wilwheaton:Portrait of Jesus by digital artist Bas Uterwijk using artificial intelligence, combining
wilwheaton:Portrait of Jesus by digital artist Bas Uterwijk using artificial intelligence, combining traditional iconography and what we know about his ethnicity, and culture for the time and regionThis is, apparently, what the actual Jesus of Nazareth looked like. I am an atheist. But I like this guy. He was a rebel, he was an antiauthoritarian, he dedicated his life to helping the poor, the sick, the indigent, the people who were discarded and rejected by society. He hung out with sex workers and lepers, and gave comfort to the sick and suffering, and he loudly and relentlessly called out the hypocrisy of the church and its leaders. He was a really cool guy.This guy is not the Jesus I was introduced to in parochial school. The Jesus I was introduced to was white, super super super white, and he was keeping an eye on you so he could snitch on you to his dad, who was SUPER PISSED AT EVERYTHING YOU DID all the time for some reason. The Jesus I knew was, like, maybe going to be okay with you, as long as you knew what a giant fuck up you were. And he was absolutely not accepting of anyone who didn’t do exactly what the authority figures at school told us we had to do. Did I mention that I was, like, 8 when all of this was drilled into me? I deeply resent American Christianity. It has brought nothing but pain into my life. I deeply resent and despise evangelical Christians who turned this guy in this picture, who was reportedly a cool, loving, gentle, dude, who was a legit rebel, into someone who hates all the same things they hate, and who LOVES authoritarians the same way they do.I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world. What I do know is that, in America, this person has been perverted into a weapon, a cudgel, to be used against the same people the actual Jesus loved and stood up for.And, look, if someone professes to follow the teachings of this dude, whose WHOLE FUCKING THING was “love everyone. Period. No exceptions”,and they don’t, like, do that? They are as bad as the money changers in the temple. I know that this dude loves them, because that’s his whole thing, but I also know how deeply disappointed in them he is. -- source link