cHriStiAniTy tOdAy is having a normal one, I see.
It's like they really want to screech "YOU KNOW JESUS ISN'T WHITE, DON'T YOU?" as if everyone doesn't already know that.
So weird.
Anyway, "Asia" is a Greek word potentially derived from the Akkadian word "asu" ("to rise") referring to the east where the sun rises in the sky. Historically, and at the time of Jesus, it referred to Asia Minor, or the Anatolian peninsula that is modern-day Turkey.
So if you asked literally anyone in the ancient Roman world if a man born in Bethlehem of Judea was an Asian, they would have thought you were dropped on your head as a baby. It's even more nonsensical than saying Jesus was a Palestinian.
Jesus was a Jew, of the line of Abraham, Jacob, and David. The entire Bible is about God's use of this lineage to save all of humanity and redeem us from our sin.
But CT knows that.
What's the point of the article, then?
Well, that Jesus doesn't look like this:
Jesus was born in Asia. He was Asian. Yet the preponderance of Christian art that shows him at home in Europe has meant that he is embedded deeply in the popular imagination as Western.
Soft-imbibing the commie nonsense about "decentering" whiteness, CT feels morally obligated to remind us that Jesus wasn't Caucasian by [checks notes] portraying Jesus as Indian and Japanese.
Some may object to depicting Jesus as anything other than a brown male born into a Jewish family in Bethlehem of Judea in the first century, believing that doing so undermines his historicity. But Christian artists who tackle the subject of the Incarnation are often aiming not at historical realism but at theological meaning.
By representing Jesus as Japanese, Indonesian, or Indian, they convey a sense of God's immanence, his "with-us-ness," for their own communities — and for everyone else, the universality of Christ's birth.
Ah, so it's natural, and even good, when people contextualize biblical figures and stories to fit with their own cultural and artistic aesthetics - at least, to a point.
So ... explain to me why Westerners need to know that Jesus didn't look like this:
While the Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos are encouraged to think of Jesus like this:
Beneath them, on either side of the fish, are two house lizards. The artist said this is a reference to the folk belief that every evening at six, the lizards come down from the ceiling to kiss the floor in reverence to God. If even the lizards honor Christ, he says, then why don't we?
Make it make sense, CT.
Y'all got the Gospel really messed up with critical race theory, didn't ya?
See, normal people look at this and say, "Wow, look at all the beautiful cultural depictions of Jesus. The nations are praising their Savior!"
In fact, I'm pretty proud of the Japanese nativity scene I made for the featured photo of this article, even if AI did 90% of the work 😂
But CT is over here raving about non-Western depictions:
So that I can decenter my preconceptions about this:
That's just a soft form of what the wokies are doing when they tear down statues or say not hiring white people isn't discrimination.
Just a nicer shade, that's all!
If I had to guess why they keep doing this framing, I'd say it's because they think we're all a bunch of uneducated hicks who think things like this:
😂
I'll leave ya with this:
"For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise." - Galatians 3:27-29
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