For a long time it actually filled me with some feelings of rang at the complete lack of authentic representation for Jesus appearance that we see within stain glass and classical paintings. These images have in some cases been used to reinforce racial prejudice and in some cases anti-Semitism. After all Jesus was just like us and certainly not like them.
Of course this flies completely in the face of the gospel message and people can only come to this conclusion with selectively reading the bible to reinforce a pre-exisiting world view and not asking God to challenge them as to what HE is revealing from the Bible. However, this made me feel uneasy... Why was Jesus not a Jewish and from the middle east?
However recently I wondered if this was a deliberate mistake. You see everyone wants a Jesus they can relate to and often the elements of God we most relate to get overemphasised (and sometimes we diminish the parts we don't like). Maybe these painters wanted to show that God was their God, not just the God of this tribe or that but he was their God. If you go to Africa you can find pictures of Jesus who is black, if you go to India then there are pictures of Jesus as an Indian man.
Jesus was the God for all and people.
