on wondering . . . what color is Jesus?

 Jesus is white. I know this from all the paintings I've seen of him, done by white painters, mostly from Europe in the last few hundred years. And I'm white, so I'm comfortable with Jesus being just like me. It makes me feel like maybe I could relate to him, or understand him somehow.

But wait: When I was in high school, I visited a school in downtown Dayton. It was an inner city school with a largely African American student body. In the art room, there was an amazing painting of Jesus, done by a student.

What caught my attention, and my imagination, was that in this painting, unlike any painting of Jesus I'd ever seen, Jesus was black.

That led me to consider the possibility that not everyone thought of God in the same way I did. Maybe to other people, it was just as obvious that Jesus was black, like themselves. 

The Bible tells us God created us in his own image. But I think this goes both ways. I think we've created God in our own image, too.

A few years ago I went on a class trip with St. Benedict School's eighth grade to Washington D.C. While there, we visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I highly recommend that anyone planning a trip to Washington spend a couple of hours there, whether you're Catholic or not. The architecture is amazing, and the artwork superb.

Throughout the enormous church are little shrines for many world countries and cultures. Not every country is represented, but there are a whole lot of them. And in each one is a painting of the Blessed Mother and the Infant Jesus. What's unique is that they're done by artists who have visualized the Holy Family as the people of each country see them. In the Vietnamese shrine, Mary and Jesus are Vietnamese. In the shrine from one of the African countries, they are black. In the Irish shrine, red-headed. 

I loved it! Again, it made me ponder the physical appearance of Jesus.

Logically, I know he was from the Middle East, and Jewish. He was no blond haired, blue eyed baby, nor did he sport the red locks I've often seen him portrayed with.

He no doubt wasn't actually black or Asian, either. But since people have historically made quite free with his appearance, and since there are, as far as I know, no photos or portraits of Jesus in existence, I just feel like what does it matter?

People need to be able to relate to Jesus, and if it helps to picture him as we, ourselves, appear, I doubt he'll mind. I've always figured Jesus was a whole lot more understanding and tolerant than anybody else.

Remember how Jesus's followers were given the ability to be understood by people of all languages when they spoke? Maybe when we see Jesus, he'll appear to us all differently, too. Who knows?

In the book, “The Shack,” a powerful novel about dealing with loss, Jesus appears to the protagonist as a Middle Eastern man, while God appears as a large, black woman, and the Holy Spirit, a young Asian woman. This is an excellent book, by the way, and I recommend it, especially to anyone struggling with a personal loss. 

Jesus said something to the effect of, when you do unto others, you do unto me. So look around at all the faces you see. We're all pretty different. Yet we believe God made us all in his image.

What color is Jesus? 

What color do you want Him to be? I'm no theologian, but I'll bet He cares more that you want Him to be . . . period. Everything else is just window dressing.