Besides White Jesus

redblue22

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This is so human of us.

To take the one being who is WAY more than a normal person and has all the power in the universe, and argue about what he looked like.

While whatever Jesus looked like is an interesting question, I am actually interested in picturing Jesus in a lot of different ways so to create a sense of similarity. That is why I say there should be an Asian Jesus and a Black Jesus--and not just a white Jesus. I also like short fat ugly Jesus and disabled Jesus.
 
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blackribbon

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While whatever Jesus looked like is an interesting question, I am actually interested in picturing Jesus in a lot of different ways so to create a sense of similarity. That is why I say there should be an Asian Jesus and a Black Jesus--and not just a white Jesus. I also like short fat ugly Jesus and disabled Jesus.

There are pictures of Jesus with black skin...I have seen them in African American churches. I can't remember looking when I have attended services at a couple Asian services...but often these churches share the same buildings as traditional churches and just meet at different times than Sunday morning.
 
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Cearbhall

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Now "disabled Jesus"...no, that would show that Jesus was not perfection and He was....
Huh? His perfection isn't about his flesh. No human body is perfect. He was aging like everyone else and would have died like everyone else, probably at what we would call a young age.
 
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blackribbon

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what do you mean by "traditional churches"?

Church that have been established and own their own building. There is a Chinese church that meets at my current church on Friday nights. We don't oversee or have any leadership connection in that church. It is completely independent but is helping out a smaller church until they feel the need to build their own building. I have also attended churches that meet in school buildings. Well, in fact, our current church has a satellite church that meets in a local high school every Sunday morning. I don't consider that a "traditional" set up for a church. It is every bit as Christian though.
 
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blackribbon

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Huh? His perfection isn't about his flesh. No human body is perfect. He was aging like everyone else and would have died like everyone else, probably at what we would call a young age.

He was sinless. I kind of expect that his body since it was half God may have very well been perfect. The Old Testament people who were closer to the perfection of granted to Adam & Eve before they were banished lived to be in the 800 & 900 years range so no, I don't think it is given that He would have died of natural causes. He did have the power to heal others...so I do think it fairly likely that he didn't limp around "disabled" while healing the cripples. Not worth debating though.
 
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Cearbhall

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He was sinless. I kind of expect that his body since it was half God may have very well been perfect.
That's interesting. In Catholicism, I was taught that God became human to humble himself, and he fully accepted the human experience and the vulnerability of the human body, hence the execution. I was also taught that Jesus was both God and fully human, and that neither of these compromised the other. Perhaps other denominations look at it differently.
 
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redblue22

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I wonder what it says when we can't have a short, fat, ugly Jesus. I would think he was pretty in line as disabled Jesus after the whippings. But then crucifixion pictures rarely show a bare naked bloody shell of a man. Jesus knows what it is like to be disabled. I'm not going to be the one who says Jesus was sinless, therefore he couldn't be disabled. Or weak, short, bald, old, fat, ugly. This thread has really served its purpose when someone said Jesus was perfect, so he couldn't have been black.
 
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Ubuntu

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As a man, Jesus shared our infirmities and weaknesses. We know that he experienced hunger and pain, he became tired and had to get sleep. According to most translations of Isaiah 53, Jesus experienced diseases and sickness too. Then again, he was a carpenter by trade, so Jesus must also have been muscular.

When it comes to his ethnicity, we know for sure that he didn't have blond hair and blue eyes. He was a Jew, not a Swede! His skin colour was was most likely olive coloured, somewhat similar to people living in the Middle East today.
 
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MehGuy

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Muscular six-pack Jesus must empower those who are buff. I find more connection with Jesus who can't even carry his own cross.

How about empowerment for women with Woman Jesus?

Personally yeah, I'd find more empowerment with a guy who had an impressive image. Something people would want to inspire to.

Although I've always picture Jesus kind of skinny, the Father being more impressive in stature, lol.
 
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dzheremi

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To find non-white Jesus, you need to look to churches and peoples that were Christians before Europeans were, or at least before Western European artistic styles began creeping into everything. When you do that, you find depictions of Christ that are African, Asiatic, etc. To the extent that you find other things than these native styles, the fleshy, Western-styled art is what is non-traditional to these places.

Here are a few examples:

Matenadaran_Gospel313_Last_Supper.jpg

Depiction of the last supper from the Armenian-language Matenadaran gospel, 1287 AD

(This seems to be something of an Oriental peculiarity, as the Syriac Orthodox also have ancient images depicting the last supper where the table is round, as opposed to the more standard flat, long shot as found in, e.g., Michaelangelo's Last Supper.)

dfm_13_f60r.png

Image of Christ (center), St. Thomas (L), and Simon Peter (R), from an 18th century illustrated gospel in Alqosh, Iraq

unknown-artist-christ-pantocrator-church-of-the-monastery-of-st-anthony-the-great-coptic-12th-century.jpg

Christ Pantocrator (12th century), Monastery of St. Anthony on the Red Sea, Egypt

icon-620_1791896b.jpg

Ethiopian triptych icon (15th century), known by the monks of the monastery of St. Stephen where it is located as the icon of "He who listens"

These are the traditional iconographic forms of these peoples who were among the first to convert to Christianity during the apostolic age, and hence they form an invaluable treasure for all Christians who wish to know how the ancients saw Christ, and to worship Him as they did. To me it has nothing to do with 'representation' in some kind of modern, western political sense, but rather the plain fact that the one Christ is the Christ of the Armenians, of the Syriacs/Assyrians, of the Egyptians, of the Ethiopians, and all others just as much as He is the Christ of the northern and southern European painters who established the Western standards of how Christ is depicted in western churches like the Roman Catholic Church or the various Protestant traditions (those of them that make use of images in worship, that is). Because He is the God of all the world and all of its peoples, of course you can find these different styles, and probably even more that might not have such a long history, but I suppose still prove that the inculturation of the Gospel of life continues in our own day among the more recently Christianized, as well. And praise be to God for that!
 
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quietpraiyze

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What do you think of various groups of people having different pictures of Jesus?

For example, in the US, there is primarily White Jesus. In Asia, one might have an Asian Jesus. There are many to think of; for example, Black Jesus, disabled Jesus, fat Jesus.

This is no small matter in the Black community. This was actually a topic we covered in Theology in college. It's very important because of the issue of power/oppression and how people visually internalize the God Head and how they relate to God or don't. If you're black and God is white that's a problem...that's a big problem. It also speaks to the idolatry of "whiteness". I think when it comes to disabled and fat you'd be hard pressed to find that kind of imagery because they go against the biblical presentation of who Christ was as the son of man. Christ was whole, complete, and perfect.
 
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dzheremi

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No, but there are certain conscious or unconscious cultural standards by which people produce things, and there's nothing wrong with that being applied to this situation. In the same way that there are regional or national traditions regarding what foods are eaten or not eaten in a given place, there are (broadly speaking) traditions regarding how to make religious artwork. In the same way that a Chinese person doesn't need to eat specifically Chinese food to live, people don't need depictions of Jesus to look a certain way in order to worship Him. But they will end up looking a certain way anyway.
 
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redblue22

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Do we really have to change the historical real Jesus to be like "us" to be able to relate to Him? Do we need a god that looks like the image in our mirror be able to love and worship Him?

yes.
 
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