What does Jesus look like?
Here is a question for you. What does Jesus look like? Now we can't rush off to see his DMV photo to be sure. Anyway if he had a DMV photo it wouldn't look anything like him. Georgie Bush may have all your details in a data base but there is no passport photo of the supposed Saviour of the world. None of the disciples sketched a quick one of the Lord of the Universe taken a snooze either. No one snapped a Polaroid when he was extolling the virtues of whatever.And the only texts purported to be written by people who knew him seem totally uninterested in giving us any description of the man. You would think that if these books were written by people who actually knew him they would at least give a description of him somewhere along the line. Virtually any other biography does that. Of course the people who did the written probably never saw the man. I can describe Paris but not Rio. I've seen Paris several times but never been to Rio.
Now the only manuscripts that attempt to tell us anything about this man never describe him at all. So in reality no one has any idea what he looked like. He could 5'5" for all we know or 6' tall. He could be thin or fat, have brown eyes or green. Maybe he had longish hair and maybe he didn't. When it comes to his looks we are clueless. And that raises an interesting question. If we don't know what he looks like we wouldn't recognize him if he sat down next to us at McDonald's.
Of course there is a traditional image that arose from religious paintings done centuries after the man was dead and buried. And people think of that image. But there is no reason to think that image is Jesus.
Yet people claim to see Jesus in the oddest of places. They usually see some vague shape which they associate with the traditional image of Jesus. And they proclaim it a miracle, a sign, a wonder of God, etc. People are so easily deluded. For instance a California man says he saw a sign from God when the face of Jesus was spotted on the tail of a piece of a shrimp.
But in Florida some people insist Jesus is appearing in the bottom of a pan that is used to heat nachos. The restaurant announced they would not use the pan for cooking any more.
But in Phoenix a dentist and his staff insist that this x-ray shows Jesus inside a man's mouth. You really have to look closely to find this sort of thing. Of course the places that Jesus pops up is only limited by human imagination. People think they see him, think they talk to him and the really balmy ones think he talks to them.
I mean look at those images. Couldn't it be Charles Manson?
posted by GodlessZone at Monday, August 07, 2006
7 Comments:
Does it matter what the savior looks like? As long as it's the savior He might even have been a green monster. ;)
No really, no one knows what Christ looks like, we all think of Him as a pretty tall, lean guy with a beard and long hair. We even named slippers to Him over here in the Netherlands. "Jesus-sandals" which are leather slippers.
August 09, 2006
I have been a photographer for over 30 years, that is simply an overlay. I am not saying that Jesus don't exist becase I do but why would he want to hide in your mouth. Get real>
October 08, 2008
Just because people claim to see Him, does not mean that they did. But just because you claim that you learned to ride a bike, doesn't mean you did. Jesus can come any time or place he wants, He is the Omnipresent. No one knows for sure what He looks like except for those who knew him. Who knows, maybe He did look like all the photos we see, but that was His human bodily form. Not His Ruler of Heaven. He came down to save us, every single person on this earth or that was or is to come to be on earth. He would not have come down looking like God, He then could not have died. He had to take up the human form to be like us, so we could be like Him. We will not know what He looks like, not until judgment day... Are you ready? Will you enter into heaven? You can't just believe, you have to have a relationship, give your life to God. Satan and the demons believed, look where they ended up, you cannot be like God, but you need Him.
October 27, 2008
You are mistaken in stating that the Bible doesn't describe Jesus. It is not in great detail, but it does mention his looks. But before I get to that here are a few other considerations. He was a Jew. We know where he was born and where he grew up. He would have looked similar to anyone else living there. He was raised under Jewish customs, which is why you see long hair and a beard in the pictures that depict him. True we don't know exactly what he looked like, but we do know from scripture that he was not handsome, but rather had common looks (Is. 53:2).
Why would the disciples write about his looks. There was no reason to. In using your approach, why would they? If I were to meet you and write something about you, I wouldn't necessarily write of your looks, but perhaps, what you said or did. Only if I were to expect someone to meet you would I give them what you looked like, and perhaps not even then, but maybe what you would be driving or where you'd be. It's quite a presumption to say they should have, and if not, then they didn't see him. Their mission wasn't to tell of his looks, but of his deeds and his life and sacrifice.
Why do you focus on the things that may or may not be of God and say look at this, not true, but leave out all the good that can be seen, being done in the name of Jesus and for God. Open your eyes to what is around you, not what the media says, or Hollywood says, and you will find that Jesus and God are there.
April 08, 2009
He was a Jew and I've known many Jews and they can look extremely different. Why assume they look alike? If he looked "similar to anyone else living there" then we don't know what he looks like in the sense of being able to say "this is him" or "this is not him." It is silly to say you know what someone looks like but then can't distinguish him from anyone else in the vicinity. That's as useful as saying: "Yes officer, I can describe the man. He had two eyes, legs, arms and ears. I'm pretty sure he had a mouth and he looked like everyone else." That isn't a description in any meaningful sense of the word.
You also miss the entire purpose of this post. People claiming that images are Jesus have no bloody idea what he looked like so all they know it is some rock singer that they are imagining to see. I never said the Bible "should have" described Jesus I was only commenting on the absurdity of people seeing a burnt piece of toast and proclaiming Jesus appeared there if no one knows what he looked like.
As for his life, who knows? The Bible is unreliable and the accounts of Jesus written decades after his death with the earliest copies of those manuscripts being copies written after the deaths of the original authors.
Some people do good in the name of Jesus, but most the really vicious assholes I meet in life are Christians trying to run other people's lives and attacking others. There is a lot of evil done in his name which implies that it is the people involved that matter, not Jesus.
April 08, 2009
yes it is the individual that matters not Jesus.what matters about jesus is that is name is still a solution to all problems and the name above every other name. i have tryed it and it worked. He's looks can not make any difference now but He's name.
November 24, 2009
Clearly he is not the solution to the problem of bad spelling.
November 24, 2009
Post a Comment
<< Home