Transcription
Impostor syndrome is real. I was going down the uh roster of speakers and I was like PhD, PhD, guy who took 30 years to figure out a Bible donkey couldn't speak Hebrew. But I'm here for what it's worth, and it's an honor to be here.
Now, those who know my story know where I live. I was born and raised in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 2 to 1. It's a state with over 7,000 churches, most of them Bible-based. It is located within a highly religious section of the United States known as the Bible Belt. Also, uh, it's known as the divorce belt, the uh teen pregnancy belt, the we have the meth belt, of course, and the uh porn use belt. We have that always the Puritan stage. And then you hear from like Pornhub, they did a survey and they're like, "Hey, our biggest usage comes out of and it's always a red state, isn't it?" Or almost always. We're certainly the uh flag-waving, Bible-banging, God and country, we are a Christian nation belt. Tens of millions of Americans have linked God and the government. Political speeches have really become sermons. The White House has been doing prayer theater. You guys been watching that? These big performances where he's sitting in the Oval Office and all the evangelists are laying hands and anointing him as God's proxy on earth. Bible rhetoric has really infected the discourse. False history about our founders and a secular constitution. The, the, the false narratives are everywhere. We've seen an entire culture linking Jesus to a man that they have embraced as a great savior, anointed by the savior. Of course, I'm talking about the poster child for presidential prepubescence. Donald Trump. Tangerine Palpatine, right there. Our founding fondler. Okay.
Now, I know, I know that the rest of the world, including Canada, thinks that my country has become just a runaway clown car. I know this. I saw this post a while back. I'm sure you can validate this one from a guy named John who posted online, "Canada must feel like they live in an apartment above a meth." Yeah.
Now, I'm prepping a different speech which gets into the breakdown of the breakdown of the United States that covers decades and decades, all the precursors or many of the major precursors that got us to the tragic place we are today. That's a different presentation that I'll probably do and release in the fall. Uh, but I want to draw mostly away from politics today for a presentation about the western perception of Jesus Christ. Certainly the Bible Belt perception of Jesus Christ, which is something like this.
Now, I am not going out on a limb when I say that Oklahomans and citizens like them profess Jesus all the time while knowing almost nothing about him. Maybe you saw this recent headline from my home state. Oklahoma has recently been ranked 50th in education. You know how many states we have in the United States? If you don't count the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Oklahoma, we have 50 states. We have come in last. Fortunately, our leaders in Oklahoma have been focused on other ways that we can make Oklahoma great again. We just passed House Resolution 1013 proclaiming Christ is King. This is a government proclamation. Well, that ought to do it, right? That should fix roads, healthcare, transportation, schools, public safety, homelessness, the deficit, etc. And this kind of legislation has been making the rounds across the United States. A similar bill was introduced in North Dakota last year. It was rejected, but the proposal was again that the kingship of Jesus Christ would be acknowledged at a government level. Jesus is on everybody's lips. Trump is worried. He's terrified about the upcoming midterm election. So, he's been telling people to support his voter suppression bill in the name of Jesus, for Jesus.
But beyond the weaponization of God speak to turn the United States into Gilead, I have noticed something interesting. America needs Jesus. This is a common sentiment. We need some Jesus. I love Jesus and Jesus loves me. What a friend we have in Jesus. Jesus saves. Jesus take the wheel. Interestingly, the Son of God and savior Jesus they are invoking is almost always this guy. White Jesus. Check out those baby blue eyes. I saw this meme recently. So there I was, the only white dude in Jerusalem. Of course, we've seen the artist interpretation of Jesus's brother. Do you know he had a brother? Brian Christ turns water into colder light. Brian Christ, by the way, have you seen these? These are making the rounds throughout the Bible Belt and elsewhere. It's taken off. People are buying in bulk these tiny little one and a half inch tall Jesus figurines. And the thing is is you just put them in your pockets, your handbag, or wherever, and wherever you go, you leave a little Jesus. I call them little G's. You leave a little Jesus wherever you go. And so people go shopping, they leave one on the shelf. They go to a friend's house, they leave it on the mantle. Natalie was working. She works in medical, and somebody left one of these on the receptionist desk. And so she knows my sense of humor and she called me and she goes, "You want this for your office?" And I'm like, "Hell yes, I want a little G." So she brought it home. In fact, that's it on the right. I took a little phone photo on my way out the door. But even here, doesn't that skin look suspiciously fair to you? I grew up with this image of Jesus all over the place. Christian schools, my illustrated Bibles in my head. You walk up to the average American Christian and even suggest that a first-century Jewish man might not have looked like this guy. What response might we expect? No.
Back in 2001, a British forensic anthropologist and a retired medical examiner, a guy named Richard Neve out of the University of Manchester, he made this image of what he thought Jesus might have looked like. Uh, he used as a guide this uncovered male skeleton from the time and the region. This was made for a BBC documentary called The Son of God, 2001. Now, here, this guy looks suspiciously like someone that ICE would throw in the back of a van and deport, right? And my churches who saw this depiction of Jesus Christ would be undoubtedly shouting in protest because our mental picture of Jesus was literally a white savior.
Now, this is the most all-time most reproduced image of Jesus Christ ever made. It was painted by a guy named Warner Sallman back in 1940. It's called The Head of Christ. Warner Sallman was an artist who mostly drew and painted for commercial ad campaigns. For the better part of a century, this single image has been printed more than half a billion times. It's in illustrated Bibles, prayer cards, calendars, murals, hymnals. It's displayed in homes and churches across the United States and all around the world. This is the Jesus you're going to get when the guy who depicts him is a white Christian marketing artist out of Chicago. Now, we know that human beings have evolved to respond to things that look like us and sound like us and feel like us and validate us. And in a country that has been white-centric for most of its history, what ethnicity would we expect our Jesus to be? He would be White Jesus.
Now, I don't know if it's true that a grandma displayed a young Obi-Wan on her mantle thinking it was Jesus, but I really want it to be true, so I brought this slide. But have you guys seen a Kenny Loggins Jesus? Jesus taking the highway to the danger zone. Jesus. Okay. Well, take a look at the depiction on your left. This is a legitimate piece of art. It is called Prince of Peace. It was painted back in 2003 by an artist who was a child, eight years old at the time. Her name is Akiane Kramarik. Now, she claimed as a young baby, I say baby, eight, that she had visions of heaven. Okay? And she had claimed that after one of these visions, when she came back, she saw Jesus. And so, she took her paintbrush and this is the Jesus that she painted. Now, we see maybe a little ethnicity in there, but overall, this is going to be the type of Christ that would be painted by a young woman not born in the biblical Holy Lands, but in Mount Morris, Illinois. Right now, if that's her personal God, fine. Totally cool with me. Fine. I doubt Jesus would be upset. He's supposed to be a personal God. He personalizes himself. I'm I'm good with that.
Now, I'm going to back up for just a second. The Gospels themselves never describe Jesus. On the Damascus Road, the Bible says he appeared to Saul as a blinding white light. If you read about him in the book of Revelation, he's more of an apocalyptic figure. He's got white hair and eyes of fire. But there are no specific features for Christ ever given in the Bible. If you go back to the Old Testament, supposedly prophesying the arrival of the Messiah in Isaiah, uh, Isaiah 53 says he wasn't beautiful. He wasn't majestic. Wasn't really desirable or even remarkable in appearance. He was kind of ordinary. Contrast that to Psalm 45:2, which says, "Thou art fairer than the children of men." Now, when the Hebrew word for fairer is there, it doesn't mean fairer as in whiter of skin. In that context, the word is yapa, which translates to become beautiful. So Psalm 45 was not saying Jesus was white. It was saying that he was handsome, like the handsome bridegroom. And of course, his church would be the bride of Christ.
Here is one of the first ever discovered depictions of Jesus Christ. It is in statue form. It's dated to about 330 CE. It was found in one of the Roman catacombs. And he is the young boy Christ, upper teens, maybe 20. And he's caring for one of his flock. That's right out of the New Testament. John chapter 10. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. But check out Jesus's face. Does that look like a brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jewish guy? Or does it look more Caesar-like? Now, Roman emperors were treated as gods, especially in its more pagan-centric eras before Christianity was more incorporated. But we saw emperor worship and then the melding of emperor worship and the worship of the Christian God Jesus. Constantine considered to be the first Christian emperor. He legalized Christianity. In Romans 3:13. Now, many people said that he made it mandated. It was the law of the land. You must be Christian. That is not correct. But it had been stigmatized in the past. And so Constantine, uh, he made it acceptable and even promoted it, right? His own personal faith. And so we begin to see more of a melding of supreme ruler imagery. The supreme ruler on earth in conjunction with the supreme ruler from on high. And we see this in other deity figures, other leaders, other great and noble men. Right now, this is a depiction of Constantine's unshaven face next to that good shepherd carving. Do you see any similarities? Because I do. I mean, I might be wrong. I know it's all subjective. Pristine kingly power. Neither one of these guys looking like that brown-skinned guy from Galilee. Jesus is more Eurocentric in this depiction.
Constantine moved the capital of Rome to Byzantium and he renamed it. He named it after himself, of course, Constantinople. The Byzantines were a Christian Greek-speaking part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted another thousand years after the fall of the Western Empire. A lot of people say that Rome fell when it fell in 476 CE. That's the fall of Rome. But actually, no. Rome was more than the Western Empire. It's more than the city of Rome. The empire was divided into west and east. And the Eastern Empire survived well into the 15th century. And that millennium saw a tremendous amount of marvels and advances in science, in engineering, infrastructure, and in artistry. So, here's where we really start to see depictions of Jesus Christ made by the Romans. Mosaics of Christ were plastered all over Byzantine churches. More and more Christ was depicted as the slightly older Jesus, around the age of 30, complete with beard. And of course, that image would become embedded into the culture. It's believed that the beard communicated greatness, great wisdom, great power. It was a credibility enhancer. Of course, we've seen this in other great figures. Marcus Aurelius had the beard. The philosopher Diogenes had traveled to Athens. You know, he'd been given audience by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great. This was considered the look of extraordinary men. And it makes sense that extraordinary gods might have the same look, even beyond Christianity. Zeus is the obvious one, but I mean, check out some of the other deities. Poseidon had the beard. Odin had the beard. Brahma, the creator god of Hinduism, had the beard. And of course, then with Christianity, we do have to come back to it's God, Yahweh. Okay. Okay, fine. Yahweh. All right, I'll play it straight. Let's pinball back to Jesus.
This is a similar Byzantine depiction of Christ. It adds purple to the mix. There's purple in his hair and purple in his clothing. At that time, emperors were the only ones allowed to wear purple. It was the color of royalty. The commoners could paint with it. They could use it, but they could not wear it. So, it makes sense that Christ, the King of Kings, would incorporate purple. This is a specific type of Jesus depiction in the style called Christ Pantocrator, which means almighty. This is the oldest depiction known of the Pantocrator Christ. It's at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, dated back to the sixth century. And you'll see commonalities. And now once I point them out, you won't be able to not see them because they'll be everywhere. But you will see he's got his right hand kind of up with a gesture, and then in the left hand, he's holding the holy book. Right? This is a common element. Check out the face. The right side, his right, our left, his right side is gentler. The countenance is gentler. It's softer. This represents the merciful Jesus. The left side, our right, his left side represents the sterner Jesus, more of Jesus the judge. The whole vibe was about Jesus the pardoner or the judge, the forgiver or the condemner. Both an open hand and a closed fist. Right? And these literal two faces were of course mostly white.
Here's a Christ Pantocrator depicted in the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul. It started out as a church in the 300s in Byzantine. Then it became a museum and now it's a mosque. And you can see, I'll show you, I'll zoom out. You can see on his right, our left, he's flanked by the Virgin Mary. And on the other side is John the Baptist. Jesus is sitting on a jeweled throne like an emperor. Again, he's got the gesture with one hand, the holy book in the other. Mercy and/or judgment.
A few other examples of Christ Pantocrator. This is on the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Still 4th century. This is from the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. This is 12th century. A bearded Christ with the big halo. He's got the book. He's got the gesture. And I found this interesting. During the Renaissance, it was not uncommon for artists to depict Jesus Christ, but insert their own faces sort of into the mix. They would make a Jesus that resembled them. This guy is a German Renaissance artist. His name is Albrecht Dürer. This one dates to about 1500 CE. Now, did he have a god complex? Did he have a a good sense of humor? And he thought, "This will be awesome," and he makes himself Jesus. I don't know. I don't know. But I mean, you and I are asking the same question. Do we really think that the New Testament Jesus Christ looked like a 28-year-old dude out of Nuremberg? I kind of doubt it, right? I kind of doubt it.
The Quran has its own Jesus. Muslims say Jesus was a great prophet, not the Son of God, not the Messiah, but he was an important part of the story. In the myth of Islam, that Jesus was uh born not in a manger or in a stable or in a house, but in the desert under a palm tree. You'll notice that Mary in the Muslim depiction has Persian features and clothing. As she offers her breast for food, Jesus offers back a pomegranate. Now, in Islam, the pomegranate is one of the fruits of heaven. By the way, the Islamic halo is commonly depicted not as the glowing ring that we're used to, but the Islamic halo is often depicted as fire. And you can see that in this depiction. Islam has altered the Jesus story to serve its Islamic story. That's interesting.
Here is a Hindu Jesus. This depiction is dated back to about 1600 from India. You'll see Jesus and Mary. We don't know who the other characters are supposed to be, but Jesus and Mary are identifiable. Mary's got the tilak mark on her forehead. And that mark is commonly used by Hindus, of course, to represent spiritual enlightenment, meditation, focus, the mind's eye. Right? Hindus molded the Jesus story into Hinduism.
Here is an Asian nativity scene. This was painted in 1958. Asian mother Mary, Asian Joseph, Asian baby Jesus in a bamboo manger. Many Native Americans have their own version of Jesus Christ. This was painted by a Franciscan friar, a guy named Robert Lent in 1989. This is Apache Christ. The painting is on display at the Apache Mission in Mescalero, New Mexico. And there's some beautiful art from the Native American culture representing Jesus. This one's called Lakota Trinity. It was painted by a guy named John Giuliano, who was a Jesuit priest, and he painted the Trinity. So if you look at the top, and I'll do give you a close-up here, that's Yahweh or God the Father. He's got the big headdress. In the middle, the Holy Spirit as represented by a great eagle. And Jesus is on the bottom, but he doesn't look like any Jesus we are used to. He, in this depiction, is a victorious Sioux warrior.
And of course, throughout the United States and around the world, we have plenty of depictions of an African-American Jesus. This is one of the earliest depictions of a Black Jesus in the US. It's in stained glass at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Warren, Rhode Island. It was made in 1877. And versions of this in print are displayed in homes and churches across the US and all around the world. There's a Black Virgin Mary statue at St. Charles Lwanga Parish in Detroit, Michigan, of all places. We can find African-American versions of all the major Jesus stories, including the Sermon on the Mount and the Passion, right? The arrest, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now, let's say I took one of these African-American Jesus paintings into the average white-bred, corn-fed Protestant American Christian church. What reaction might I expect? You're going to die. But why? Why? What's the issue? What's the problem? Right? He's a personal Jesus. Many people get really uncomfortable when "made in thy image" doesn't look like my image. And how much othering and bigotry and harm has resulted because God has been shaded in our limited colors.
In more extreme cases, this kind of Jesus propaganda can cause immense suffering. Hitler's propaganda made use of Jesus imagery to persecute, imprison, and murder Jews. An Aryan Christ, he was the master of his supposed master race. Right-wing extremist organization, the Proud Boys, raised a wooden cross outside the Michigan State Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Their Jesus validates their racism, sexism, and homophobia. The Jesus of more progressive Christians rejects racism, sexism, and homophobia. Their Jesus meets you where you are, as you are, and loves you unconditionally. The Jesus of Christian nationalism is a dominionist Jesus who demands a state church. On April 13th, our own Department of Justice promoted that dominionist Jesus from an official government page. Christians who oppose a state church have activated to defend state church separation and promote a personal Jesus, not a government one. This is Amanda Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee. We're friends, she's an ally. She happens to be a Jesus believer, but she founded the organization Christians Against Christian Nationalism. She's like, Jesus wouldn't want or need a state church. He's a personal savior.
I appreciate that. And of course, how can I not mention another example of someone who made a god who looked like him? Oh, yeah. I'm sure you guys saw this one, right? A few weeks back, April the 13th, Donald Trump posted an AI image of himself as savior and healer, complete with all the Americana [ __ ] that we see in that type of depiction, flags and eagles, worshippers. And even when many Christians came forward, a few people in the MAGA cult came forward upset. They called it blasphemous. He deleted the image, but he had an explanation, and it was this. He said, "It wasn't a depiction. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker, which we support." And then he blamed the fake news for misinterpreting the image and misrepresenting him.
Now, indulge me as I take a little bit of a bunny trail here, but have you seen the memes that followed in the wake of his doctor excuse? This is the cast of Grey's Anatomy. Someone posted this, a cognitive assessment test. Please identify the doctor. Uh, we've got, oh, uh, giving court before Congress. We've got Dr. Me. Oz. giving testimony, of course, uh, as we roll toward the month of October and Halloween, looking for a costume of a Red Cross worker. We have that one ready. Here's my doctor before my prostate exam. Jesus checking your lymph nodes there. We've got the doctor statue in Rio de Janeiro. And of course, someone had to share a picture of his doctor water skiing. Okay, fine. Fine. Trump as Jesus did bother a lot of Trump supporters, but MAGAs have long worshiped Trump as a savior figure with a direct link to the Christian savior.
Which brings me back to this whole idea of the warrior Christ. Because that's the whole mentality that's been going on, the conqueror, the crusher of evil, right? Much like Jesus of the 9th-century Germanic Saxon people, that was a warrior culture spoken about in poems about the great chieftain. The apostles were warriors. They were warrior companions. They drank mead, which was honey wine, at the Last Supper. Their mission was to conquer. As written in the ancient Germanic epic, the Heliand, the idea of the warrior Christ with his army remains popular today. Then he spoke and said there would come a wise king, magnificent and mighty, to this middle realm. He would be of the best birth. He said that he would be the Son of God. He said that he would rule this world, earth and sky, always and forevermore. This attitude, especially when it's colored by American gun culture, is extremely popular today. This is a real sign you can buy, and people are actually hanging on their properties. Warning: This home is protected by Sweet Jesus and a gun. If you come here uninvited, you might meet both of them.
Of course, blessed are the meek. Christians reject the God and gun sermons. They protest. They think a Second Amendment Jesus is ridiculous, right? They don't buy that. The Southern Baptist Convention Jesus wants women silent and submissive, serving men. The American Baptist Jesus ordains women and celebrates them as equals. Anti-gay Christians say Jesus condemns homosexuals. Advocacy Christians say Jesus made gay people and loves them exactly the way they are.
This is Hebrew Bible professor Dr. T. Hester Hamori. She's written a lot of books about the early and suspiciously human depictions and attributes of the biblical God. But all we have to do is just crack open the freaking Bible to see the obvious. Throughout all scripture, God is emotional. He's glad and sad. He's calm and angry. He's secure. He's insecure and jealous. He's forgiving. He's unforgiving. He's petty and territorial. And man, can he hold a grudge, right? Got a big ego. No matter how big the Bible tries to make him, God becomes increasingly small, very small. He looks more like creation, not a creator. He looks like us. I am convinced that if other creatures could make a god, the same would be true. If zebras had a zebra god, there is almost no doubt that deity would have four legs, hooves, and stripes. The gods of eagles would almost certainly have great talons and large wings. Whale gods would be able to raise giant tsunamis with their giant mammal tails. And then there are the gods of human beings. Bipeds with four limbs, skin, hair, eyes, ears, nostrils, teeth, and even fingernails. Why would a god need fingernails? Michelangelo's famous fresco inside the Sistine Chapel. We see Jesus's father and the same qualities. Now, you can't see fingernails, but check out his feet here. Yahweh's got toenails. Why does Yahweh need toenails if he wasn't created by people who were using us as inspiration?
There are tens of thousands of splintered denominations of Christianity, which is bizarre considering that they represent the religion which, according to 1 Corinthians 14:33, has a God who is not the author of confusion. Is it possible that all of this was the product of human hands and not divine ones? Was our inspiration for God's just a reflection in the mirror? Did God make man in his image, or did we make God in ours?
Now, personally, have I made a God in my own image? I would leave you today with three commandments. Except I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to give commandments. I'm not going to command anybody. I would give some encouragements. My encouragements would be: Be strong in kindness, not cruelty. Live an authentic life to the fullest and help others to do the same. And because we have an innate capacity for goodness without gods, let us go out into this often cruel and divided world and let us love one another. Thank you so much for having me out today.