Jesus Looks Like Us

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

- John 1

via Episcopal Intercultural Network on FB

I love the culturally specific pictures of Jesus. All of them. Tea Party Jesus. David Chappel's Jesus. Kanye's Jesus. Some of them I've featured here. I think it is Mark Sandlin of the God Article* who refers to the white, blonde versions that I sometimes use on my Facebook pages (like Hipster, Know-It-All Jesus) or that color the world that Cage Fighting Jesus inhabits as "Surfer Jesus." That Jesus is a white dominant, consumer-culture, happy-shock, confident-through-conquering Jesus.

I'm fascinated with the fact that many of us prefer to think of Jesus as a little baby with cute little fat cheeks in his holy swaddling diaper, as the lead singer of Van Halen, as (and I had dreams about this) Superman, as a businessman, as a mystic, as a shaman, as an executive with business advice (ok, this one confuses me, to be honest. You really have to read into the guy who gave the Beatitudes in order to read him as a Lee Iaccoca type), as a laughing man.

Of course they don't depict how Jesus actually looked. Of course, Jesus was a real man of real blood and flesh and color, with eyes of a certain hue and nose of a particular type. And we knew he was Jewish, of Middle Eastern descent and we know he wouldn't be White - well, not Northern European White - much less blonde. He probably wouldn't have a button nose, or straight hair. It may have been nappy. But then again, his hair may not have been long anyway. At least according to some Fundamentalists (one preacher is known for saying that Jesus wore pants because there's no way he wore a freaking dress).

I'm also well aware of the fact that Jesus has been, for millenia, over-represented in the West and then in the rest of the world through White Dominant Missionarism as being Northern European and male and straight and handsome (according to the cultural specifics). Other cultures were then encouraged to worship the Jesus behind the image - not the Jesus of the Gospels which revealed the God of the Scriptures, but the Jesus OF the image: White, European, Male, Privileged. As a result, I know that having a homogeneous, Euro-normative near-monopoly of misrepresentations of a Middle Eastern man bent on inclusion is not just troublesome but contrary to the very vision of the man we are supposedly depicting**. The answer, though, isn't to censor out the various readings of Jesus, but to contemplate what they say of the various cultures - to contemplate what they say of those doing the depictions, including us.

For the Jesus of the Conquering People is a Conquering Jesus. And that is not a good thing. But it's a necessary thing to recognize it for what it is, to see the trends of murder in the name of Jesus and recognize how that reflects back on ourselves as representatives of Jesus but also Jesus, to see the signposts of the Empire - where it is coming from, where it is going, what is its name, and what does it require?

The fact that a God would come to earth, in flesh, in poverty and dirt and muck and among sickness speaks resoundingly to me. The fact that most of our depictions feature a sparkly, triumphant, other-worldly Jesus also speaks resoundingly to me. The first is what I want - a healer God for the sick, a comforting God for the afflicted, a meek God for the abused, a peacemaking and bread-making God for the oppressed and hungry.

The second vision of God is indicative of what my culture wants - or wants to believe in. Victory without turmoil. Peace through war. Prosperity amongst starvation. Comfort at the cost of others' affliction. These are what these images of Jesus depict of us.

For Jesus has always been at the intersection of humanity and divinity - and it is in him where we see our best, and our worst.

Sometimes, I like to picture Jesus as an angry badger.

What is one of your favorite depictions of Jesus?
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*Mark and the fine folks at The God Article have some fantastic ones of Things Jesus Never Said - which inspired my own Things Martin Luther King, Jr. Never Said.

**That vision can be seen clearly when we see what Jesus did and said in proper context - which includes poverty and exclusion and dirt and empires and death. Much of contemporary, and especially White, North Atlantic, Christianity has continued a legacy of removing him from the world in which he lived and placing him in strictly philosophical and other-worldly garb. To get a good idea of who Jesus is, I'd consider some New Testament scholars. Most helpful to me, however, have been NT Wright, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan. Or you can buy my book. *wink* *wink*

Hulk and Cocoa

Daddy, do you like Spider-Man?

Sometimes when we're in the potty, or getting ready for a bath, my daughter finds few distractions from her imagination.

Yes honey. I do.

Do you think he can come over to our house?

Well, I don't see why he would, to be honest. I hope he doesn't find the need to.

But he can, right?

Oh sure. It might be a little disorienting, but that would be pretty awesome.

See what I do there? I throw in a little vocabulary to add an extra level of educational awesomeness into the mix. Because nothing says "Daddy-daughter bonding" like "edutainmental fantasies."

But not Hulk, right? We don't want Hulk in our house, right?

No, no. Hulk will smash. He'll destroy everything.

Hulk is angry. He'll smash everything.

Yeah. We can't have that.

No...

My daughter's on the fast-track to becoming a Serious Comic Book Geek, in spite of her innate yet quite unnatural princess temperance. Who else ponders this stuff? Nerds, that's who.

Why is he angry?

I'm not sure. But that's what makes him the Hulk. He's innately angry. That's how he becomes the Hulk.

Oh...

Thinking. Where does she come up with this stuff? Do they have these brainstorming sessions in preschool? Or is this what she's thinking of during story time that gets her so easily distracted? Is this gonna keep her from Harvard?

She looks me in the eyes.

Daddy, what if we invite him for some hot chocolate?

The simple, profound power of imagination. God, I love this girl.

Lazy Sunday Reading: The Divine Commodity

Pastor Skye Jathani, in his book, The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumerist Christianity, argues that the Western church's meta-problem is that it is trapped up in the consumerist environment that surrounds it. And it fails to transcend that consumerist culture because it fails to apply a healthy amount of imagination. From the first chapter:

In July 2003, ten thousand Christian retailers gathered for the fifty-fourth annual Christian Booksellers Association convention. The CBA represents the $4.2 billion industry that sells Bibles, books, bubblegum, and bracelets to Christian consumers. The economic power wielded by the CBA has grown so rapidly that President George W. Bush has even taken notice.

Bush, whose ascent to the presidency would not have been possible without conservative evangelicals, addressed the 2003 CBA convention via video. "You know as I do the power of faith can transform lives," he said. "You bring the Good News to a world hungry for hope and comfort and encouragement." Interestingly, Bush was praising Christian retailers, not churches, for spreading the light of Christ. The fact that the president of the United States, the most powerful political figure on the planet, would address the merchants of Christian books and baubles reveals the economic and political influence Christian consumers have attained.

The other memorable appearance at the 2003 CBA convention was actor/director Mel Gibson. The Hollywood hero and devout Roman Catholic gave a preview of his upcoming film The Passion of the Christ. Gibson's movie was promoted as a way for Christian retailers to leverage the Easter holiday. The CBA's president said, "We want to play a role in reclaiming the holiday for Christ. We want to draw people into our stores and drive seekers into the church." Of course, TPotC became one of the most profitable films in history...

The presence of both political and pop-culture royalty at the CBA convention would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier. In the mid-twentieth century some feared America would follow the path of Europe, where the church atrophied to become and emaciated shell of its former glory. That fear drove evangelical Christians to seek cultural, political, and economic influence as a way of ensuring survival. The 2003 CBA convention represented the culmination of their cultural revolution...

Christian researcher George Barna concludes, "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus." During the same half century that evangelicals were climbing to the pinnacle of cultural influence, the church has largely lost its ability to transform lives and teach people to practice the values championed by Christ. Research conducted by sociologists and pollsters show that "evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." Despite the influence of Jesus Christ over Washington, Hollywood, and Wall Street, his power over the hearts and minds of people in America is far less evident... Although megachurches have multiplied across the fruited plains, the numbers show that Christianity in America has been consolidating and not expanding.

photo © 2007 Allan Ferguson | more info (via: Wylio)
The challenge facing Christianity today is not a lack of motivation or resources, but a failure of imagination.

Walt Disney's successors wanted to honor their founder's dream. That laudable motivation is what kept the Epcot [Walt's original dream of a planned urban living environment - an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow - after he died, the plan went on, but as a severely dated amusement park attraction. A very cold and unfulfilling one, as the Simpson's Principal Skinner would remind us] project alive. The problem was not their motivation; it was their lack of imagination. They did not possess Disney's ability to see beyond what was conventionally possible. They simply could not see the city he wanted to build in their mind's eye. As a result they reinterpreted Epcot through the only framework they could comprehend - pragmatics, economics, and market potential.

Likewise, the paradoxical rise of Christian political/economic influence and decline of Christian moral influence is not the product of devious or ignoble motivation. Christian leaders in America are largely admirable men and women who passionately love God and genuinely desire to honor Christ. Many sacrifice time, income, and emotional energy giving themselves to what they believe matters most: Christ and his kingdom. And we certainly do not lack resources...

Our deficiency is not motivation or money, but imagination. Our ability to live Christianly and be the church corporately has failed because we do not believe it is possible... Wanting to obey Christ but lacking his imagination, we reinterpret the mission of the church through the only framework comprehensible to us - the one we've inherited from our consumer culture...

How can a prisoner plot his escape if he doesn't believe a world exists outside the prison walls? The prisoner's imagination must be free before his body can follow. As Albert Einstein observed, "Problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created them." And Walter Brueggemann declares, "Questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing."...

We manage our churches with repackaged secular business principles and methodologies pioneered by marketers. A prominent pastor was asked what was distinctly spiritual about his leadership. The pastor responded, "There's nothing distinctually spiritual... One of the criticisms I get is 'Your church is so corporate...' And I say, 'OK, you're right. Now why is that a bad model?'"...

In his defense, for decades ministers have been conditioned by books, conferences, and seminars to revere how secular corporations accomplish their work. It is assumed that the way Home Depot or Starbucks reacts to consumers' desires is how the church ought to react as well. Whether one is selling Chryslers, Coca-Cola, or Christ is irrelevant, the principles of marketing and persuasion apply equally to all. So, why not learn from the biggest and best? Lyle Schaller, one of the most popular church consultants, has said, "The big issue... is not whether one applauds of disapproves of the growth of consumerism. The central issue is that consumerism is now a fact of life." In his book, The Very Large Church, Schaller goes on to coach pastors on how to appeal to spiritual consumers, but he never expects the church to transcend or transform these cultural values. This posture of resignation to consumer culture reveals the utter captivity of our imaginations.

Violence and Imagination

Here's my confessions:

• I stopped watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies because Jackie Chan's fighting was more realistic and fun.
• When I walk near gang-bangers or drug-abusers I sometimes imagine that they do something threatening and imagine how I will press their faces to the wall in abject defeat - after thrashing them a few times with car doors, my ninja-like kicks, and Lou Ferrigno-type punches.
• My own experience with child-rearing was corporal-based and as much as I try to shake that system from my bones, violence still registers as the final step in correction. As in, the end of diplomacy is bombs, the end of discipline is a whoopin'.*

I'm limited, shackled to violence. I grew up listening to violent rhetoric, singing songs glorifying violence, watching sh*t blow up and thinking that was cool (and it is, except when it blows up on people. Which happens every time the real sh*t blows up).

But here's where I pat myself on the back:

• I never got into fights and made a willful choice not to join the military when I was young because - even as young as seven years old - I figured that Jesus didn't want me to fight.
• I have always appreciated the skills of Bruce Lee, but could never get into his movies because of the cold-blooded killings.
• Okay, that's about all I got...

I recognize that there is a disparity here. Oppressed people tend to understand violence best because that is what they have seen and experienced. So it should not shock people when, say Palestinians, Hutus, Northern Irish, Pakistanis, or pick-your-oppressed-people-from-nearly-any-country-in-Africa/North America/South America/Asia/Europe respond in violence (although often the violence done by the oppressed is immeasurably smaller than that done by the oppressors to them). There needs to be a widening of the imagination. The imagination to believe - and this has been proven to be the case time and again - that creative nonviolent resistance is more effective than armed resistance.

However, when dealing specifically with non-violence as a tool, we cannot make the mistake that others in the struggle for righteousness and justice make (and it's an easy one to make): you cannot fight for equality by any means necessary. When it comes to employing violence, you can either choose to act in one way or the other. You cannot be both violent and nonviolent. One squelches the movement of the other.

Freedom is active movement. Unlike in nature, however, this movement is not self-sustained, it doesn't start and keep going until it hits an opposing force; its constantly in friction and needs constant reinforcement. And still, above that, there is counteractive and hostile resistance to freedom. Those who resist are looking for ways to discredit and derail the movements of freedom because it threatens their grasp of power. Nonviolence is a method of changing hearts and minds so that the world - including the oppressors - can recognize the oppression for what it is, heartless inhumanity. It is pro-action towards freedom that engages all. But it's also extremely costly.

And because of the cost, we need to be all the more engaged in nonviolent resistance itself. And that takes some use of the imagination - through everyday examples, through hearing the stories of those who have fought this fight before us, through filling our minds with something more than glorified explosions, perhaps.

* I talked briefly about that here.