Image of Christ, part 1

Relationship with someone I have never seen with my own eyes, and whose voice I've never audibly heard, but whose presence is everywhere (including within me) can be challenging. Specifically, I have had various times throughout my relationship with Jesus when I've realized He seems more like an idea than a Person. Those realizations usually make sense of my spiritual apathy. As I again try to realign with the reality of Jesus' person, I'm looking back on previous times I have worked through this and sharing some things I wrote during those times.

Like most Moody students, one of the best classes I ever took was Images of Christ in the Novel, taught by Dr. Rosalie De Rosset. Below is an edited version of the first paper I wrote for that class, 4 years ago:

My image of Christ is blurry. In the last year I’ve become a little flustered with how abstract God is to me. It’s shocking to be raised in an evangelical church that emphasizes relationship with Christ, only to realize after “knowing Him” for ten years that He seems to be more of an idea than a person. Is this the normal struggle of a creature trying to understand the transcendent creator? Really, it has been more than Christ which has felt obscure. Spiritual matters in general have sent me on a journey of questioning how to understand a realm which operates in ways only explained with metaphors from this physical world that I’ve become so familiar with. Christianity is full of mystery. Daily I’m puzzled and awed at the spiritual side of life. And daily I seek to refocus on the unseen… which is a rather ironic exhortation from the Apostle Paul. It sums up well the life of a Christian—a physical body indwelt by the Holy Spirit, accustomed to life on earth but aware that this is not our home. Oh how I anticipate the day when we no longer see dimly, but see our Lord face to face and our hearts finally find their home—at one with Him.
            Until then, my mind is full of twenty-one years of trying to know the Jesus Christ I’ve never seen. There are flannel graph pictures and coloring pages from children’s church, where Jesus wore long robes and sandals and had long brown hair and a neatly trimmed, full beard, and usually had a smile on his face. There are numerous nativity scenes, where Jesus looked like most babies, except that he was “away in a manger… no crying he makes.” As a child this gave me the impression that a perfect baby never cried. But actually, Jesus probably cried a lot. He didn’t speak right away. He developed as all humans do. He breastfed; He cut and eventually lost baby teeth; He had the toddler bouncy, unstable walk. He was fully human.
            And He is fully God. At one formative Bible study when I was thirteen or so, one of my peers asked the teacher how Jesus can be God and the Son of God at the same time—a question I had been wondering myself for a while, but was too shy and proud to ever ask. After hearing many explanations of the Trinity, I still struggle to fit it accurately into my image of Christ. The biggest complication is Christ taking on flesh, while the Father and Holy Spirit are still spirits. How then, can they be one?
            Not long after hearing about the Trinity for the first time, I heard and began to understand the Gospel for the first time. Sadly, I was raised in the church but don’t remember hearing the Gospel until I went to a youth convention in sixth grade. This was definitely the beginning of my relationship with Christ. I learned of the love, grace, mercy, forgiveness and compassion of Christ. This opened up an image of Christ which was deeply connected to the cross.
            Many images of Christ include the cross--statues, necklaces, paintings, t-shirts, etc. One of the most powerful (and popular) recent images of Christ’s crucifixion was in Mel Gibson’s Passion movie. Despite it’s shortcomings, the movie implanted into the minds of many the brutality of Christ’s death. There was no clear complexion, smiling lips or dancing eyes. This was a Jesus with pain and struggle dripping red from his body, wincing and stumbling, weakened and quiet, except for occasional moans and screams. With each viewing of this film, my awareness has deepened of the cost of my sin and the reality of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Beyond the physical pain was the intense spiritual pain of bearing the weight of the sins of man. Having images of Christ’s body correlates to what was going on spiritually, but much of that is still a mystery.
            The Jesus Film also shaped my image of Christ. From what I remember, it gave me the impression that Jesus was always in the same mood. He always taught with a tone that implied nothing He was saying was that surprising, and He was unmoved by the responses of those listening. I didn’t like this image. Viewing the film made me wonder more about His personality, facial expressions, tones of voice, and physical gestures when He taught and interacted with people.
            Once I passed by a research magazine (I don’t remember if it was Christian or not) that claimed to have a computer generated image of what Jesus may have looked like based on research concerning what the average male in His region and of His ethnic background looked like at that time. They said He was shorter than the average male is now. His hair wasn’t long and flowing, but probably had tight curls. His face didn’t look as long and slender as Christians have painted it, but had more of a round shape. Seeing that article made me question and hold more loosely the traditional Christian images of Christ.
            A few years after the peak of the WWJD? fad, when Christians were trying to return meaning to the overused phrase, I read the classic, In His Steps by Charles M. Sheldon. The book was ground breaking for me. I finally grasped what it would look like to live with my whole life surrendered to the Lord, following Christ. To imagine what Jesus would do if He were in my shoes brought a new perspective to my image of Him. To imagine Him in my world made His attributes seem more real. He is honest, wise, generous, loving, faithful, humble, and gracious.
            Throughout my early teen years, my youth group fell in love with a Jesus who was our Friend, Lover, and Savior. We knew His teaching was hard, but somehow thoughts of Him brought up warm, tender feelings in focusing on His acceptance of us. Like too many Christians, we didn’t read the Old Testament much, so it was pretty easy to ignore God’s judgment, justice, wrath, and anger. To fear God was just to respect Him.
            I realized I needed to find the balance of fear and tender love. Coming to Moody caused a swing in extremes. My home church was sentimental, passionate, contemporary, and undignified in approaching Christ. Moody is reserved, traditional, reverent and controlled. Over time my heart turned cold. Jesus seemed much less exciting and much more reserved—much less mysterious and much more contained. It took me over a year to realize this.
           So here I am now, caught in a beautiful tension of knowing and not knowing. Every image of Christ carries some truth, but all of these truths must be balanced by one another. Jesus is patient and firm; innocent and shrewd; loving and confrontational; teaching with authority and serving with humility. He is complex. In seeking to fix my eyes on Him, I need to reflect often on the many aspects of who He is in order to keep a balanced perspective. He is God and He is man. He is one with the Father and the Son of the Father. Currently He is at the right hand of the Father, and in approaching Him, that is the image which comes to my mind most often. I’m excited to keep understanding more of the ways He has revealed Himself to us.

 Throughout that class, I started to let my curiosity roam. What did Jesus' voice sound like? What facial expressions might He have used? What is it like to make eye contact with Him? To have Him address you by name? My professor used novels with Christ-types to teach us to approach the Bible with more creativity. It isn't heretical to try to picture the scenes and characters, as long as we remember that it is speculative. Dare I say it's even helpful to imagine Jesus' words in modern vernacular... people at Moody scoffed at the Message because many people treated it like the English word-for-word translations, when it's actually a paraphrase. So I ditched the Message and switched to NASB because it's the most literal translation. Well, in scholarship, that's a smart thing to do. But I've since realized that paraphrasing can be good if we don't give it the same doctrinal weight as more literal translations. (However, I'm still not a huge fan of most paraphrases I've read... modern vernacular quickly becomes outdated or sounds cheesy).

So, next time you read in the Gospels, read slowly, and pay attention to the tone of voice you imagine in your head. Try to picture the scene. Remember that it's a record of something that really happened, not just some story, and do whatever imagining it takes for that reality to sink in. Don't just read to learn doctrine. Read to know Jesus more.