Let's Talk About White Jesus
I will never forget reading the story “Fire Balloons,” by Ray Bradbury. It was in his Illustrated Man collection; I read it as a new Christian, in high school, who did not have a church since I’d moved away from the friends who would take me in Austin.
In the story, two missionaries visit Mars to proselytize the life discovered there; they end up learning that some of the Martians are not humanoid at all, but appear as blue spheres. The part that stuck out to me was not even the main point of the story, but a small moment–near the middle, if I’m remembering correctly–where one of the missionaries draws a circle on the board and says, basically, “This is Jesus.”
The other missionary pretty much asks, “Uh… Can we do that?”
And the first missionary points out that the Church has been doing it for millenia, making a crack about Jesus looking white in many popular depictions despite being Middle Eastern, and looking Chinese in some Chinese drawings of Jesus, and looking African in some African drawings of Jesus… He says, basically, that they’re in good company. The gospel adapts to different contexts.
Perhaps because I was unchurched, this simple thought blew my mind.
I had never, ever thought about how I’d been trained to see Jesus before. We had a boy with long hair and a brown beard in our class; everyone mentioned how he looked like Jesus all the time. We didn’t even think about it.
Jesus is often painted like this, and so, white actors have often portrayed him in films without much scrutiny
Ted Neeley as Jesus in Jesus Christ, Superstar
A historical reconstruction of what Jesus most likely actually looked like, as a Middle Eastern laboring man of that time period
Now I try to refer to portrayals of Jesus as white as “White Jesus.” I even did a satirical icon of “White Jesus” for our art show last year, which is the image at the top of this post!
I think a lot of people today (compared to the ancient days of my youth) have more awareness of this first issue. I’m really glad! Because it’s not that “White Jesus” portrayals are sinful, but that we should be aware that they are a form of contextualization, reflecting a particular choice to connect with one particular type of people over others.
And we should particularly pay attention if we cringe at pictures of Black Jesus or Chinese Jesus as “inaccurate.”
An image of Jesus ascending into heaven by George Wang Suda
Since reading this story as a kid, I’ve tried to even be okay with Jesus as a circle to hypothetical circle aliens. Not because it’s radical, but because that is what contextualization has always done.
But this is not simply a matter of Jesus’ race (or shape). This past semester in seminary, I took a class called World Christianity Through the Arts. And I had my mind blown again.
I was shown pictures of LAUGHING Jesus. In fact, I was introduced to a whole artistic project to collect pictures of laughing Jesus!
https://www.miat.org.au/jesus-laughing-exhibtion.php
I had not thought before about how prioritized images of Jesus show Him serene or suffering–not alive, not vibrant.
The people I look up to most in the faith are not very self-serious at all; I have good reason to believe Jesus laughed much and often, based on them! But I could not conjure a single image of Him laughing until my professor brought up those pictures.
Why is this? What cultural values does this reflect?
What do you think?
The very person of Jesus is a translation of the concept of God Eternal, wrapped in human flesh, in a particular culture, at a particular time. I don’t think it is wrong that we “Incarnate” Him through our artwork according to the cultural symbols and understandings of the people we’re trying to reach, because He was Himself Incarnated into the Humanity He was trying to reach.
Then I think this begs the question: How do you see Jesus?
How else could you see Him?
