Prior to this Cephus mentioned the different depictions of Jesus seen throughout the world. In a black church you may find yourself more likely to discover a depiction of a black Jesus. In China or Malaysia you may be more likely to witness the worship of a distinctly Asian Jesus. You can probably see where this is going. The questions for debate have already been posed with this extra bit hopefully providing some additional guidance.

• Why do some people feel the need to anthropomorphize Jesus to fit themselves?
• Is the idea of Jesus more important to some people than the real person?

Thanks to Cephus for questions to debate

Abs,
fantastic topic and your questions are on point as usual. I have to believe that the idea of Jesus is the most important thing. At every culture you might look into and ethnicity for that matter, the people worshipping Jesus take his image and make it their own. In the Carribean and in Ethiopia (and probably many other places) people have Jesus in the appearance of a black man. In other places like europe and America he is typically portrayed as white. In Mormon groups he is white with Golden blonde hair and in some sects in Korea he has Oriental features like in his eyes. It's not really important when you go to God to picture what he looks like so much as it is to picture yourself close to him. If envisioning him looking like you makes you fell better, I say go for it!!! I myself always picture him as a Hebrew, or original Jew.

In response to your second question, Abs, I would say that yes the idea of Jesus is much more important to many people than who he really was. If history proved that Jesus the man never existed, Christians would still follow the words attributed to him in the gospels.

What is most important about Jesus is that he is God made accessible. To many people, a person of the same color and appearance is even more easily accessible, which is why they imagine him so. So as long as people are separated by color, Jesus will look different to each culture.

I agree, it's what Jesus stands for that's more important than what He looked like. Salvation is the important part, not perception.

Better that they should take his message and make it their own. Personal gripe of mine is that, for many Christian religions, the words of Paul seem to have more importance than the words of Christ.

Not true about the Mormons, I have been to visitor centers and the paintings do not portray him as Golden blonde. Dark brown, perhaps, but certainly not golden blonde.