Jesus Christ *0003

I grew up used to seeing Jesus as a white man—with sleek golden hair and glowing porcelain skin. I honestly thought that’s what he looked like. Even the angels, and those Jews and Gentiles from the Bible? Yeah, I thought they were all foreigners—white people from some faraway land. That’s how I spent my early, unripe fruit days—blissfully unaware, soaking in a Sunday school version of the world. But eventually, as my brain ripened and started stewing in a mess of thoughts, temptations, trivia, and growing pains, I came to realize: Wait a minute... that’s not how it was at all. Lo and behold, I learned about the brutal, heartbreaking history of the Jewish people—a small, marginalized group often dismissed as primitive in the grand narratives of empire. Turns out, they weren’t blonde Europeans with British accents. Who’d have thought?

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=147634977961987&set=pb.100081464553989.-2207520000&locale=gl_ES

Sometime in early 2001, the BBC or someone from the UK dropped a bombshell:
They unveiled a “scientifically reconstructed” image of Jesus—this really short, scrawny dude with tight curls, a hooked nose, and dark skin. Just... some completely average Middle Eastern man. Let’s just say—I was shook.

It was like realizing you’ve been duped your whole life by a shiny, polished lie wrapped in stained-glass windows. I get it—those great artists throughout history couldn’t exactly paint Jesus as just another guy. I mean, if they had, would anyone have flocked to church with that much enthusiasm? Let’s be real—people don’t say it out loud, but we all secretly care about appearances. I mean, I do... a little. But come to think of it, isn’t a plain-looking Jesus who healed the sick and flipped the script with a borrowed donkey exactly what “the Son of Man” should look like?

The first Jesus I ever met was just the “Son of God.”
Christmas was everyone’s favorite holy party, packed with mystery and candlelight and plenty of tinsel. Movies, dramas, and sermons all drilled in that magical, solemn image of the nativity. 
But here’s the weird part:
While Jesus is always portrayed as all Apollonian—noble, quiet, serene—our Christmas celebrations go full Dionysus. Festive chaos, consumerism, overeating, champagne-fueled karaoke. And with “White Christmas” and “Santa Grandpa” jumping in, we lean even harder into the holiday rave. Kids, adults, grandmas—it’s the same story. Everyone’s bouncing to the beat.

But Easter? That hits differently.
From Good Friday to the Garden of Gethsemane, to Peter’s denial and Judas’s betrayal, there’s a solemn cinematic quality to it all. So naturally, the Friday and Saturday before Easter turn into a somber drama. Then Easter Sunday rolls around, and suddenly all the “church people”—(yes, I call them that; they belong to church, but calling them “Christians” feels too generous)—they all burst out singing with every bit of vocal cord they can summon. Some of them should definitely not try that high note, but hey, A for effort.

For the longest time, I wanted to know what Jesus was really like. The historical Jesus.
The Jesus who actually walked around in sandals in first-century Palestine. But the thing is—we’re now living in what scholars call the “third Sitz im Leben,” the third life-setting.

The second one was already messy enough:
Jesus gets religion-ified, institutionalized by Rome, stuffed into 66 canonical books, filtered through the Reformation, then run through the capitalist meat grinder, translated into a hundred languages, and reinterpreted by every sect with a pulpit and a budget. It’s a historical funhouse mirror. So can we ever truly know the real Jesus? I don’t think so.
After Jesus’s death, Christianity quickly became the Church of Paul. And let’s face it: religious legacies only survive intact if one of your disciples is really, really good at writing. That’s why we have the Analects from Confucius, Plato’s Dialogues, the Agamas in Buddhism—those thinkers had solid copywriters. But Jesus? He left his PR in the hands of a bunch of fishermen.

And so, unsurprisingly, the world is now flooded with people claiming to be Jesus’s successor, his buddy, his twin brother, or the Second Coming himself. Honestly, I don’t mind those folks. Everyone’s entitled to a little creative delusion. But it’s the people who actually believe them, buy the merch, and join the cult that I just can’t figure out.

At this point, I’ve given up trying to grasp the original Jesus.
All I have is my version—one grounded in intellect, reason, and history, not religion. I don’t care if Jesus was real, mythical, married, in India before his ministry, or just a really good guy with strong morals. What matters is how I choose to see him. To me, a Jesus who shifts with the times and speaks to each era’s wounds—that’s a living Jesus.

And the Jesus I’ve come to love and respect?
He’s like water. He flows low, goes where he’s needed, nourishes life, and exists in many forms—liquid, gas, solid. Where there’s water, life follows. We should be more like water.

But today’s materialistic churches? They don’t become water. They own it. They don’t shine light—they sell it. They don’t flavor the world like salt—they hoard all the seasoned meat. We need water that revives life. Water that washes away the filth and restores sacred things. Sure, that water might get dirty in the process, but the world will come out cleaner. We need to be gentle lights in dark places, guiding the lost. We need to be salt—dissolving ourselves to make the world more flavorful. Honestly, if we’re not even willing to do that, how can we expect to waltz into heaven? Is paradise really supposed to be that easy?

Jesus, in his short time on Earth, gave us a vivid, intense example of how to live. And me? I’ll probably end up doing all my homework in a panic at the last minute—when I’m old, tired, and running on the fumes of faded duty and dwindling desire.

Korean version: https://deposo.tistory.com/118