Imagining Images

After talking about images of Christ in class on Tuesday and reading The Color of Christ, people throughout the world seem to use images to represent concepts that are too complex to understand and express in basic words. Religion is not a concrete idea, and no one is absolutely certain that their religious beliefs are accurate since these beliefs are based on faith and have not yet been proven. Because of this lack of certainty in religion, the concepts may seem like a mystery and may be confusing. Christ is a challenging aspect of Christianity because numerous individuals may not be able to completely grasp the idea that Jesus is Christ, but Christ is larger than that. In order to make sense of these Christian teachings and make the ideas more relatable to them, they use pictures to represent Christ so that he appears to be more human. Because of this, throughout history, people have been preoccupied with identifying Christ's skin color, hair color, eye color, facial structure, body shape, and more characteristics. This obsession with demonstrating Christ as a human being helps these followers of faith relate to him and understand the teachings so that they are able to put the faith into practice and follow Christ's footsteps. Another interesting idea is that these images of Christ have evolved over time, meaning that the changes in the images parallel to the changes in the world. Similarly, how Christ is represented depends on the culture and location in which the people who created the image live. So, in order to understand the picture of Jesus being presented and why he possesses these certain features, individuals must look at the surrounding context, such as the social, cultural, geographical, and historical forces. Images are powerful tools that are used to demonstrate the unknown features of Christ so that he and the entire faith seem more worldly and humanly.