Is God A "white Man" In A Robe?

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

I don't have a picture for God, but in my head Jesus is a white guy, fairly tall and handsome, longish brown hair, and a well cared for beard.
I never gave this depiction much thought until I went to Kenya. Not only did their pictures show Jesus as a white man, but that he was snow white, and also rather effeminate.
IMO this is wrong for 2 reasons,
1. Though not accepted by all, there is a wideheld view in Kenya (perhaps all of Africa, it is also common in Asia) that white people are somehow superior. I t must make it more difficult to leave this entirely incorrect and rather destructive view behind when your ultimate role model is literally whiter than white.
2. The efiminate nature of these depictions adds weight to the notion that Christ was a weak person. Yes, he taught us to turn the other cheek and to forgive 70 times 7 times, but the idea that Christ was or that Christians should be people who smile at everything and never take (sometimes angrily) a stand is imo just wrong.

You know cavalier, your words are so true. I too feel that we are humans before we are anything else. We have to learn to be other things along our life cycle.

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

I don't have a picture for God, but in my head Jesus is a white guy, fairly tall and handsome, longish brown hair, and a well cared for beard.
I never gave this depiction much thought until I went to Kenya. Not only did their pictures show Jesus as a white man, but that he was snow white, and also rather effeminate.
IMO this is wrong for 2 reasons,
1. Though not accepted by all, there is a wideheld view in Kenya (perhaps all of Africa, it is also common in Asia) that white people are somehow superior. I t must make it more difficult to leave this entirely incorrect and rather destructive view behind when your ultimate role model is literally whiter than white.
2. The efiminate nature of these depictions adds weight to the notion that Christ was a weak person. Yes, he taught us to turn the other cheek and to forgive 70 times 7 times, but the idea that Christ was or that Christians should be people who smile at everything and never take (sometimes angrily) a stand is imo just wrong.

Well put my cavalier

 

[wil]

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://heraghty.diaryland.com/images/femchrist.jpg&imgrefurl=http://heraghty.diaryland.com/taoist.html&h=259&w=345&sz=20&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=TgWAu5W5hljeXM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3DFemale%2BJesus%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

I found this depiction..It may be a little racy, but a depiction none the less.

Any thoughts?

art and artist....whew.

I am not a prude.

I am not gender biased.

I appreciate art and nudes.

This offended me. Which intrigues me. Why, why did it offend me?

It also allows me to understand that I can't be required to understand why others say they are offended at something that doesn't offend me....I must accept that. And why something that does offend me, doesn't offend others, I must also accept that.

Art, sometimes it pushes our buttons...pushes the envelope....makes us think.

There is value in that. I wish I didn't click on it, then I wouldn't have to contemplate my reaction.

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

Wil, I really appreciate your honest reaction to that..
The idea of this thread was to challenge views of what you feel is a good depiction of GOD.

Just to give you some idea of how I came to realize GOD is everywhere.
One day a little girl ran up to me and said "Why do you live alone?
I did not know how to react, because she could not have known that I lived alone at the time because people always would come by and visit.
To make a long story short, I realized that GOD is everywhere and in all things. I have learned to hear GOD in all forms from people in all walks of life from homeless people to children to the sick. There is no doubt in my mind that GOD is watching you, in some very unexpected places

 

[Dondi]

I have to admit, I was a bit putoff by that image of a female christ.
I don't know what the artist's intention for dipicting that female christ. If it was for shock value, it was initially startling in several ways. The idea of a female christ is disturbing enough, but for it to be bare-breasted seemed almost obscene.

But then I was thinking that this Roman means of execution probably applied to females as well as males back in the time of Jesus, so what we see here is probably not an unrealistic portayal.

But then it also reminded me that we are all on that cross, no matter the gender. (I'm speak as a Christian now). If Christ was our substitute, then we should be up there, men and women. It also reminds me that we all carry our crosses.

Funny, wil, that after the initial shock at something, a curious intrigue causes us to pause and wonder.

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

Attached Images
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/attachments/belief-and-spirituality/278-is-god-a-white-man-aragorn.jpg?d=1157036299
Attached Images

Kinda looks like a serial killer to me. People with blue eyes have always scared me. The eyes remind me of the KKK guys that used to march downtown in the town I am from. Also he looks as if he is ready to kill his next victim. That's just my opinion though.

Funny story
When I was a teenager, me and a friend of mine were coming out of the mall from the arcade and were parked next to an older woman. We just so happened to be going to our car at the same time she was going to her's. She saw us walking in the same direction as she was and she took off running and jumped in her car and locked the door and looked at us as if we were going to harm her in some way. We smiled at her and got in our car and drove off. For the life of me, I could not figure out what was so scarry looking about me. When I got home and looked in the mirror, I still could not see the "scarryness" in my face or body. Being the (baby/youngest) in my family, I was always told, that I could not scare a Fly away with a fly swatter. LOL

I guess that just goes to show that some images that seem scarry to some are not scarry for others and that people see things differently.

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

art and artist....whew.

I am not a prude.
I am not gender biased.
I appreciate art and nudes.
This offended me. Which intrigues me. Why, why did it offend me?
It also allows me to understand that I can't be required to understand why others say they are offended at something that doesn't offend me....I must accept that. And why something that does offend me, doesn't offend others, I must also accept that.
Art, sometimes it pushes our buttons...pushes the envelope....makes us think.
There is value in that. I wish I didn't click on it, then I wouldn't have to contemplate my reaction.

By the Wil, I senaked a peak at your photo book at Zaada.com
In one of those pictures you kinda got the whole long hair thing going there. You could pass for one of the deciples in a good movie.

Just jokin wit ya.

You have a very good looking family. GOD has really blessed you in many ways.

 

[Caimanson]

It also allows me to understand that I can't be required to understand why others say they are offended at something that doesn't offend me....I must accept that. And why something that does offend me, doesn't offend others, I must also accept that.

Don't know what the original intention of the picture was, the excerpt from the gospel in my eyes redeems the picture, and I even kind of like it.

Part of the reason I think is that in my old evangelical church, images of god or Jesus were always seen as pointless and idolatrous, so I suppose with that kind of mindset I don't feel defensive about it.
The bottom line for me, is that this picture is as unreal as any other picture of Jesus.

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

I like the picture of the female Christ because it suggests the underlying eroticism that's always been part of the crucifix image, except it's not an effiminate looking man, it's a woman. I imagine her lifting her head and singing, if I could turn back time...

Chris

 

[cavalier]

The bottom line for me, is that this picture is as unreal as any other picture of Jesus.

I can understand that.

It reminded me of a movie, "Sirens" Hugh Grant, Sam O'Neil, Elle MacPherson, Portia de Rossi.
Hugh Grant is an Anglican vicar who has recently arrived in Australia. He is sent to see an artist (O'Neil) and dissuade him from painting religiously "offensive" pictures. He ususally paints nudes and in one has used his naked wife to represent Christ on the Cross.
I think I remember his argument was that the naked body is a beautiful God create thing, and that his wife was just as good a representation of Christ as anyone else.

 

[Quahom1]

Yo, the picture is, disturbing.

 

[Caimanson]

I think I remember his argument was that the naked body is a beautiful God create thing, and that his wife was just as good a representation of Christ as anyone else.

Something on those lines is what I got from that excerpt from the gospel of Thomas, that I have "arrived" when I stop making all kind of human distinctions.
So in that context, that female crucifixion makes me feel that christ is beyond male or female, it forces me to look at the inner not the outer.
So a picture like that in my eyes could be classed as iconoclast.


Alvaro

 

[Quahom1]

Something on those lines is what I got from that excerpt from the gospel of Thomas, that I have "arrived" when I stop making all kind of human distinctions.
So in that context, that female crucifixion makes me feel that christ is beyond male or female, it forces me to look at the inner not the outer.
So a picture like that in my eyes could be classed as iconoclast.


Alvaro

ah, yes...The Gospel according to "doubt"...

 

[Caimanson]

ah, yes...The Gospel according to "doubt"...

Doubt? Quahom, I never knew that about you, welcome to my club!

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

Yo, the picture is, disturbing.

Q, why do you find it disturbing?

 

[Quahom1]

Q, why do you find it disturbing?

I had to think about this for awhile. Not because I didn't have an answer, but rather, there are so many points to the answer, that could never really be expressed in words.

The picture's first point (whether the author intended or not), is not to solicit thoughts of the sacrifice of Christ, but to illicit a base reaction. What is incorporated in the picture is designed to cause the viewer to imagine sadism/masochism, violence, death, and eroticism. There is no message of sacrifice or salvation in the picture.

In reality, there would be no flesh left intact on the musculature of the crucified body (male or female would be indeterminent from visual observation). The Romans were ruthlessly efficient in their scourging of those condemned to death.

This picture uses the crown as a type of erotic apparel, suggesting pleasure in pain (accented by the blood flow that is almost like make up). The female breast exposed is a biological trigger, for most males, as is the clear skin tone/texture and health of the musculature. (In otherwords, the first thing that catches the male eye is the body, and it isn't in revulsion that is in the mind of the viewer).

The picture defeats the message below it, by causing a very male reaction to a female image. Instead of suggesting a blending of humanity into a one ness, without gender or pre-dispositions to gender, it clearly emphasises the difference in gender and causality of that difference.

In short, it attempts to illicit excitment at the sight of a subdued female who is physically attractive and healthy.

If God is female, then man has beaten God, and is the dominant being "over God", who is as helpless as a female bound, bleeding and naked on a cross.

To sensationalise an event like the crucifiction, with a naked female body suggests that man (men) is lower than the basest animals in this world. Even the animal kingdom instinctively protects, (not destroys), its female half, and it certainly does not put that destruction on display, and call it "art".

The only word that seems to fit the picture is "abomination"...a disdainful mockery.

It clearly does not tie in with the message from the passage of Thomas' Gospel. It refutes it. A disturbing parady of one event and paradox of picture and words.

my thoughts

v/r

Q

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

The picture's first point (whether the author intended or not), is not to solicit thoughts of the sacrifice of Christ, but to illicit a base reaction. What is incorporated in the picture is designed to cause the viewer to imagine sadism/masochism, violence, death, and eroticism. There is no message of sacrifice or salvation in the picture.
Q

Personally, that picture did not arouse me sexually at all.
Seeing a bloody woman is not my idea of something erotic.

In reality, there would be no flesh left intact on the musculature of the crucified body (male or female would be indeterminent from visual observation). The Romans were ruthlessly efficient in their scourging of those condemned to death.
Q

In reality, childrens books depicting Jesus as European are "in fact" not
accurate.

This picture uses the crown as a type of erotic apparel, suggesting pleasure in pain (accented by the blood flow that is almost like make up). The female breast exposed is a biological trigger, for most males, as is the clear skin tone/texture and health of the musculature. (In otherwords, the first thing that catches the male eye is the body, and it isn't in revulsion that is in the mind of the viewer).
Q

Again a bloody woman, (naked or not) is not erotic. IMHO
The 1st thing that caught my eye was the blood.
Then I saw the cross and the thorns and the verse and so on....

The picture defeats the message below it, by causing a very male reaction to a female image. Instead of suggesting a blending of humanity into a one ness, without gender or pre-dispositions to gender, it clearly emphasises the difference in gender and causality of that difference.
Q

Would a man without a shirt cause a woman to be aroused?
Do bloody men with no clothes arouse women?

In short, it attempts to illicit excitment at the sight of a subdued female who is physically attractive and healthy.
Q

Hmmm..
A subdued male who is healthy in the same circumstance may be attractive or sexually arousing to females.

If God is female, then man has beaten God, and is the dominant being "over God", who is as helpless as a female bound, bleeding and naked on a cross.
Q

Only a woman would let a man think he has "won" just to satisfy a male ego. (Learned that from my mother) (My father often "thought" he won)

Females are not as "helpless" as you may think.

Mothers protect their young everyday.

A woman protected you in her womb before you were born.

Women tend to be less violent then men, true, but "can" be as violent if
properly pushed.

Try going a round in the boxing ring with (Muhammed Ali's daughter).

Try running against Flo Jo

In both cases, you will probably get your but kicked.

To sensationalise an event like the crucifiction, with a naked female body suggests that man (men) is lower than the basest animals in this world. Even the animal kingdom instinctively protects, (not destroys), its female half, and it certainly does not put that destruction on display, and call it "art".
Q

Killing is universal and so is protection. In the animal kingdom, Females are killed very often and left out for all to see. Killing is just as instinctive as protection. Women protect their young, and will "Kill" another woman to save them. Men do the same.

The only word that seems to fit the picture is "abomination"...a disdainful mockery.
Q

Very storng (real) words. I appreciate the honesty.

 

[Quahom1]

Personally, that picture did not arouse me sexually at all.
Seeing a bloody woman is not my idea of something erotic.

You didn't create the picture.

In reality, childrens books depicting Jesus as European are "in fact" not
accurate.

Of course not...

Again a bloody woman, (naked or not) is not erotic. IMHO
The 1st thing that caught my eye was the blood.
Then I saw the cross and the thorns and the verse and so on....

Not to you. But then again you did not create the picture.

Would a man without a shirt cause a woman to be aroused?
Do bloody men with no clothes arouse women?

In light of the symbology supposedly being represented? I doubt it. Do bloody men arouse women? yes.

Hmmm..
A subdued male who is healthy in the same circumstance may be attractive or sexually arousing to females.

Not a chance. The only "subduction" of men that most women want is in their bed, on Sunday morning. And they call it "cuddling".

Only a woman would let a man think he has "won" just to satisfy a male ego. (Learned that from my mother) (My father often "thought" he won)

That quite possibly is true. However the opposite is also true. The man needs an excuse not to "win", to shore up his ego (and to take pressure off of himself...that he put on himself).

Females are not as "helpless" as you may think.

I'm not the one conveying a female as helpless...

Women tend to be less violent then men, true, but "can" be as violent if
properly pushed.

Maybe in your "world"...words can also be violent, and a serpent's tongue spits venom that can blind, and paralyse...

Try going a round in the boxing ring with (Muhammed Ali's daughter).

No contest. I don't fight for points...

Try running against Flo Jo

I was a distance runner...

In both cases, you will probably get your but kicked.

Depends on your perspective. I wouldn't come away "clean", but I would still be walking...

Killing is universal and so is protection. In the animal kingdom, Females are killed very often and left out for all to see. Killing is just as instinctive as protection. Women protect their young, and will "Kill" another woman to save them. Men do the same.

But, what has this to do with the picture I find disturbing, for the reasons I expressed?

Very storng (real) words. I appreciate the honesty.

You asked...

v/r

Q

 

[YO-ELEVEN-11]

Q,

The idea of the thread in the begining was to get in "essence" different opinions on how GOD or any religious dieties should be depicted or if they should be depicted at all.

If I offended you, I deeply apoligize for that.
Your opinion is very valuable in this matter, because you have let me know that their are people who do get offended by depicitions.

Just as some people may find it obsene for Jesus to be depicted as a "White Male" (european) hanging on the cross.

Q,

Do you feel that we should have depictions of that event?

Do you feel that we should have depictions of any religious dieties at all?

 

[Quahom1]

Q,

The idea of the thread in the begining was to get in "essence" different opinions on how GOD or any religious dieties should be depicted or if they should be depicted at all.

If I offended you, I deeply apoligize for that.
Your opinion is very valuable in this matter, because you have let me know that their are people who do get offended by depicitions.

I simply stated it was disturbing...

Just as some people may find it obsene for Jesus to be depicted as a "White Male" (european) hanging on the cross.

He is depicted as people can understand "Him". I simply stated my finding one particular perspective, "disturbing".

Q,

Do you feel that we should have depictions of that event?

By all means.

Do you feel that we should have depictions of any religious dieties at all?

That might cause problems. Especially if one is ignorant of another's faith. Then you might end up with hundreds dead, over a cartoon....

but that could never happen...right?

v/r

Q