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Mexican nativity

THE COLOR OF JESUS

Greetings everyone!

I am sure you all are very busy getting the last minute things done for Christmas. This year I get to go to four Christmas celebrations; One with my sister and her family, one with my husbands family, one with just my husband and I on Christmas Day, and the last one with my daughter who lives across the country! How joyous is that! And I just love this time of year where I can remind people of Jesus by simply saying Merry Christmas!

But in all our decorating, do we display the baby Jesus accurately? Most often manger scenes show Mary, and the babe Jesus as blond, blue eyed with creamy white skin. And Joseph is depicted with brown hair, a multiple of colors for his eyes and creamy white skin. Yet they all wear middle-eastern robes. Is this truly what they looked like? 

Romanian nativty

“It’s important to note that no one in the past 1,900 years has known what Jesus looked like when he came to earth as a baby born of the virgin Mary, what he looked like as a man bearing our sins on the Cross, or as our risen Redeemer returning to heaven. Isaiah is the only book of the Bible that indicates Christ’s appearance, only to say that he would not be comely

African nativity

to look at (Isaiah 53:2). But there are three reasons to believe that Jesus did not appear as the blond-haired, blue-eyed baby depicted in many nativity scenes.

    1 Historically and genetically speaking, Jesus likely would have resembled the people of the Middle East where he was born. It is not recorded anywhere in the Bible’s account or other historical accounts that Jesus did not look like the people he lived among, something that certainly would have been notable since the Romans, a European people, lived among them.

Holland nativity

     2 The Bible would have given us more description if Jesus’ physical details were important. Perhaps God kept these descriptions out to allow Jesus to be King of all kings in our imaginations of him.

3 There is only one race: the human race. At the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament, God caused different groups of people to

Hati nativity

each speak a different language. This led to each group migrating to different areas and creating small gene pools. As a result, we have different ethnicities of people, but we are all still one race, the human race, descended from Adam and Eve.

The application of this incorrect display can be dated back to the time of the Renaissance and the Byzantine Empire. Artists and their masterpieces became highly esteemed and given great influence. It was a time when Christianity was slowly on the rise, thus when beautiful Renaissance paintings depicting

Middle-eastern nativity

Jesus were first created, it reasonable to consider that the artists would have painted reflections of the faces they knew…Europeans! But the Holy family and most other historical people the Bible has recorded were descendants of Shem and would not have looked European. 

Surely by the 1900’s artists would have known this. So why persist with the inaccuracies?  

Oriental nativity

“Arguments over Jesus’ ‘race’ stem from the evolutionary mindset of race and racial supremacy, inspired by Darwin’s faulty model. This evolutionary mindset divides ethnicities and results in arguments over racial superiority. In early simplified evolution models, all creatures evolved from a less fit (considered inferior) state to a more fit (considered by some to be superior) state. This is persistent in some people’s minds and has given rise to racism over the years. Some Christians

Peruvian nativity

have fallen prey to this mistaken philosophy and racism—even anti-Semitism—and argue that Jesus must have been Caucasian because, they say, that is the superior race. But there is no superior “race.” God’s Word tells us that God created man and woman on Day Six of

Creation Week. These two people had the gene pool for all people of all appearances. There is no superiority of race because race is a social construct that is contrary to God’s Word. Jesus came to save sinners, to be Lord of all who believe on his name, and to be a friend to all who trust in

I believe this is also Peruvian

him…We must remember that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7)). It is impossible to know what Jesus truly looked like on earth, or what he looks like now in heaven in his resurrected body. But we do know what his character looks like, and that is what we should focus on.” Galatians 3:28 states it well; “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Jesus is our provider, is an advocate, compassionate, dependable and our friend, just to name a few. 

Should you run out and purchase an ethnically correct nativityy scene? You could. Or you can alter the appearance of figurines you already own to more accurately reflect the

Southwestern Mexican nativity

truth. But whether your nativity scene figurines are depicted as African, European, Indian, Russian, Chinese, Mexican, Middle-Eastern, or anything else, you can always simply share the truth.

Until next time, God bless and Merry Christmas!

Willow Dressel
And don’t for get to watch the exciting trailer for the new novel THE GOLDEN STRAND OF SHINAR (then click on the boy on the horse. Click on this link to go right to it or go to youtube and type the title in. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH2Y6LR5q5o&t=33s
Please share with all your friends and spread the truth!

References:

https://answersingenesis.org/holidays/christmas/image-christ-christmas/