|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| ok, so i have thursday off of work (i think) so i plan to have another substantial post then. it's usually controversial (though i fail to see why), so i'm going to go ahead and name the topic now. The Bible is NOT inerrant. but don't worry. i'm going to tell you why that's not so scary/bad. just don't crucify me before you hear what i have to say about it. | | |
| I had this discussion with my mom a couple of weeks back and was curious what anyone who reads this might think.
I do not like pictures of Jesus. I grew up in a church that had a massive stained-glass picture of the glorified Christ behind the pulpit. So every time we looked at the pastor, we could glance up a little and see the object of our worship and affection. It seemed nice at the time.
I have come to despise that picture because I now see it in a new light.
Have you ever seen an ugly picture of Jesus? I have not.
Have you ever seen Jesus depicted as a short, hardened, nomadic Jew? I have not.
Have you ever seen Jesus and wished he were prettier? I have not.
Now let me ask you a few more questions.
Have you ever seen Jesus with blue eyes? More often than I can remember.
Have you ever seen Jesus with glowing light all around him? Oh yes.
Have you ever thought that Jesus looked like a model? On occasion, I have.
Is. 53|2: For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry
ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, [there
is] no beauty that we should desire him.
If the above verse is true, why do we paint Jesus to look so good?
I'll come back to this later.
What did Jesus look like? I could go on about the common characteristics of Jewish build and facial structures, but that still allows for a great variance. I could take the middle road and factor in for time spent wandering the countryside (adding callouses and darker skin than normal), but I would still be guessing. The truth is that on one really knows what Jesus looked like. There was no Leonardo da Vinci around to give us a picture of him. No paparazzi photographed him riding his donkey into Jerusalem. No security cameras caught his face leaving the temples. There is nothing remaining that gives us even a complete physical description that a police sketch artist could use to recreate his face. We simply don't know.
This all means that each time we paint, draw, draw, or sculpt Christ, we are creating our very own Jesus. We are painting the Jesus we see in our heads, not the Jesus the disciples saw on earth. In essence, we decide who Jesus is based on what we like.
Here is my point: we don't get to decide who Jesus is, but we try to all the time. You see, no one wants to follow an ugly Jesus. Instead, we make Jesus pretty enough to warrant our faith based on his good looks alone. This is absurd.
You see, Paul said that he became all things to all men that he might save some (1 Corinthians 9|22), which is commendable. But we are making Jesus all things to all people. That's distortion.
All of this came about because Stephen Baldwin was on TV. He was doing an interview on a news show (20/20 or 60 Minutes or something like them) about his skate and music festivals where he presents the gospel. I find nothing wrong with that. It is a way to reach out to a group of kids that others will not try to reach. I think festivals like that do a lot of good. What was wrong, in my opinion, was something that he said. When talking to the interviewer, he said that Jesus was the gnarliest guy of his time and that the disciples were also gnarly. It took me a second to comprehend what he was saying (partially because NO ONE says gnarly anymore, and partly because I couldn't believe what had just been said). What he did was change Jesus. Instead of becoming all things to all men, he made Jesus all things to all men, which in another sense he is, but not like Baldwin meant. I mean, really, do we have to appeal to teens that Jesus was cool and antiestablishmentarian? Since when is Jesus the Peacenik not enough (I hope you can detect the sarcasm there)?
Can't we be satisfied with the social/political/religious revolutionary that he was? Or am I way off base with this one?
You see, I think we paint Jesus so much because that's the one time we can make him look and act like we want. We paint a Jesus that appeals to our vanity. We paint a Jesus that is as vain as we are. And in the church at large, we worship a vain Jesus.
What do you think?
| | |
|
