The Re-birth of Jesus
As we prepare to celebrate Christmas tomorrow, there has been a recent focus on how Christ has been taken out of Christmas. Christmas in the context of this debate, has been turned into a consumeristic, marketing, and materialism movement. We were even lead to believe a few years ago that on Black Friday, our Christmas shopping could rescue the economy with this view of Christmas. Black Friday may one day become a holiday all by itself creating the trifecta of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas. But this isn’t the Christmas problem that I want to deal with. The problem I want to bring up has been an issue much longer. I want to focus on those of us that still keep Christ in Christmas. We have another problem.
Our problem is with the Christ that we lift up during Christmas. In an ever-increasing multi-ethnic and multicultural world, we continue to lift up a Eurocentric Jesus. The majority, if not all of the images of the Nativity Scene continue to be a White Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, even though this scene takes place far away from any European country. Our problem is that as we strive to celebrate the birth of Jesus, we actually lift up a false Jesus. By lifting up a false Jesus, we run the risk of that Western Jesus become the very symbol of what Christmas has become. We also must remember that Christmas isn’t a biblically based holiday in the first place. First century Christian Jews would not have placed the importance on Christmas that we do today. Over time Christian Gentiles made the pagan rooted festivals of both Christmas and Easter what they are today and have long forgotten the true biblical holidays such as Passover and Pentecost.
I’m not saying that we should move away from Christmas and Easter. No, I’m saying that we should recover the real roots of how they came to be celebrations for us in the first place so that we can present the real, biblical Jesus to the world. Christmas and Easter are pagan rooted festivals that were used for evangelism purposes to present Jesus to the Gentile world. This was a multicultural world. Over time though the European part of the pagan world came to dominate Christianity through Constantine and the Roman empire. This led to the re-birth of Jesus into a European.
In this Christmas season the church has the opportunity to recover the true Jesus based on Matthew 1 and John 1. We can also recover the mission of the true Jesus through Luke 4 and Matthew 9, 10, and 25. The real Jesus is a Afro-Asiatic Jew (Matthew 1), but most importantly the Son of God, Who has existed before what we know as the beginning of time (John 1). The real Jesus calls us beyond consumerism to a life of truth, transformation, compassion, mercy, and justice. The church must present the gift of the real Jesus to the world and solve the real Christmas problem.
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Thank you Efrem for your dedication in guiding us all to enlightenment during these dark times and major change. Keep up Gods’ good work(: peace
For “those of us that still keep Christ in Christmas,” how should this (“…present[ing] the gift of the real Jesus to the world…”) be done in a way that is different from what churches, who teach and preach “the real Jesus [which] calls us beyond consumerism to a life of truth, transformation, compassion, mercy, and justice” are doing now? And how is that message, the “real Jesus”, relevant to the discourse between the Afro-Asiatic Jew vs. the European Jesus?
Praise God for your sharing the truth about our Lord and thank God for being taught the truth from the pulpit long ago.
I concur, the image we have of Jesus has been wrongly perpetuated in a pagan and Western civilization perspective. However, the greater ill may be the way that we have lost the reason why He came. To reconcile His creation unto Himself. As Christians we must not embrace Christmas when the advertisers prompt us. Rather, we must live out Christmas everyday as we celebrate His love.
Like so many other divisive issues we must be careful not to alienate the unenlightened. We must love gently, perhaps even slowly in order that the world may come to know and accept the greatest Gift ever.
My use of the un-enlightened is too harsh especially considering I was once counted among them. A better term would be “those being wooed”.
While I think it is correct to encourage us to reexamine how, as Christians, we may have contaminated Christmas with our own cultural beliefs, it is ironic and a bit disturbing that you once again have stretched your academic credentials to claim expertise in an area in which you have very little knowledge. As you know, I am part African American and would be just as happy to adopt the image of a “Black Jesus”, but it just isn’t so. While a hundred years ago it was popular to fantasize the racial make up of what first century Jews may have looked like, it is now believed through significant scientific study with genetic markers, that first century Jews were very similar in appearance to Those Jews located in Eastern/Northern parts of Europe. Yes, a predominantly white looking race of people, with a large proportion having light colored eyes, brown to light brown wavy and straight hair and white colored skin, similar to those in central Europe, prior to the invasion of the Moors. Your idea that the “re-birth” of Jesus, making him look like a European is both scientifically and historically inaccurate. If you placed this idea, with all of the recent research, before any serious academic, they would strongly disagree with you and wonder where you have been the last three decades. You have a good point, but once again your understanding of history is flawed. You are basing your understanding of what Jesus should look like after 2000 years of invasions and conquests of the middle east. This is similar to your misunderstanding of the history of the Palestinian conflict, which we discussed several months ago. You really need to do some scholarly research before you attempt to teach others about things you know very little, if anything, about.
Whether or not genetic evidence “proves” anything is beyond the point. Jesus is presented by the white majority culture in ways that meet their cultural needs. The Jesus we white people lift us is practically obsessed over our our individual needs, He is not just European, but northern European. His dress is European. The American Jesus wants to protect us as a white christian nation. If you do not believe me listen to Rick Perry, the most outspoken of the GOP candidates about his faith when he talks about Obama and his war on faith. Here is his quote…“As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.” Obama has done nothing to fight churches. I think these attacks are because his is liberal and he is black.
I do not tend to think that Jesus was black, but that he was asian is just a fact of geography. The Semetic language he spoke is considered afro-asiatic. The point we need to keep in front of us, though, is that Jesus came for all of us, black, asian, white, native, all of us. If one group tries to suggest that they are better in God’s because of their ethnicity or the color of their skin, they are both misguided and insult God. The sorry fact is that white people and the white church has not only suggested that this is so, but have acted out of this belief. They have acted hatefully toward minorities and have discredited the message of Jesus and the church itself by their actions. I should be saying “we” not “they” since I am white. We should do a better job taking responsibility for our actions.
Daniel if you read Efrem’s blog again, you’ll see he is scolding white people, because the Baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are depicted as “white.” I don’t care what color Jesus is, but I do have a problem with people using their position in God’s church to be devisive, especially when they are absolutely ignorant of basic historical facts. There are even ancient drawings done by the Egyptians depicting various national groups (Nubians, Libyans……..and, yes, Jews), prior to the time of the Exodus. And, the Jews are always depicted as a pale race with light eye color, not as Black or Asian in appearance. As I stated, I think Efrem had a good point, but scholarship is everything! If I were 100% White and criticized Efrem for his faulty reasoning, I guarantee you would be calling me a racist! And, I’m not sure what you mean by Jesus being depicted wearing “European” dress? And, no, you are absolutely incorrect in your statement that First Century Jews spoke an “Afro Asian” language.
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the AFROASIATIC LANGUAGE FAMILY. The most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic[1] (206 million native speakers),[2] Amharic (27 million),[3][4] Hebrew (about 7 million)[5] Tigrinya (6.7 million),[6] and Aramaic (about 2.2 million). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages
Good Buddy Jesus
http://kiddmillennium.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/jesus-thumps-up1.jpg?w=510
Blonde Jesus http://ecx.imagesamazon.com/images/I/51DW0yRV%2BVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Italian%20Images/images/Artists/Masaccios%20600th/Masaccio-Madonna-BAR700.jpg
Jesus in european landscape
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Rome%20&%20Central%20Italy/Rome/Rome_Churches/Santa_Maria_del_Popolo/Images/800/PintNativity-May05-DC0491sAR700.jpg
American Jesus
http://daybreaksdevotions.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/american-jesus.jpg
http://totalobscurity.typepad.com/flagorama/pics/jesusflag.jpg
Sorry Daniel, the scientific and historical evidence does not support an asiatic or black Jesus. However, to me it is not a big deal. I will just stay with my original point that Efrem is mistaken and it was incorrect for him to accuse Europeans of hijacking the portrayal of his physical image. Besides tracing language trees has nothing to do with appearance.