Tag: Jesus Christ

Thank You, St. Boniface: A Repost About Christmas

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

This post is about how we got our Christmas trees. For the record, I would probably still have a Christmas tree in the house even if it they were pagan in origin. (I’ll explain why in a different post, drawing on G.K. Chesterton.) But Christmas trees aren’t pagan. At least, not entirely.

My Barbarian Ancestors

Yes, I had barbarian ancestors, in Ireland, England, Friesland, and probably among the other Germanic tribes as well. Some of them were headhunters, if you go back far enough. (For example, pre-Roman Celts were.) All of us had barbarian ancestors, right? And we love them.

St. Boniface was a missionary during the 700s to pagan Germanic tribes such as the Hessians. At that time, oak trees were an important part of pagan worship all across Europe. You can trace this among the Greeks, for example, and, on the other side of the continent, among the Druids. These trees were felt to be mystical, were sacred to the more important local gods, whichever those were, and were the site of animal and in some cases human sacrifice.

God versus the false gods

St. Boniface famously cut down a huge oak tree on Mt. Gudenberg, which the Hessians held as sacred to Thor.

Now, I would like to note that marching in and destroying a culture’s most sacred symbol is not commonly accepted as good missionary practice. It is not generally the way to win hearts and minds, you might say.

The more preferred method is the one Paul took in the Areopagus, where he noticed that the Athenians had an altar “to an unknown god,” and began to talk to them about this unknown god as someone he could make known, even quoting their own poets to them (Acts 17:16 – 34). In other words, he understood the culture, knew how to speak to people in their own terms, and in these terms was able to explain the Gospel. In fact, a city clerk was able to testify, “These men have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess” (Acts 19:37). Later (for example, in Ephesus) we see pagan Greeks voluntarily burning their own spellbooks and magic charms when they convert to Christ (Acts 19:17 – 20). This is, in general, a much better way. (Although note that later in the chapter, it causes pushback from those who were losing money in the charm-and-idol trade.)

However, occasionally it is appropriate for a representative of the living God to challenge a local god directly. This is called a power encounter. Elijah, a prophet of ancient Israel, staged a power encounter when he challenged 450 priests of the pagan god Baal to get Baal to bring down fire on an animal sacrifice that had been prepared for him. When no fire came after they had chanted, prayed, and cut themselves all day, Elijah prayed to the God of Israel, who immediately sent fire that burned up not only the sacrifice that had been prepared for Him, but also the stones of the altar (I Kings chapter 18). So, there are times when a power encounter is called for.

A wise missionary who had traveled and talked to Christians all over the world once told me, during a class on the subject, that power encounters tend to be successful in the sense of winning people’s hearts only when they arise naturally. If an outsider comes in and tries to force a power encounter, “It usually just damages relationships.” But people are ready when, say, there had been disagreement in the village or nation about which god to follow, and someone in authority says, “O.K. We are going to settle this once and for all.”

That appears to be the kind of power encounter that Elijah had. Israel was ostensibly supposed to be serving their God, but the king, Ahab, had married a pagan princess and was serving her gods as well. In fact, Ahab had been waffling for years. There had been a drought (which Ahab knew that Elijah — read God — was causing). Everyone was sick of the starvation and the uncertainty. Before calling down the fire, Elijah prays, “Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” (I Kings 18:37)

Similar circumstances appear to have been behind Boniface’s decision to cut down the great oak tree. In one of the sources I cite below, Boniface is surrounded by a crowd of bearded, long-haired Hessian chiefs and warriors, who are watching him cut down the oak and waiting for Thor to strike him down. When he is able successfully to cut down the oak, they are shaken. “If our gods are powerless to protect their own holy places, then they are nothing” (Hannula p. 62). Clearly, Boniface had been among them for some time, and the Hessians were already beginning to have doubts and questions, before the oak was felled.

Also note that, just as with Elijah, Boniface was not a colonizer coming in with superior technological power to bulldoze the Hessians’ culture. They could have killed him, just as Ahab could have had Elijah killed. A colonizer coming in with gunboats to destroy a sacred site is not a good look, and it’s not really a power encounter either, because what is being brought to bear in such a case is man’s power and not God’s.

And, Voila! a Christmas Tree

In some versions of this story, Boniface “gives” the Hessians a fir tree to replace the oak he cut down. (In some versions, it miraculously sprouts from the spot.) Instead of celebrating Winter Solstice at the oak tree, they would now celebrate Christ-mass (during Winter Solstice, because everyone needs a holiday around that time) at the fir tree. So, yes, it’s a Christian symbol.

Now, every holiday tradition, laden with symbols and accretions, draws from all kinds of streams. So let me hasten to say that St. Boniface was not the only contributor to the Christmas tree. People have been using trees as objects of decoration, celebration, and well-placed or mis-placed worship, all through history. Some of our Christmas traditions, such as decorating our houses with evergreen and holly boughs, giving gifts, and even pointed red caps, come from the Roman festival of Saturnalia. This is what holidays are like. This is what symbols are like. This is what it is like to be human.

Still, I’d like to say thanks to St. Boniface for getting some of my ancestors started on the tradition of the Christmas tree.

Bonus rant, adapted from a discussion I had …

... in a YouTube comments section with a Hebraic-roots Christian who was insisting that Christmas is a “pagan” holiday:

So, as we can see, the evergreen tree is a Christian symbol, not a pagan one, and has been from the very beginning of its usage. St. Boniface cut down the tree that was sacred to Thor, and that was an oak tree, not a Christmas tree. Sacred oaks are pagan. Christmas trees, which incidentally are not actually considered sacred, are Christian.

Yes, I am aware, as are most Christians, that Jesus was probably not actually born on Dec. 25th. Yes, I am aware that Yule was originally a pagan feast time.

But let’s look at the symbolism, shall we?

For those of us who live in northern climes, and especially before the industrial revolution, the winter solstice is the scariest time of the year. The light is getting less and less, and the weather is getting worse and worse, and all in all, this is the time of year when winter officially declares war on humanity. Winter comes around every year. It kills the sick and weak. It makes important activities like travel and agriculture impossible. It makes even basic activities, like getting water, washing things, bathing, and going to the bathroom anywhere from inconvenient to actually dangerous to do without freezing to death. If winter never went away, then we would all surely die. That is a grim but undeniable fact. Read To Build A Fire by Jack London, and tremble.

Thus, people’s vulnerability before winter is both an instance and a symbol of our vulnerable position before all the hardships and dangers in this fallen world, including the biggie, death. And including, because of death, grief and sorrow.

Yule is a time of dealing with these realities and of waiting for them to back off for another year. After the solstice, the days slowly start getting longer again. The light is coming back. Eventually, it will bring warmth with it. Eventually, life.

Thus, it is entirely appropriate that when the Germanic tribes became Christians, they picked the winter solstice as the time to celebrate Jesus’ birth. He is, after all, the light of the world. A little, tiny light – a small beginning – had come into the bitter winter of the sad, dark world, and it was the promise of life to come. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. All this biblical, very Hebrew symbolism answers beautifully the question raised by the European pagans’ concern with the sun coming back.

Our ancestors were not “worshipping pagan gods” at Christmas. They were welcoming Christ (who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) into the heart of their culture. They were recognizing that He was the light, using terms they knew, which were Germanic terms, and this is not surprising because they were Germans.

So, if you want to make the case that no holidays are lawful for Christians except those prescribed in the Old Testament for Israel, be my guest. Try to find some Scriptures to back that up. And maybe you can. But you cannot make that case by accusing people who put up a Christmas tree of worshipping pagan gods. All you’ll do then is reveal yourself to be historically ignorant.

Sources

BBC, “Devon Myths and Legends,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2005/12/05/st_boniface_christmas_tree_feature

Foster, Genevieve, Augustus Caesar’s World: 44 BC to AD 14, Beautiful Feet Books, 1947, 1975, Saturnalia on p. 56 ff.

Hannula, Richard, Trial and Triumph: Stories from church history, Canon Press, 1999. Boniface in chapter 9, pp. 61 – 64.

Puiu, Tibi, “The origin and history of the Christmas tree: from paganism to modern ubiquity,” ZME Science, https://www.zmescience.com/science/history-science/origin-christmas-tree-pagan/

Why I Think It’s Funny That We Have Angel-Shaped Cookies

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

(I was going to include a picture of our angel Christmas cookies, but … we ate them all.)

Angels are scary beings that usually inspire terror whenever they appear. We don’t really understand what they are. We know they have a different kind of body, one that exists in the heavenly realms, and is probably unpicturable to us as it actually is. We know they were created by God and serve Him (the unfallen ones, anyway), but we don’t know how many kinds there are or much at all about what they actually do. We do know that they are very dangerous.

And we make … cookies of them.

I just love that.

I think it’s hilarious.

I’m sure that being made into a cookie is very insulting to the dignity of angels … those that care the most about their own dignity, anyway, which would be the fallen ones.

The unfallen ones probably just get a smile out of it, because they know that the reason for their cooki-fication, the reason humans refer to them at all, is that they played a minor but striking role in announcing the birth of Jesus … that is, in God’s dealings with humanity. And being unfallen, they probably know that since this was part of God’s plan, it was in fact very good, so it follows that having cookies made of them is actually to the glory of God. So I suppose they don’t mind.

For a more serious post about angels, click here.

R.I.P., Huitzilopochtli

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

The name Huitzilopochtli means “hummingbird of the left [hand]” or “hummingbird of the South.” Now, if we were to play a word-association game and I said “hummingbird,” I doubt that the first thing out of your mouth would be “human sacrifice.” This was not true of the tribe of the Mexica, however.

The hummingbird was closely linked both with human sacrifice and with rain, since it appears in the rainy season, so the bird was associated with the form of death believed to feed the sun and with fertility as well. Huitzilopochtli [after, in the myth, killing his sister and routing his brothers] was no longer just an obscure earth deity, he was now the Lord of the Daylight Sky, the Rising Sun, and his symbol, the hummingbird, also came to represent the fallen warriors who accompanied the sun on his daily journey. Among his other attributes, the Mexica came to believe in Huitzilopochtli as the God of War … who incited his chosen people to greatness … by the force of their own hearts and their arms which would “lift the Mexican nation to the clouds.” These same hearts and arms were also to provide the vital, nourishing blood that sustained the god and the Aztec world.

The Aztecs, by Brian M. Fagan, pp. 55 – 56

Got that? Hummingbird >>> rainy season >>> fertility >>> human sacrifice >>> war.

The Mexica were sacrificing to Huitzilopochtli as they wandered around central Mexico, fighting one people after another, before they ever founded their great capital city of Tenochtitlan. (We are still not clear on the location of their original homeland.) However, if we count from the founding of Tenochtitlan in the year Two House (probably about A.D. 1325), when the Mexica built a reed temple to the hummingbird god on the small island where they had seen an eagle perched on a prickly pear, then Huitzilopochtli reigned in central Mexico just under 200 years. Cortez arrived in 1519, and by 1522, Tenochtitlan was destroyed.

According to the ancient world view that dates back to Genesis, the One God temporarily gave the lesser gods control over various nations. At Babel, when He scatters the peoples, there are 70 groups, corresponding to the 70 gods that traditionally composed God’s council in Ugaritic and Hebrew mythology. But the gods do a rotten job of leading their people. They tend to behave tyrannically, as do the human rulers who both serve and imitate them. Hints begin very early that one day, the gods’ time will be up. The One God will take back direct rule, not just of the Hebrews, but of all nations of the earth. Then all the nations will once again be His portion, His inheritance.

In the meantime, He lets them run, and things get very bad. When things get too bad in a nation, the One God often judges them. He brings that civilization to an end, usually by using another nation (equally wicked but not yet ready for their own judgement). Defeat in war was well known in the ancient world as a sign that our god had either abandoned us or been defeated by a foreign god. It was well known to the Hebrews as a sign that the One God had had enough of the way this lesser god, and these human kings, were running this nation.

Some nations got to go a very long time. Before the Israelites went into slavery in Egypt, the One God predicted that He would bring them to the land of Canaan four hundred years later — but not yet, “for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” The Phoenicians, who would burn live babies to appease their god Moloch, got to go on with their wicked ways until Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C. … a very long run indeed. Rome would have her turn many centuries later.

Using this scale, the reign of Huitzilopochtli was shockingly short. Less than two centuries … but what centuries they were! By the time judgement arrived in the person of Cortez, the Mexica were carrying out raids and wars farther and farther afield (almost to Guatemala) to feed the demand for prisoners whose hearts were ripped out of them and offered to Huitzilopochtli, now almost daily. The bodies were kicked down the steps of the temple. Depending upon the type of sacrifice, the arms and legs might later be eaten with some prickly pear on the side. The skulls were stored on massive skull racks. Aztec warriors moved up the ranks based upon how many prisoners they had captured for sacrifice. After a certain number, they were allowed to wear a mohawk. More captures, and they earned a cotton cloak, a necklace, a feathered headdress.

When Cortez and his men were fighting their way out of the city for the first time, astoundingly they managed to capture the temple, though it was covered in hundreds of very tough Aztec warriors. They then took the statue of Huitzilopochtli and hurled it down the temple steps … the very steps down which so many human bodies had been flung. Then, with heavy casualties, a few of them managed to escape the city. On the way back to their base among the Tlaxcalans, they fought battle after battle in which they were massively outnumbered. They should have perished dozens of times, but they didn’t. About a year later, Tenochtitlan was under siege and the Mexica, unable to keep up with death rate, began throwing the bodies of their fallen loved ones into the canals of the city. Hardened Spanish warriors couldn’t handle the smell when they entered the city. Nor could they stop their Tlaxcalan allies from slaughtering the Aztec civilians. God’s judgement on a 200-year orgy of bloodshed was a terrible thing to behold.

Today, Huitzilopochtli is an obscure name. Many people have heard of the Aztecs, and even of Quetzalcoatl, but the hummingbird of the south is not a name on everyone’s lips. He who once filled millions of people with terror has passed into obscurity. Now he’s a bit of trivia, a name known to experts on Mesoamerican history and archaeology only. Nor is Huitzilopochtli alone in this. He has joined the ranks of many gods, such as Moloch, Ishtar, Vesta, Cernunnos, and Tanit, who were once mighty in their lands and now are known only by people with a special interest in a particular corner of history. There are other gods, of course, whose names we do not know. We find a strangely shaped cultic object and we can only speculate. All of these lesser gods have become part of history. But everyone knows the name of Christ, the one Who sets the prisoners free. If someone wants to break into a strong man’s house and take his precious possessions, his people, one must first tie up the strong man.

R.I.P., Huitzilopochtli. You had a good run — 200 years — but beating hearts will be cut out and offered to you no more.

Quote: Originally Written in Hebrew

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness!

You have relieved me in my distress;

Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.

How long, O men, will you turn my glory to shame?

How long will you love worthlessness and seek falsehood? Selah.

But know that the LORD has set apart for Himself him who is godly;

The LORD will hear when I call to Him.

Be angry, and do not sin.

Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah.

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,

And put your trust in the LORD.

There are many who say, “Who will show us any good?”

LORD, lift up the light of your countenance upon us.

You have put gladness in my heart,

More than in the season that their grain and wine increased.

I will both lie down in peace, and sleep;

For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.

Psalm 4. By David.

So.

My dad used to quote me the last verse of this psalm as a bedtime prayer when I was small.

The classical Christian school where I teach had selected this psalm for memory work for the month of October.

And then …

We hear of atrocities in Israel, committed against Israelites. Every single verse of this psalm, written by David millennia ago, instantly becomes 100 times more relevant and poignant.

When I hear about mothers and babies murdered, reading that last verse out loud is almost more than I can handle.

Let’s all use this psalm to pray for them.

And I love those guys

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

… the man who serves his God with his whole heart is apt to forget his surroundings, and to fling himself so completely into his work that the whole of his nature comes into action, and even his humor, if he be possessed of that faculty, rushes into the battle.

Spurgeon, from Eccentric Preachers, quoted by Douglas Wilson in A Serrated Edge

How to Be Free

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

I just read John 18:1 – 19:16. It’s really pathetic, in these chapters, to watch Pilate try to avoid crucifying Jesus but still placate the Jewish officials.

He says to Jesus, “Don’t you realize that I have the power either to free you or to crucify you?” (John 19:10), but in fact, Pilate doesn’t have any power at all.

The book Who Moved the Stone? makes a strong case, from hints in the text and other historical evidence, that Pilate had received an emergency visit from someone, perhaps the High Priest himself, the night before. The priests had just arrested Jesus, and the meeting went something like this: “We have this criminal whom we really need condemned. If we bring him to you tomorrow morning, before Passover, will you just quickly condemn him for us so we can get that out of the way? In exchange, of course, for our ongoing support.”

Pilate had agreed to this reasonable request. But the next morning, things started to go off. Pilate’s wife, who perhaps was there for the 11 p.m. meeting, had a nightmare about Jesus which she took as prophetic, and sent her husband a note saying, “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man.” (Matt. 27:19) Also, the Jews hadn’t brought any clear charge against Jesus for which Pilate could execute him.

Pilate tried to get rid of the problem by sending Jesus to Herod (Luke 23:5 – 12), but to his dismay, the problem came right back to him. He then tried to placate the council by having Jesus flogged. He kept arguing with them, saying, “I find him not guilty.” They were shocked and dismayed that he was going back on his word of the night before (John 18:29 – 31). They started threatening that if Pilate did not condemn Jesus to death, they would turn him in as being in rebellion against Caesar (John 19:12). Things had not been going great politically for Pilate. If there were a riot, or if he were accused of being anti-Caesar, it would be the end for him. Best case scenario, he would lose his job, but more probably he would lose his life.

In short, Pilate could not avoid crucifying Jesus without losing everything. He was trapped.

Jesus, of course, was trapped too, but the difference was that He had walked into the trap. More accurately, Jesus was not trapped. He could have summoned twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53) at any moment to vindicate and free Him. He was going to His death freely. He was not trapped by His own fears and desires. Pilate, on the other hand, was trapped by his own fears and desires. His options were extremely limited because he was not willing to lose everything.

Consider, then these two men, as they stand in the palace looking at each other. One is a governor, wearing the robe of a governor, standing in his own palace, making what should be a routine decision about what to do with a prisoner.  “Don’t you realize that I have the power?” he says, but in fact this man has no power or agency in this situation. This man is terrified.

The other has been up all night. He has been interrogated at least three times. He has already been beaten once by the high priest’s guards, again by Herod’s guards, and he has just been flogged by Pilate’s guards. His back is flayed. His nose may be broken. When he speaks, he cannot manage very long sentences. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he says. “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” This is the man who is actually in charge of the situation. Despite appearances, this man is truly free.

In Luke 9:23 – 24, Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” This sounds like a hard saying – and it is—but what Jesus was giving us here was the secret of how to be free. If Pilate had been willing to lose everything, he would have had more options. Jesus was willing to lose everything, which allowed him to do exactly what, on a deeper level, he wanted to do, which was to work the Father’s plan.

Jesus Is Funny

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields — and with them, persecutions.

Mark 10: 29 – 30

My Guilty Pleasure: Petra

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

I know that a few of you, my online friends, are musicians or at least knowledgeable about music. So perhaps I am about to embarrass myself.

I love Petra.

They are a late 80s/early 90s Christian rock band, and somehow all of the singers on the band seem to be tenors (I like that, too). I don’t know. Maybe my taste is bad, but I just love their music. I listened to it — and actually worshipped to it — a lot in high school.

In the 90s, I had the album below (Unseen Power) on cassette tape. The cover bore a picture of a white, power-generating windmill against a clear blue sky (because unseen power, get it?). The upshot was that I was listening to this song, In the Likeness of You (Psalm 17:15), back then in circumstances exactly like the ones I’m in now: in the middle of an Idaho winter, when the landscape is severe and almost monochromatic, but the distant horizons draw your eye to their ethereal beauty … not unlike the soaring harmonies of Petra. And the song has the exact same effect on me now as it did then.

So here they are, in all their shaggy-mullet glory. Enjoy.

Portraying Jesus in Visual Art

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments
Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Pexels.com

Many years ago, when I was studying graduate linguistics/anthropology/missiology, I was approached by a friend who had grown up with Greek Orthodox roots. She was doing an anthropological research project, and she wanted me to take a look at a few pictures of icons and give her my initial reaction. (Me, the research subject, an evangelical who was unfamiliar with Greek Orthodox iconography.)

I took a look, and I was repelled. The first one, of Christ on a background of gold leaf, was so stylized that it hardly looked human to me. The eyes were huge and round, the nose very elongated and very narrow. The second, a Nativity scene, wasn’t any better. The figures seemed stiff, and all the faces were like the one on the first icon, except that the infant and Mary didn’t have beards. Their skin was a shade of yellow that looked jaundiced to me.

Since I knew this was a research project, I was very honest with my friend about how negative my reaction was to these icons. This was a mistake; I could see that her feelings were hurt. She explained to me that the faces had been “idealized as an aid to meditation.” Which just goes to show you.

About Image Making

A strong argument could be made that any visual portrayal of Jesus constitutes a violation of the Second Commandment, which forbids making images in order to worship them. This includes making images of humans or animals which purport to portray the one true God. Hence, when the Israelites made the golden calf and worshipped it, identifying it as the God that had brought them out of Egypt (!), they got dinged for disobeying the second commandment. “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4).

When God gave the Israelites the temple system, there was a lot of rich visual imagery, but none of it was of the kind that could be confused with an object of worship. It was all decorative. The priests had rich, purple and white clothing, and the decorations on pillars and curtains extended only to pomegranates, palm trees, and flowers, and the occasional cherub (a heavenly creature that was a throne guardian). There were no images of animals or people that might be mistaken for portrayals of God Himself. (Exodus chapters 25 – 30 and I Kings chapter 6)

In the innermost room in the temple, where a normal Ancient Near Eastern temple would have a large statue of the god, there was … nothing. Just the ark, with no statue behind it. God would not allow Himself to be portrayed “in the likeness of a man,” though a few of the prophets did see something like this in their visions. (Genesis chapter 18, Daniel 7:13 – 14, and many others)

Jesus, according to the New Testament, is God incarnate, a man. This means that, when we read the stories of the things He did, every reader is going to get some kind of mental image. But in the providence of God, Jesus did not come to earth at a time when photography had become ubiquitous, and He was not important enough socially to have realistic statues in the Greco-Roman style (or any statues at all) made of Him. We are not given a physical description of what He looked like, except that we are assured He was ordinary-looking. For example, Isaiah 53:2 says, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,/nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” In John chapter 18, when the Roman guards and the priests’ thugs come to arrest Jesus, they have no idea which of the twelve men in the dark Garden is their perp. Jesus has to tell them, “I’m the one you’re looking for.” This tells us that he looked like any other first-century Jew, including in the way he dressed.

The emphasis, in the Gospels, is always on His words and actions … and these tend to be so compelling that His personal appearance, to put it mildly, is secondary.

So, is it even permissible to portray Jesus when we are illustrating the events of the Gospels? I have seen this admirably handled by the Arch books, a series of Bible stories for children which hires many different artists. In the Arch books (at least when I was growing up), Jesus is most often shown “off camera.” If portrayed, we might see Him from a distance (as being led away to be killed in the background of a picture), from behind, or we might see an arm and a slice of the side of the face. Rarely do we see His face full-on. I think this is a good method. In some of these books (not all), Jesus is recognizable by the iconic white or off-white robe with a shoulder sash, and the shoulder-length hair. I now know that this style of dress and hairstyle were drawn from the personal appearance of the peripatetic philosophers.

About Incarnation

So, given that Jesus wasn’t actually a peripatetic philosopher (at least not in the Greek tradition) and probably did not have the over-the-shoulder sash and the shoulder-length hair, are artistic conventions like this permissible? If someone wants to portray Jesus (even from behind), are they morally bound to make Him look as much like “He probably looked” as possible?

With all the caveats above about it being better not to portray Him at all, I say no. Here’s why.

Jesus’ whole job was to come live with human beings, as a human being. This is what we mean by His being “incarnate.” His incarnation was very complete. He wasn’t just pretending to be a local guy; He actually was a local guy. He was dedicated in the Temple, grew up in the rough town of Nazareth, learned a trade, and spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, probably some Greek, possibly some Latin too.

But the really amazing thing about Jesus’ incarnation is that He can cross any culture. When His words are translated into a new local language, He actually becomes one of those people. He comes to them, as one of them, but as God. When a people receive the Gospel, they receive Him as their Jesus, with His message and his call and His substitutionary death and His enlivening Spirit meant for them.

Usually, they then start making visual art about Him and about the other events in the Bible. And naturally, they often portray it as though these events happened just a few years ago, in their local region. This is completely appropriate. They are applying the incarnation.

Why do all the figures in religious paintings from medieval and Renaissance Europe look like German peasants, or like Italian aristocrats? To ask the question is to answer it. When you are going to paint a portrait or a figure, you go to the people around you for models. For example, Rembrandt would often go into the slums of Amsterdam to find models for his biblical paintings. Not surprisingly, the people in his paintings came out looking Dutch.

This does not happen only in Europe. I was once able to see an artistic representation of one of the events of the Gospels done by an Australian aborigine. There were no human figures in this work of art. All of the action was shown with footprints in the sand. When the characters walked somewhere, there would be a trail of footprints. When they sat down for a meal or teaching, there would be a circle of u-shaped butt prints. I couldn’t understand this drawing without someone explaining it to me, but it made sense to the artist and presumably to his audience. And that’s kind of important in art, isn’t it? You don’t want to portray something that is so alien that your viewers have no idea what they’re looking at, however historically accurate it may be.

Showing Him in Specifics

So, given that we are portraying Jesus at all (which as I said above is a question open for debate), I am completely in favor of White Jesus. There. I said it. I am also in favor of: Javanese Jesus, Sundanese Jesus, Aboriginal Jesus, Ethiopian Jesus, Nigerian Jesus, Navajo Jesus, Latino Jesus, and Greek Orthodox Jesus, provided that these arise naturally in communities that have received Jesus’ word for themselves and become His followers, and now rightly think of Him as their big brother.

I am not in favor of them as theological statements that Jesus looked this way or that, or that His appearance was of any importance (except, of course, near the end of the Bible where He appears looking like white-hot metal with a sword coming out of His mouth).

I am also not in favor of an industry that produces lots of commercialized, sentimental religious art. That is definitely breaking the Second Commandment, whether or not Rembrandt was.

But leaving aside that odious industry, when most Christians make devotional art they are not arguing that Jesus’ personal appearance was of paramount importance. Anyone who thinks they are making such a statement does not understand Christian doctrine very well. All of the emphasis in the Bible is on Jesus’ words and actions. The Apostle’s Creed, and the Nicene Creed, emphasize that He was made human, but that’s it. All of us know that whatever our mental image of Jesus, it is certainly not accurate in its particulars. That doesn’t matter, because it’s not a mental image we are worshipping. It’s the reality.