representing Jesus

On Sunday afternoon I looking through a book that contained various pictures of Jesus painted by famous artists. What I found was actually quite sad, though the "blond hair and blue eyes" version of Jesus was (thankfully) missing from this collection, I still found the pictures showed a rather weak and feminine Jesus. A couple of the pictures could have been a Pears soap advert, and some showing the adolescent Jesus definitely looked to me like an 18 year old girl with long wavy hair.

Now, what I am saying is not to knock the great artists, but it did make me think about how we represent Jesus.

To me Jesus was fully man and fully God, and we should not be scared of either of these "identities". As a man I think he would have been strong. I think he would have been a man of emotion and passion. As fully God he would have had insight, compassion and love far beyond what a human could understand, but it would have been sensitivity with strength. Jesus interacted with normal people and was not vague, aloof or untouchable.

There are of course no pictures from the time of Jesus to show us what he looked like so, whatever image we come up with, it can only be speculation. What we do have is his church which is made of up people created in God's image, is made up of people filled with the Holy Spirit, is made up of people being transformed more and more into Jesus likeness. So for the world around us, we are Jesus.

So, does Jesus look like this?