Amanda-- The faces of Jesus

Amanda Rocabado

"The faces of Jesus"

9.14.08

I found the film on the many faces of Jesus to be incredibly fascinating. It was amazing to see all of the different depictions of what Jesus looked like throughout history, and I was interested to explore reasons behind creating the images of Jesus in the first place. I understand that stained glass murals and paintings in churches provided a visual for the illiterate as well as serve to strengthen the faith of believers, but I am not convinced that these reasons are sufficient in explaining why they vary so much, and why they suddenly became popular. Could it be that the sudden rise in images of Jesus hundreds of years after his death were due to other factors beyond finding another way to make Jesus relatable? The film briefly touched on some of these factors, but it is interesting to explore them further.

I think a large factor that may contribute to the popularity of these images of Jesus may be to suggest that the idea of Jesus should be put into the context of each culture, rather than to force the culture of Jesus’ time on others. We talked about Paul taking Christianity to the Greeks several times in class, and how he did this by connecting the idea of Jesus with their existing idea of religion, rather than introducing a whole new concept. Making Jesus look and seem like the people you see around you everyday does much more than make him relatable, it also suggests that he could have just as well come today, and live in the context of your culture. Certainly the fundamental teachings of Jesus would not be altered, but it is interesting to explore the idea of how Jesus would interact with your own time in history.

This is often a fundamental struggle with modern Christians, trying to interpret how Jesus would act today based on the record of his life in the bible, and ultimately why there are so many different denominations. Perhaps artists throughout history have chosen to depict Christ in a familiar form in order to provoke these thoughts further. This current Jesus also becomes more real, more present, and the visual leads us to think that God is all around us… so we better be on our best behavior. This can also lead the viewer to think that since Jesus is not bound by time and history he could very well return today, couldn’t he? Is that what the church is trying to communicate by housing all these images of Jesus?

What did the creators of these images really think about when they were painting?
And a better question, what did they want you to think when you looked at them?

Ok, maybe none of this makes sense and the real inconsistency of Jesus’ appearance in artwork just goes to show that man is incapable of accurately showing what it is to be both fully human and fully God. This may be more likely… but who really knows?