself.

And yet, let none mistake Clarke’s teaching for mere pride of color or form. His words are not a call to idolatry, but to identity. For when each person sees God in themselves, they learn to see God in others. Only those who have found divinity within can recognize divinity everywhere. But when people worship an image that denies their own reflection, they are divided — within and without — and cannot live in harmony with the world. Thus, the imagination, rightly guided, is the path to unity; wrongly guided, it is the root of bondage.

So, children of earth and time, heed this wisdom: do not accept the image of divinity handed to you by those who seek power over your spirit. Close your eyes, look within, and see what rises from the silence of your soul. The God that lives in you will wear your features, speak your tongue, walk your roads, and know your pain. Honor that vision. Teach it to your children. For when a people restore the sacred to their own image, they rise from the ashes of servitude and become again the co-creators of their destiny. As Clarke’s words remind us, to reclaim the imagination is to reclaim the throne of the spirit — and that is the first act of true liberation.