Jesus's Portrait

I've been to quite a few wedding receptions.  I could compile a nonfiction book on the people I've met and the stories I've been told around and across banquet tables.

Occasionally, I feel trapped by the conversation, especially if the subject is about religion or politics, and I disagree with something said.  I don't want to be contentious at such a celebratory event.

At a reception recently, the conversation turned to the book, #1 NY Times besteller, Heaven Is Real.  You probably know about it:  A four old boy, his father a Wesleyan minister in Nebraska, nearly dies from a burst appendix. Over subsequent weeks and months, the little boy reveals aspects of a brief but detailed visit to heaven, including an encounter with Jesus, wearing a crown, purple sash, and white robes.

The parents present the young boy with portrait after portrait of Jesus.  None resemble the Jesus he met until he's presented with a painting by another child prodigy, Akiane Kramarik of Mt. Morris, Illinois, who paints largely from her imagination.  For believers, including the boy's parents, this conjunction of child prodigies has  special authority.

I've posted a photo of the charming prodigy and her Jesus-portrait.  What strikes me about  the painting is the styled hair of Jesus.  It reminds me of what's called a tell in poker--a gesture that gives away the player's hand.  This hairstyle screams of the early years of the twenty-first century when she painted it.  (I'm reminded of movie epics that can be dated by the hairstyles, no matter how period-authentic the costumes are.)

The book Heaven Is Real appears to be full of its own sort of theological tell, doctrine that is concordant with unique Weslyean doctrine.

Some years ago, anthropoligsts devised an image of what Jesus might really have looked like, given his time, social status, and genetic background.  It caused a bit of a stir.  I always thought that this face would have fit nicely into a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western  (music of course by Ennio Morricone.)

Such renditions beg the questions of cultural-centrism,  of idolatry, and even of the notion of cult--religion looking to one figure in particular.

Regarding the historical Jesus, I lean to the outlook of the relatively recent Jesus Seminar, particularly John Dominic Crossan.  Jesus was a social radical who doesn't resemble the popular portrait that most folks carry in their imagination.

Whenever I get distressed about such things, I turn to Theodore Parker's "Transient and Permanent in Christianity (1841)," and find my distress much relieved.