Christian Art from a Variety of Perspectives

A few weeks back I asked what your picture of Jesus looked like. Recently, I looked at the sidebar of Matt Stone's blog, Glocal Christianity—a goldmine of Christian and religious imagery. He's organized the images into culturally distinct sections that range from Christian Art | Esoteric to Christian Art | Asian.

Here's one of the pictures from the Christian Art | Animated section:

jesusandspidy.jpg

Somehow I doubt Ditko drew that panel....

And here's one from the Christian Art | Political category:

gunsandgod.jpg

You can find all of the categories on the righthand side of his blog. What's interesting to me is how many different ways Jesus is represented. He runs the gauntlet of skin colors, hairstyles and political ideologies; yet he's still extremely recognizable. And when he's not depicted on the cross, he's usually granting his approval or disapproval to a person or statement.

The big question this cornucopia of Christs raises in my mind concerns the ways we use and abuse Jesus to sell our worldview. There are plenty of images in those archives that I disagree with, but I'm sure I'm just as guilty of painting a picture of Jesus that others could criticize. And I'm sure we can all find verses to support our outlook.

How have you seen an image of Jesus used to promote a certain viewpoint or worldview recently? Is it always offensive to use Jesus in this way? After all, even a picture of Jesus gathering the children to him can say say a lot about the artist and the culture he or she lives in.

Other thoughts?

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Comments (8)

I wish I had my J.I. Packer "Knowing God" book with me so I could quote him on images. It is a must read, and once you do, pictures like these will make your stomach churn.

So, my thoughts are - not cool.
I travel a lot and therefore see a lot of different people. One such person asked me and a friend what Jesus looked like and we smiled at him. He already had his own idea of what Jesus looked like, but wanted to either confirm or deny what we would say. This happens to me everyonce in a while, so here goes. I spent several months in the middle of Iraq last year and saw a multitude of people whom I think looked just like Jesus. After all wasn't he from that general area and wouldn't he have the dark hair, beard, and dark features. Oh and one thing stood out about what I saw was that a lot of those people have rather large noses, just like mine. The one who asked what Jesus looked like was very satisfied with the answer. But, remember he really does look just like all of us, just a litttle more holy. In God's Grace John
For me, some of these images were thought provoking, many were astonishing in beauty (Visit of the Chiefs in the Native American section, for example), some were obviously crafted to make stomachs churn. But more than a few of them were wonderful. Personally, I love seeing the Lord & His Word reverently portrayed through the eyes of different cultures.

Funny, the "Mankind is No Island" video on Matt's site reminds us that we can become a (living) visual representation of the Lord too...


@hartz: I took another look at the Native American section. I'll agree, there are some wonderful images of Christ in there.
hilarious. what about presenting Jesus in music? judging by a lot of contemporary worship, it sounds like he should be wearing a prom dress and that eternity may be spent listening to "endless love" in the dark with him. if christians could create great art, it could change the world.
"Endless Love"... that is awesome. Mark Driscoll talks about the metrosexual Jesus, sipping his latte while driving his Cabriolet with the top down, long hair flowing in the wind, on the way to getting his manicure. Sounds like some of the same stuff. Between the kitschy art, touchy-feely music and offensively corny books and movies, Christian art is pretty far gone.
The Old Testament is full of random things God used as object lessons to get his point across to the culture he was addressing. Since we are such a media-driven culture some of these images might prove useful to him.

I suspect he views image of himself used to sell products or ideologies much like the the moneychangers at the temple. Other images may be offensive to him, some just eye-rollers. My personal favorite is the Jesus bobblehead I saw in Bookpeople.

Christ knows the heart and intent of the artists. Scripture tells us that even things intended for evil he can turn to good.
Glad you found the images thought provoking. That's basically why their there, to get people thinking. In this increasingly image oriented world we live in I think its important to ask ourselves, what do the ways we do or don't represent jesus say about ourselves? To Brandon in particular i would ask, what would you say about Christian movies and illustrations in children's bibles? They're forms of art / visual communication too. Is art ok for kids but not for adults? How would you develop a theology that addressed the art question holistically?

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