Why are Christians ashamed of Jesus?

[Avoice]

It is sad that Christians are ashamed of Jesus.

For centuries they have been drawing him like a European. With blue eyes and sandy blond (light brown) hair.

He was from the Middle East. They know what men from the Middle East look like. Black hair and brown eyes. And darker skin.

If they must have an image why don't they draw him in truth? They don't.
Christians find their false image of Jesus comforting. Looking at it with such admiration. What if he looked like Sadaam Hussein? And wore jeans and a tshirt?

How will Christians recognize Jesus? By wearing a white robe with arms outstretched? Looking like the guy in the Last Supper painting?

[Athetotheist]

It is sad that Christians are ashamed of Jesus.

For centuries they have been drawing him like a European. With blue eyes and sandy blond (light brown) hair.

He was from the Middle East. They know what men from the Middle East look like. Black hair and brown eyes. And darker skin.

If they must have an image why don't they draw him in truth? They don't.
Christians find their false image of Jesus comforting. Looking at it with such admiration. What if he looked like Sadaam Hussein? And wore jeans and a tshirt?

How will Christians recognize Jesus? By wearing a white robe with arms outstretched? Looking like the guy in the Last Supper painting?

Comparisons have been drawn between images of Jesus and classical images of Zeus. Perhaps European Christians were trying to infuse their image of Jesus with the features of a deity associated with power in the ancient world.

[1213]

It is sad that Christians are ashamed of Jesus.

For centuries they have been drawing him like a European. With blue eyes and sandy blond (light brown) hair.

He was from the Middle East. They know what men from the Middle East look like. Black hair and brown eyes. And darker skin.

If they must have an image why don't they draw him in truth?....

How do you know what he looked like?

By what is said in the Bible, Jesus was not born the same way as normal people, which is why it is possible that he looked different than other people there. And in any case, it is possible that the people didn't look the same back then as nowadays.

But, I think it is possible Jesus was black, he was just so bright that he looked like white, which is why the depictions are not bad.

[Avoice]

Nobody knows what he looked like. Yet he looks European. No attempt to make the image reflect what was known about him. He was Middle Eastern.
Just another case of people wanting their God to be like them. Christianity has its roots in the Middle East but it is the religion of Europeans. So they made him look like they do. The same way Buddha looks oriental.

It doesn't matter how different people think his birth was. The fact remains that his image is one that Europeans are comfortable with. Europeans couldn't have hung up an image resembling an African or Oriental and proclaimed 'Here is my lord and savior.

Have you seen the image that African Christians have come up with? Whaddya' know....Jesus is now black. They made Jesus look like they do.

[bjs1]

[Replying to Avoice in post #1]

This critique would have made a lot more sense 300 years ago. The pale, blue-eyed depiction of Jesus was more common during the Renaissance. The idea was that Jesus was every man’s brother, so he could be drawn with any skin tone. Modern depictions of Jesus usually (though not universally) depict Jesus as a Middle Eastern man.

[1213]

Nobody knows what he looked like. Yet he looks European. No attempt to make the image reflect what was known about him. He was Middle Eastern.
...

By what is told in the Bible, Jesus was born of God. It means he doesn't necessary look like what you imagine "Middle Eastern" looked like back then.

Also, after he was resurrected, his appearance was different than before it.

We don't know what he looked like, therefore it could be that he is white. Because we don't have any knowledge about his looks, it would be best not to make any images of him.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to 1213 in post #6]

By what is told in the Bible, Jesus was born of God. It means he doesn't necessary look like what you imagine "Middle Eastern" looked like back then.

He apparently looked ordinary enough for the people in Matthew 13:55 to look at him and say, "Isn't this the carpenter's son?"

[bjs1]

Nobody knows what he looked like. Yet he looks European. No attempt to make the image reflect what was known about him. He was Middle Eastern.
...

By what is told in the Bible, Jesus was born of God. It means he doesn't necessary look like what you imagine "Middle Eastern" looked like back then.

Also, after he was resurrected, his appearance was different than before it.

We don't know what he looked like, therefore it could be that he is white. Because we don't have any knowledge about his looks, it would be best not to make any images of him.

This smacks if Gnosticism. It at least partly relies on the idea that Jesus wasn’t really human. A real human, like Jesus, was born in a specific place and had a certain skin tone and looked a certain way. An ethereal spirit doesn’t belong to any race and can’t accurately be drawn.

Jesus, a real man, was not white. He is the image of the living God with human form. He was a middle eastern man. We don’t know the details of his features, but we can draw pictures of him because we have a general idea of what a human from that part of the world looked like.

[1213]

....It at least partly relies on the idea that Jesus wasn’t really human....

I believe he is a man, as the Bible tells. However, he was not born the same way as normal men. Therefore it is possible he didn't look exactly the same as his parents.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
1 Tim. 2:5

[1213]

He apparently looked ordinary enough for the people in Matthew 13:55 to look at him and say, "Isn't this the carpenter's son?"

At that point they obviously knew him as the carpenter's son. That doesn't really tell about his look, only that it was known.

But, it is an interesting question, what did Jews look like then. Jesus was a Jew, not a today's Arab. And if we look today's Jews, most of them are white with black hair. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to assume Jesus could have looked similar.

Also, Jews were scattered among other nations and taken away from their homeland. So, if we imagine what Jews looked like, it is not the same as middle eastern people after them. It is something that we can find in among other nations.