What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD)
by: Daniel Park

        The cable television network VH1, in their TV special “Big in 2004,” crowned Jesus as one of the biggest personalities of the year. It was a big year for Jesus and company. His fictional biography novel The Da Vinci Code was still selling like wildfire, and his recent movie “The Passion of the Christ” left theaters with a gross worldwide revenue of $611 million. VH1 proclaimed Jesus made his grand comeback.

        Very few portrayals of Jesus were consistent with each other during this peak. The 2004 movie “Saved!” was a religious satire that criticized Christianity. Dan Brown's book claimed Jesus had an affair, a claim that seriously tested the faith of many (which is sad, considering the book is fiction). “The Passion of the Christ” focused on Jesus' torture for two hours. Jesus was everywhere, but it was difficult to point out exactly who he was. Who “the real Jesus was” is a topic discussed and written about for centuries, and his “true” representation continues to flux to do this day. Jesus' image has changed throughout the centuries, and these alterations now threaten to ostracize Christianity's relevance from the rest of the modern world.

        No one knows what Jesus looked like. Nearly all early works referring to him represented him either allegorically or symbolically as a lamb or fish. The well-known symbol for him, “the Greek word for ‘fish,' was viewed as an acrostic for… Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” (Wessels 2). These symbols would eventually find their way into newer renditions of Jesus, one of the earliest being “Jesus the Shepherd.” A great preference was made with this shepherd image as soon as it was created, around the fourth and fifth century. It was a sign of laborious but kind work, symbolizing Jesus' willingness to lead his followers and rescue those who have lost their way. Similar to Jesus laboring over his task to make the world known to him, these images of him physically working seem to convince the early churches to do the same. These images reflect the times that Christianity, in its infancy, was experiencing. Jesus' image continued to evolve throughout the centuries. His image gradually became more and more humanized during the Middle Ages; images of the cross became common while Churchgoers often entered services greeted by large paintings of Christ as the ultimate judge. Imagine the fear these people might have felt when faced with the prospect of eternal damnation by the hands of the judge they are attempting to please – a big step away from the youthful shepherd who represented safety and refuge. The Gothic era in the thirteenth centuries focused on Jesus as the Earthly King, a more physical manifestation that was more tangible than some earlier incarnations.

        These images, comprising only a fraction of the different representations Jesus was given in Christianity's first thousand years or so, illustrate how much he has changed during this time. Or more accurately, how much his representation has changed. The question to ask now is, “is this bad?” Do these differing, sometimes contradicting depictions pose a problem to religion today, where one might logically suppose a figurehead for such an established organization should stay whole and unchanging? Anton Wessels, professor of missions and evangelism at the Free University in Amsterdam, signifies this question by comparing the terms “portrayal” and “betrayal,” concluding that “One has to acknowledge the miracle that despite so much betrayal Jesus Christ was nevertheless ‘passed on'” (Wessels 17). It was the apostles' jobs to present the Word of God: That Jesus was possibly black in the minds of indigenous Africans helped spread the Word; that Jesus was white in the minds of Europeans helped spread the Word. The changing images between different times and cultures more likely represent Jesus' flexibility and ability to stay relevant despite these differences.

        This power, however, is the reason why so many people are opposed to religion. One of the newest incarnations of Jesus began with a book by the entrepreneur Bruce Barton in the 1920's. The Man Nobody Knows was a bestseller in its time, much more revered than classics in this period like Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and arguably more influential. Throughout the book, Barton claims that Jesus was not the meek figure that was taught to him in Sunday schools, but that Jesus was in fact the most successful businessman in history. Jesus was “the most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem … His muscles were so strong…nobody dared to oppose him… He picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world” (Barton 4). Jesus was a man's man, and those who strived to be like him would want to be as successful monetarily as they would spiritually. This book was central to the industrialized world of the early twentieth century. With a little manipulation of Burton's original ideas (not unlike the creation of Social Darwinism), businessmen now had a spiritual sponsorship in their quests to monopolize their industries and treat the rest of the world like slaves in their machines; Jesus was successful, so businessmen supposedly didn't see anything wrong with attempting the same. The general populace would conclude that Jesus, religion, and business were too intertwined as reciprocal entities that controlled and manipulated the masses. Disillusioned people began to leave the Church.

        Issues like the ones above and the modern church's struggle for power and relevance today is causing many to leave the church. Christianity has reverted back from its subjective approval of the crushing monopolies 100 years ago, but recent events has caused it to lose followers. Europe , once the center of modern Christianity and Catholicism, has become more isolated than ever, ignored by most of its populace with the continent itself sliding towards atheism. Theologian Julie Hopkins attributes this to the idea that “white Western Christians have had to adapt to multi-racial, pluralistic religious societies which has further undermined their sense of being the guardians of universal religious truths and values… Christians are suffering from an identity crisis” ( Hopkins 8). In a modern world that seems to be changing exponentially, the biggest problem isn't that Jesus' image is changing or unchanging; it's that the church is unable to decide on which idea to set out with. Changing images of the Christ wasn't as big an issue hundreds of years ago, but today's world is more cynical than ever. More and more people are losing faith in the system.

        One can speculate endlessly about Jesus' future and how far he will remain relevant into it, but only time will tell for sure. The modern church will have to cope and work with the changing times in order to make keep its numbers strong. But if t-shirts that display signs like “WWJD? For a Klondike Bar?” send a bigger message about the state of religion than religion itself can, Jesus is in for a bumpy ride.

Works Cited

Barton, Bruce. The Man Nobody Knows . Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 2000.

Wessels, Anton. Images of Jesus . Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990.

Hopkins, Julie M. Towards a Feminist Christology . Michigan : Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1994.