My Jesus has short, dark brown hair, sports thick-rimmed glasses, and wears Gap jeans.
Yep, my Jesus looks just like me.
Does that sound like a silly notion? Is it bizarre - or maybe unwise - for me to decide that I want to read my life and my characteristics into Jesus’ story? And is it only a poor idea because I am a white middle-class male?
I recently read an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that discussed a growing trend for churches with minority majorities to depict Jesus in their race of choice through their artwork and icons and the walls of their church buildings. For one Cleveland church, the latest demonstration of this Make-Your-Own-Jesus art came in the form of Black Jesus Christmas cards.
The article by David Briggs, titled “In Our Image”, did much to explore the mentalities and theologies that led up to this shift in how some folks view Jesus.
At the heart of this matter is a desire to connect with the first century Jew – er, Make-Your-Own-Jesus.
“People are looking to see Jesus and God more like in their image,” one interviewed church member said in regard to the Black Jesus Christmas cards that were a hot sell at her local Christian bookstore. “It gives you some kind of connection to him and the biblical story.”
Another person interviewed explained the visual trend by saying, “Jesus belongs to each and every one of us.”
So I guess we can make Jesus into a lot of things.
Have you watched the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby? (If you haven’t, I think you should. It’s not Will Ferrell’s best work, but it’s still an above-average film.) In Talladega Nights, main character Ricky Bobby (Ferrell) and his cast of friends get into multiple dinnertime arguments about what their Jesus is like.
It begins with Ferrell’s character, a racecar driver, needing to defend his decision to pray to a baby Jesus, or an “eight-pound, six-ounce” Jesus, as Ferrell specifies.
“I like Christmas Jesus the best, and I’m sayin’ grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus – or whatever you want.”
Supporting actor John C. Reilly’s character, Cal Naughton Jr., prefers a different Jesus.
“I like to think of Jesus like with giant eagle’s wings, and singin’ lead vocals for Lynard Skynard with like an angel band, and I’m in the front row and I’m hammered drunk.”
Naughton Jr. had a couple Jesus ideas throughout the film. “I like my Jesus in a tuxedo T-shirt, because it says, ‘I want to be formal, but I’m here to party.’”
This idea of Make-Your-Own-Jesus sounds so primitive and irresponsible when Ferrell and Reilly administer their best NASCAR-loving Southern accents. But isn’t my indie-rock twenty-something Jesus with the Prada frames and the Gap jeans (low-rise boot fit, by the way) equally as irresponsible?
Yet there are plenty of people who are taking Make-Your-Own-Jesus quite seriously. I mentioned the churches in Cleveland who are creating an ethnocentric Christ on the walls of their church buildings. There are many groups in New York City, Los Angeles, and other areas with sizeable urban communities, who are portraying Jesus in a different skin color, in a different culture, leading a specific group of people out of a specific oppression. (That oppression is usually President Bush. It couldn’t be a political party, let alone both political parties; it’s definitely one man who has created an entire system of oppression…)
What begins with a painting on the side of a building snowballs and evolves until it is the history, message, and purpose of Christ that are being transformed.
It’s a sort of societal eisogesis (reading into), this idea of reading our own stories into the life of Christ Jesus. And this societal eisogesis is very much a cornerstone to a relatively new theological movement known as liberation theology. This movement is being taken seriously by many Christians, when it should probably be received in the same light that one receives a racecar driver’s desire to worship a Jesus in a tuxedo T-shirt.
It seems that the intention of these tuxedo T-shirt believers might be earnest and well meaning. They want to connect with Jesus, and want for Jesus to deliver them from their various troubles and oppressions. The goal here is not to demonize the person in Cleveland who paints a black Savior on the walls of her church, or the fellow in L.A. who builds a mural that glorifies a Hispanic Jesus.
Note: This isn’t solely a bash against minority groups who paint El Paso Jesus (soft J, pronounced “hay-zoos”) all over the side of a building. This is also a rant against every white skinned person or church that creates an image of Jesus as either a vegetarian metrosexual (liberals) or a deer-hunting golfing attorney or CEO (conservatives).
But if connection, and not a mirror’s view, is what they are going for, then someone ought to tell them that Make-Your-Own-Jesus will never bring them there. He’s just not a good Savior. Actually, he’s probably about as good of a Savior as you or I would be. (Oh, the irony.)
Part of me even questions if a connection with the actual Jesus is what most people desire. With connection comes not only an ability to identify, but also a possibility to be challenged. I’m not so sure that we want challenge, but the whole identifying part of it does create a nice aesthetic.
We think that we’re really “progressive”. (You hear that term all the time, right?) By progressive, we probably mean that we are liberal thinkers, many of whom hate to be told, “No.” Nothing should be out of bounds to us. We should be empowered to do what we want; we become ethically claustrophobic when anyone tells us that the way we’re handling something (the gospel, for instance) is wrong.
We think we’re really pushing the envelope to paint Hispanic Jesus on the side of a building. Awfully progressive of us… Wouldn’t it be more progressive to paint a dark-skinned Middle Eastern Jesus? You know, like the real Jesus. But we wouldn’t like that very much, would we?
If we did that, you know, actual Jesus thing, it would require much more of us. Simply put, it takes a lot more work to find out about a man who lived two millennia before me than it takes for me to just assume that he lived and functioned like my friends and neighbors.
We would be challenged by the historical Jesus. If we cared enough to search, we would find a great rabbi whose ministry enhanced his Jewish faith. We could end up bewildered by our Hellenistic Christianity that has more to do with the Roman Empire than it does our Jewish roots.
And we might even be further challenged by this Middle-Eastern historical Jesus because so many of us struggle to understand and humanize the people who look just like him (physically speaking) in our world today. And we don’t much like being the ones who are caught holding the prejudice.
We wonder why our faith feels empty, when all we’ve done with Jesus is adopt him into our own narrative. We’ve made ourselves the constant, and him the variable - a sort of iconic Jesus who becomes an amorphous idea.
I believe that we can connect with the actual Jesus. And I believe I’ve done so myself. I didn’t have to pretend that Jesus grew up in my suburb, or played in hip bands with me. No, he had his own life with his own friends in his own time. He had his own culture; his life had a context. It is when I take the time to understand the context of his life that I better grasp the different things he said, the quotes that are so loosely dangled today.
That is authentic connection. And it’s why I so appreciate theologian-writers like Ben Witherington and N.T. Wright who devote their time to explaining the historical Jesus to anyone who is willing to listen. Because the actual message of the historical Jesus is powerful, and when I submit to the idea that it’s not Jesus who needs to change or fit through tight spaces, but rather myself, I participate in a Truth that precedes and supersedes me.
It has nothing to do with painting Hispanic Jesus on the walls of my church, or selling Black Jesus Christmas cards. It has nothing to do with Deer-Hunting Jesus or Metrosexual Jesus, either.
I’m challenged by, and connected to, the Jesus who never wore a tuxedo T-shirt or fell into a pair of Gap jeans.
