a friend of mine's little sister passed away about 6 years ago from brain cancer. the doctor's gave her 2 weeks, so they took her home. the night she passed, her mom asked her if God was coming for her and if she was scared. her reply was this: "yes, He's coming for me. he doesn't look anything like His pictures, and He has the sweetest voice."
that really got me thinking about the media's image of God, and how society is so in tune with what we're told to believe that sometimes, it's really hard to think otherwise.
i mean, I've always accepted the image of Christ that was put before me in church and in pictures and paintings. of course, i always knew that no one really knew what He looked like, therefore how could anyone really create a image of Him? and why are we so ready to accept something at face value with no concern for entertaining any other school of thought?
then i started to wonder why we even had to have an image? i think that in order for us to have faith in something, it's easier for us to associate something tangible with that belief. when we think of God or Christ, what image do we get in our heads? we get the images from stories we read in the Bible, but what face is associated with the God character? does it perhaps look like the image that's been seared in our brains since we were born?
is it really necessary to create an image for something and teach society that image is correct when it's not fair because no one has ever seen the object? why must we have something we can touch and feel and think of in order to have faith or belief in something? we see Christ on the cross in the form of a crucifix; we see paintings of Jesus done by people who have never seen him; we see images of Christ eating supper with his disciples in The Last Supper; we see Him depicted in Christian publications drawn by people who are still very much alive; we see Jesus in children's literature used in sunday school or CCD. who came up with this image that is so very much alive in our imaginations?
i think we are all entitled to our own opinion of what Jesus looks like. who gets to decide what He looks like for the rest of the world? i don't need a visual image to believe in something, but it seems like people are more opt to have faith in something if they can relate an image to it, and i think that stinks. granted, at a very young age, we are taught to believe what our parents tell us, and my mom showed me pictures of Christ that like the mental image in have in my head... but for a second, entertain the idea that God didn't wear a robe, or didn't have long hair, or didn't have fair skin or the lumberjack beard.
sheer deductive reasoning would tell us that Jesus was dark-skinned. he lived in the middle east. i have fair skin and wouldn't last a day there. middle eastern natives are dark skinned, so why do all pictures of Jesus show him so fair? i can understand the beard, because back in the day, everyone had a beard. but what if Jesus decided it was too hot with a beard and cut His off? he was a carpenter, after all. that's not easy work. lots of sweating. maybe He didn't wear a robe. in that line of work, He would do a lot of bending over and moving around and physical labor, and a robe isn't too conducive to that kind of work.
my point here isn't to degrade the physical image of God we hold so dearly. my point here is to get you to think that society as a whole accepts too much at face value. we know God to look one way because we are told He does, but imagine, for a second, God to have pink hair, an earring, some Bermuda shorts, and sunglasses. would we still be so apt to have the same faith that He could save the world?
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