By
Obododimma
Oha
Figure One: A popular artist's impression of Jesus Christ. Source: biographyonline.net
It is obvious
that some leaders of Christian churches have started confusing the form with
the substance, a represenation with the real thing. Images of personalities
like Jesus that we see are just artists’ impressions; they are twice removed
from reality, just as some accounts that we have in the Holy Bible were first
oral traditional narratives told by people (from mouth to mouth), each teller
adding salt and pepper here and there to make the telling sweeter. Have we just
forgotten that images of Jesus Christ we see are the impressions by artists who
felt that the white face they represented looked like it? What if Jesus had
been black or blackened (from all his wanderings and travels)? Would his
universal adoration have been the same? Well, let us leave that to theologians
to chew and quarrel and fight. But what is central to this article is the
depiction of the dressing of Jesus, just as he chose to come in human form,
eating like humans do, drinking, going to toilet, urinating, sleeping, waking,
etc. Being in human form was why he even died on the cross. And the one we
hardly think about: he had a skin like us and so his number one covering was
human skin!
Figure Two: Another popular image of Jesus Christ. Source: amazon.com
In the time
of Jesus Christ, of course there was no photography (not to talk of
photoshoppping software). There were only sculptors and some leaders like Rochas
Okorocha of Imo State, Nigeria, who would want to commission the sculpting of
important personages, as he did once upon a time for Jacob Zuma of South
Africa. If Jesus lived in the time of Okorocha, perhaps a sculpture of him
would have been erected to grace the Imo State capital and tell the heroic
story of his miracles of several exotic cars and numerous investments. A sculpture
was a chief means of telling the story of an important person like Jesus Christ,
a real historical figure, even though there were scriveners and griots who used
language aesthetically to narrate him and his deeds.
What develops
out of this? In our new hero-worship, we
forget the humanity of Jesus and that he liked it. Also, his dressing was not
permanent. Jesus wore what each artist gave him, but in reality his dressing
was in conformity with his time. He wore the Semitic long gown, yes. Sandals,
of course. Maybe he would have worn Cortina shoes if he had been a child going
to school in my time; caned by his teachers if he was naughty sometimes.
Yes; he would
not always wear that recognisable Semitic long gown and sometimes appear
bare-footed. His hair style, too. Maybe as my school mate he would wear “brush
head” but if a modern child he may choose to wear one of these shaggy
hairstyles and have his ears wired, listening to his favourite rabbi or popular
musician playing religious hip-hop. He could even see the General Overseer of
the temple once in a while.
But, if he
chooses to shift from a semiotic stereotype of him, maybe wearing these, or
tattered jeans pants, T-shirt, and baseball cap, I am sorry for him when he
wants to enter the temple, not to talk of going near the altar when the
archbishop or General Overseer is celebrating, maybe taking the microphone and announcing himself
as “Jesus Christ!” Won’t the ushers quickly grab him and he could be seen as a
terrorist waiting to strike? Do you blame them? Think of the Sri
Lanka church bombing!
Figure Three: A Very Modern Jesus. Source: funnyjunk.com
Do you see
why and how visual representations of Jesus Christ have to be permanent or
stereotyped, even if they are artists’ impressions, far from reality? Was it not how the mermaid (momiwata) in Nigerian worship turned out to be a pretty Indian
woman in Nigeria in those days and as a religious fraudster received all the
encomium and sacrifices? That of Jesus is particularly disturbing becuse the
top echelon of Christianity already intoxicated by power and Roman procedures
of worship brought into Christianity would not recognise him as their leader if
he chooses to come simple, modified in any way by our age, and not ready to
respect constituted authority again! It is even the leadership of the church
that would crucify him themselves, not the Roman soldiers.
Human beings
have courageously used human language in signifying God and his actions. We have
to think of God through what we can understand. In a similar way, they have to
represent Jesus in the ways that suit them, but forget that he is free to put on
something different but fashionable, i.e. in conformity with the present time.
Figure Four: A Black Jesus Christ.Source: ghostprintgallery.com
Figure Five: Jesus Christ the Spiderman. a modern Jesus. Source: pinterest.com
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