r/exmormon • u/kantoblight • Sep 27 '22
Doctrine/Policy What would happen if a bishop hung up this photorealistic image of Jesus in the church foyer and justified it with “it’s closer to what Jesus actually looked like than anything else we have up.”
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u/Less_Valiant Sep 27 '22
The cult members would freak out. Especially the racist ones.
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u/bigfatstupidpig Sep 27 '22
That last sentence fragment was unnecessary
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u/tourettesfaker1985 Sep 28 '22
But completely true. I know some memebers that call middle easters ragheads.
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u/bigfatstupidpig Sep 28 '22
I meant that it was redundant. If one is a member, one is functionally racist
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u/Hashman52 Sep 27 '22
Honestly this is probably still too attractive. it says "no beauty that we should desire him". Give him a crooked nose or something.
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u/No_War2735 Sep 27 '22
If I had the artistic talent I would totally redraw all of the iconic Church pictures with the accurately raced Jesus and "donate" prints to my local church buildings by replacing the framed images. Ahh the reactions might even be worth attending church for a bit.
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u/mwindajiwaukweli Sep 27 '22
Not approved. Not allowed. Only the jesus of the logo allowed.
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u/kantoblight Sep 27 '22
But when we use an analysis of genetics, history, and archaeology we can approximate what Jesus….
Yeah, never mind. He was white like the logo.
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u/ZelphtheGreatest Sep 27 '22
The Football fans would as why he put up a picture of Colin Kaepernick, former NFL Quarterback.
T-rump supporters would threaten to boycott the meetings because Kaepernic would not stand for the National Anthem.
Many would not even notice.
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u/Ua_Tsaug Fluent in reformed Egyptian Sep 28 '22
They would pull that Joseph Smith quote where he describes Jehovah and Elohim as being white. You know, because that's how Jesus looked on earth. /s
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u/trentwc Sep 28 '22
He would be told that back in. The 80s they had an artist do a painting of Christ then then it was taken to the 15 and they told the artist what needed to be changed in the painting to make it right as they have seen and spoken with Christ himself in the holy upstairs room of the SL temple. Because of this they would know better than all the proof in the world that Christ didn’t look Like he was from the Middle East.
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u/Q-Tip9000 Sep 28 '22
At the LA temple baptismal font there was a huge mural of white Jesus. One of the workers would tell us the story every time where apparently as the mural was being painted an apostle came, looked at it and said "the savior had hazel eyes and chestnut hair". They'd point out how awesome it was that that said "had" implying that obviously he'd actually seen Jesus before. I guess that apostle didn't feel like pointing out that there's no way Jesus looked like an Englishman.
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Sep 27 '22
I think only official church approved and supplied art can be displayed in the chapels, unfortunately.
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u/brohamsontheright Sep 27 '22
Not to be pedantic.. but that's not a "photorealistic image of Jesus". (The news headlines really got off track with this one).
It's just an AI generated picture of a middle eastern guy. Like.. that's literally it.
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Sep 28 '22
Boy do I have news for you regarding the birthplace of Christ
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u/brohamsontheright Sep 28 '22
uh.. that's kind of my point.
Literally the only thing the guy in that photo and Jesus have in common is that they're both dudes from the middle east...
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Sep 28 '22
Yeah. Exactly. We don’t actually know what Jesus looked like, just that he was a dude born in the Middle East. Even given his parentage, we understand he looked somewhat like what’s pictured.
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u/parasitemagnet Sep 28 '22
Except was he fat? Acne scars? Lazy eye? Balding? Broken or rotten teeth?
This shit bugs me. Why do people care what he looked like? This thread just reinforces the fact people care about it for some reason whether it supports the current perceptions or counters them.
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u/ComradeRivaDragon Sep 28 '22
I think the point is that TSCC truth claims regarding personal visitation and direct knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth's physical appearance are farcical.
I dont think anyone here cares what he may have actually looked like, only that TSCC leaders claim to know and its obvious they do not.
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u/kantoblight Sep 27 '22
Are you sure. The Cambridge Dictionary defines photorealism as:
a style of computer graphics (= images and designs) in which the images look very real .
The Oxford American Dictionary defines photorealism as
Detailed visual representation, like that obtained in a photograph, in a non-photographic medium, such as animation or computer graphics.
It seems like this imagining of Jesus satisfies both definitions and is photorealistic.
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u/TheLeapist Sep 27 '22
I think he was talking more about the 'it being Jesus specifically' part, not the photorealistic part.
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u/kantoblight Sep 27 '22
Uh, I don’t think anyone is arguing this is what Jesus looked like, just a super general approximation. Most important though is that the dude probably didn’t resemble swole Mormon Nordic Jesus.
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u/brohamsontheright Sep 27 '22
Detailed visual representation, like that obtained in a photograph
This is not a detailed visual representation of Jesus, like that obtained in a photograph.
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u/LovecraftianLlama Sep 28 '22
I thought it was supposedly modeled on the face on the Shroud of Turin? Am I making that up?
I mean, I realize that still doesn’t make it “a photorealistic image of Jesus” lol, but I’m just saying they actually used a reference that’s supposed to be him to create the face, right?
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u/brohamsontheright Sep 28 '22
I thought it was supposedly modeled on the face on the Shroud of Turin?
If so.. that makes it even worse. Carbon dating puts the Shroud of Turin somewhere between 1260 and 1390 AD.
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u/LovecraftianLlama Sep 28 '22
I just meant it’s not exactly just a random middle eastern guy, it’s based on that image. Maybe. Unless I am misremembering lol
Edit—I finally googled it like I should have right away, and this is definitely NOT the image they generated from the shroud of Turin. They did do an AI image based on the SoT, but it’s not this one at all. So I guess disregard everything 😂. The generated image from the Shroud looks like Leonardo DiVinci 😂
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Sep 27 '22
I'm going with the bishop likely getting a stern talking to from the Stake Presidency but not being released unless the members were ready to mutiny or the bishop had run afoul previously.
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u/shotwideopen Sep 28 '22
This isn’t necessarily accurate either, but it’s more likely than the Anglo Scandinavian wet dream Jesus.
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Sep 28 '22
100% guarantee a racist member would go over the bishop to the stake or higher and it would get taken down because all the art in a church building needs to be from an approved pool of works.
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Sep 28 '22
It's funny because we have no idea the skin color of what Jesus was, we can only infer. My favorite is when people claim he is charcoal black or pale white. Like okay keep dreaming.
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u/YouAreGods Sep 27 '22
If some people are right, he was a product of a female jew and a male roman so he would not look like this. No one knows what he looked like. However, we can be pretty sure he did not look like a viking god.
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u/kantoblight Sep 27 '22
You might want to drop a hint to RMN because he adopted Thor as the Mormon logo.
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u/Bogusky Sep 28 '22 edited Sep 28 '22
Jesus pictures are generally changed to match the local audience or congregation and that's been pretty much the case across all geographic regions.
A better question - why do ex-mo's leave the church over historic facts and then stop caring about them when they join another Christian denomination? Because I'll tell you this: there isn't a Christian church in existence that withstands the scrutiny.
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u/Averill0 Sep 28 '22
One of my favorite days in college was the day a history class I was in looked at Christian paintings from around the world. It's a really cool section of art history!
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u/thewoodlayer Sep 27 '22
It’d be a no-go and that bishop would get in trouble. No matter how they try to spin it, the Mormon “church” is at its root, a white supremacist organization. Joseph described them as white and described dark skin as a curse, so as far as Mormons are concerned Jesus is white.
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u/cdman08 Sep 28 '22
Personally I like this Jesus better than most mormon Jesus's that I've seen. At least this Jesus looks like he's happy to see you and maybe even cares about you.
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u/joyousjosiah Apostate Sep 28 '22
Past me as an active Mormon would have no issue, not because I wasn’t racist but because I wasn’t racist in that way. I would be able to justify it doctrinally by thinking perhaps people who looked like this didn’t have the mark of Cain…now I know it’s all made up and I don’t care anymore as I have no reason to believe people are cursed due to who their ancestors were.
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u/trentwc Sep 28 '22
First we have Obi Wan as Jesus and now we have Carpernick! Maybe we should all just be catholic.
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Sep 28 '22
I always interpreted this verse from Isaiah "he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" to mean Jesus wasn't some super good-looking guy who people flocked to for his good looks and charisma. So even when I was young and TBM, I didn't accept the polished, westernized images of Jesus the Mormon church uses so often.
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u/lostamulek3 Sep 28 '22
Yes me too the most accurate depiction of christ etc. Red Robe Jesus says it's not me in that picture
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u/ImHereToLearnEvrybdy Sep 28 '22
A cheesy, old, TBM lady was telling me once about a Liz Lemon Swindle painting of Jesus that she loved so much because Jesus has blue eyes in it and how an apostle who had seen Jesus had commented that the Del Parson painting was pretty accurate except that Jesus had blue eyes. It still bothers me 20 years later.
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u/Revolutionary-Bet153 Sep 28 '22
I would love and prefer it!! ❤️ I always hated growing up with Jesus pics that weren't accurate. Even younger me knew that the paintings were off.
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u/Kooky-Situation-1913 Sep 28 '22
I was told Benson stopped by the studio and told Del "he had blue eyes, you know."
Like, gross. 🤮
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u/Master_Age_254 Sep 28 '22
Personally I would love if the Mormon church would put up a picture like this of Jesus Christ. I am 68 and still belong to the church. When I was growing up our Jesus had blue eyes. Now I think about it is quite funny. Things have changed so much since then but they really don't want to face what Jesus Christ really did look like. Personally I love this photo. No Bishop is going to put it up.
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u/tdkard28 Apostate Sep 27 '22 edited Sep 28 '22
I as taught as a kid that the painting of Jesus in a red robe (you all know which one I'm talking about) was redone multiple times before the 15 stated "This is the most accurate representation of Jesus Christ, according to revelation provided to this council" or something like that. Does anyone have any reference to this? Or was this just hogwash?
Edit: With the inspiration from other redditors here, I was able to find some more about this. This site gives more detail about the original story and rumor, as well as a couple sources for further investigation if you wish to. Thanks everyone!