Modern Portrayals of Christ and What We Need to See as Christians

After our past intro class that hit on the topic of biblical artwork, it provoked me to bring up a topic that my former Doctrine of the Christian Life class hit on last semester: modern portrayals of Christ in art. But I wanted to take it a step further, and talk about what we should do with the Christian artwork we see.

I mostly targeted street art, since that is normally the type of modern artwork that is the most raw. I did grab others as well. Some were silly, like these:

The silly ones oddly enough have an interesting message to them, even though their main point is to poke fun at Christianity. They're also wildly creative, which makes them even more interesting to look at.

Some of them were beautiful:

These are beautiful depictions of Christ make you stop in your tracks and stare in awe at their magnificence; however they are merely beautiful. They do indeed tell a story, and there is an old message to these that has been told in a million different ways over the centuries. But they do not invoke change, they exist to reiterate what is already there.

Then, there were the powerful images:

Woah, what have I stumbled upon and why have I not been smited, huh? When I found these images, they rocked me in a powerful way. The ones out of this that hit hardest are the materialistic Jesus and Mary. What a shocking realization to see that this is how a decent portion of the world views us. Are we really seen as money-hungry materialists?

When we see the big problems taking place in the world, sometimes our first go-to question is to ask, “Lord, where are you?” when in fact the answer is staring us back in the face, with a metaphorical image of Christ pointing at you and saying, “I'm right here”. As Christians, we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to do His work and care for those who are struggling. You will always have those who create art like this out of misguided hatred and bitterness of youth, and being a Christian is not a popular trait these days. But on a larger, generalized scale, what image of ourselves are we portraying as Christians in order for others to see us this way?

Just something to think about.