Drawing Up God

Over the course of history, different races have altered Jesus to resemble their own. If you look closely at the picture above you can see how each culture has tweaked his appearance to resemble their own.

So I asked myself, why did people feel the need to change his appearance? Why do I think of a white guy when I picture Jesus rather than a middle-eastern man? Well I think it comes down to relatability. People want to feel a connection with their religion. They want to feel like it is their own and so they will make every part of it as relatable to their own personal lives as possible. It really makes me think about how self centered humanity is at times. Especially when Jesus was first being depicted, races were far more segregated than they are now so people didn't want to be praying to someone who looked foreign. We always like to say that god created man in his image, but I wonder if it's actually the other way around.

"Korean Jesus" from 21 Jump Street

In addition to this, I would argue that a parallel can be drawn between the way people have depicted Jesus and memory. Now forgive me because I did get this from Wikipedia, but it brings up an interesting point. It states that, "his artistic depictions... are based on second or third hand interpretations". Now as I recently learned from a Radiolab on memory, each time you "recall" a memory, you aren't retrieving the actual event from metaphorical file cabinet in your brain, but rather recreating an entirely new memory based on your last recreation of that memory. It went on to say that the more times you recreate the memory the more you alter it to make it more about you. Just as how nearly if not every time Jesus was painted or illustrated he was recreated from a previous recreation. Not only this, but he was also tailored to be more like the race of the person doing the recreating. Clearly, there are some similarities between the two processes.

Spongebob filling memories in his brain (wrong!)

Another reason why I think people have altered Jesus' appearances was to further their agendas. In a fairly recent npr broadcast, author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and The Saga of Race in America, Edward Blum, discusses how different groups of people have used Jesus' race to further their causes. In the late 1800's as waves of Jewish immigrants came to the U.S. some religious artists decided to severe Jesus' appearance from it's Semitic roots. These artists in favor of immigration restrictions began to depict Jesus with blonde hair and blue eyes as apposed to dark brown hair and brown eyes. Again, we see this trend of people altering Jesus' appearances to benefit themselves.

What does this say about humanity that we alter religious figures to benefit ourselves and our own agenda's? What are some other possible reasons for altering Jesus' appearance? Are there any modern day examples of the power of people wanting to racially relate to people of power or fame? (for example in American T.V. shows there are very few lead actors who are a minority)