Category: The Fish Tank Blog

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory…”

-John 1:14

You’ve seen them everywhere: banners in Times Square, porcelain crosses in church buildings, Renaissance art, “The Passion of the Christ,” and hundreds of picture-books for children. Western culture has long been saturated with images and representations of Jesus as a white man.

These are strictly lies. Jesus was Palestinian. 100% Middle Eastern. Think Arabian peninsula, not Norwegian mountainside. And I insist that this flagrant falsehood is not trivial, as you might think. It is fundamentally opposed to the essential Christian message.

The gospel is the claim that God became a real human being with real flesh and blood who lived in a particular place and a particular time in history. Jesus is not a myth, a legend, a figurehead, or a pastiche of ideas. Either He was a Palestinian carpenter who died on a specific hill at the hands of the Roman empire in roughly 33 AD, or Christian faith means nothing.

Therefore, to display images of Him (if we must) in a way that contradicts historical fact is to essentially distort the message that Christians proclaim. It is to treat Jesus as an idea or conception, not a human being. This undermines the strictly historical foundations that we Christians claim for our faith in our savior. The only conceivable reason to display images of Jesus at all is to remind people of His personhood, His humanity, and His physical suffering and death for you and me.

True, Jesus lives right now, and in (a sense) lives in each of us as Christians. But we know and live in this truth, only because He first became flesh. Brown flesh. Not only so, but He came to overthrow racial boundaries and categories, to declare that salvation was for all peoples of all tribes and ethnicities. To persist in subtle racial imperialism is to scorn his availability to the entire world and to alienate non-Caucasians.

When we make Jesus out to be white, we are making him in the western Caucasian image. We are making him friendly and nice-looking, tame, aesthetically pleasing. We get Jesus on our terms. Nothing could be further from what He came to do. He came to offend and outrage our sensibilities, to overthrow our conceptions of how the world works and establish an upside-down kingdom that makes everyone uncomfortable. Everyone who met Jesus was either severely offended, terrified, or prostrate in worship. No one thought he looked nice. “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Is 53:2)

For His sake and the world’s, can we please stop making self-indulgent, false images of Him?

She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

And so, in Genesis, we find ourselves with Hagar, in the desert. Indeed, she seems to be one of the first people we encounter with no worldly status or claim to authority as she enters the narrative in the rather intimidating wake of Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, and Abraham. God had promised Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would bear a child, but they doubted; Sarah took her handmaid, Hagar and gave her to Abraham. Hagar conceived, and the disastrous ramifications consume the story. Hagar begins to “despise” her mistress, Sarah “dealt hardly with her,” and Hagar flees.

We are told that the Lord finds Hagar in the desert and she names God “El Roi,” the God who sees. In fact, this is the only time this title is applied, and it comes from a nobody – an Egyptian, a pregnant woman, a runaway slave.

We skim over the story, acknowledge God as the proverbial Santa that “sees” everything, and move on. But, there is so much more.

In Hagar’s story, we find the depravity of the human condition, we find the loneliness that is so universal that it unfortunately becomes trivial, we find the fragility of our emotions, we find our inclination to run away from pain, and we find our vulnerability. We all carry the brokenness of Hagar – at least I know I do. It was not so long ago that I sat in my room Freshman year, crying as I talked to my mom on the phone, telling her that no one would notice if I disappeared. And I know I’m not alone. The more people I talk to, the more I realize how depression and suicidal tendencies reign, waiting to consume the lonely, mocking that void that churns in the pit of your stomach when you make up in your mind that no one cares and that you are alone.

Hagar was was pregnant, homeless, and alone, with no one to console her; yet, God met her in her affliction – and He does this for us. He gives us a glimpse of his character when we are not expecting it and when we are hiding. He did not take away her problems, nor does he take away ours, but it is rather remarkable to consider that the creator of the universe desires to care for and see the nobodies. God saw Hagar, and in return, she saw God.

El Roi – The God who sees me. Perhaps it is my own brokenness that makes this one of God’s most precious names to me. And perhaps it is no accident that it is when we are at our lowest point that we most crave to be seen.

In my lonliness, God saw me. In my despair, God saw me. In my ignorance, God saw me. And he still does. My God – a God who sees me, even when no one else does. But, what is even more humbling to me is that even though God sees me, he still extends his grace to me. Yes, God sees my brokenness and comforts me, but he also sees the layer of filth that has settled on my heart, he sees my shortcomings and failures, he sees my selfish motivations, and he sees my sin. I am humbled, once again.

God sees me; yet, He keeps looking anyway.

Throughout the past few weeks, I’ve had more and more people come up to me asking why I have decided to start writing for the Harvard Ichthus.  Well, here’s my answer:

College is the point in which we all face the same decision:  either we decide that up to this point our beliefs were simply superfluities imposed on us by mom and dad, or we choose to embrace them and make them our own.  This was a decision I originally struggled with greatly.

Arriving at Harvard, I realized that throughout high school, I hadn’t really given my faith much thought.  So for the first semester, I simply ignored the question altogether.  When asked if I was religious, I would sort of resort to a default response, mumbling a weak, “Yeah, I’m Christian” without really knowing why.  Clearly, I was on shaky ground.

But since then I’ve realized that for me to be able to take a stand for myself and define who I am, I need to be informed, I need to ask questions, and I need to engage in conversations.  Maybe unsurprisingly, I’ve now found myself with even more questions than when I started – questions which can’t easily be answered, but that nevertheless demand answering.  Consequently, in the past two weeks alone, I’ve forced myself to make time and read.  I’ve started reading philosophical essays by Anselm and Kant, books by both Christian Apologists and New Atheists, the Good News and the daily news – anything that can help me understand the role of religion in my life and in the world.

This is something I would’ve never done before – too preoccupied with school work to even think about adding extracurricular reading to the list.  But ironically, in burying myself under school work, I was burying my mind.  I was content with the silt and dirt of half-forgotten homework assignments rather than searching for the light of truth.  I was digging myself into a grave of narrow-mindedness rather than breathing in answers and breathing out questions.  Now that I’ve changed this, I’ve found myself thinking more critically about these issues than ever before and in this sense, I feel the Harvard Ichthus has added a new fire to my life.

So being part of the Harvard Ichthus is a chance for me to learn more about myself, to see where I stand on issues which I believe are of central importance to my life.  And one thing I’ve quickly realized and which continues to cement and renew my commitment to the Harvard Ichthus is that society is rife with misconceptions about religion.  I always knew there were misunderstandings on both sides – but never to the extent I now perceive.  We talk in contradictory tongues and look through skewed visions so is it a surprise that our speech is garbled and our sight obscured? There is certainly much to be gained through discussion and debate, but we can gain nothing from the confusion and ignorance which we currently find ourselves in.  I hope to change this, to show people that Christianity is intellectually rigorous, personally relevant, and crucially important, that Christianity is a force of good and a source of light.

Why do I write for the Harvard Ichthus?  I answer:  because I believe we only ever make progress through thoughtful discussion, because I believe it is worthwhile to understand the Christian faith, and because I believe these questions are vital to how I relate to the world.  So, now I can truly say with conviction, “Yes, I am a Christian” and this is why my fingers will continue to type and my mind will continue to whir for the Harvard Ichthus.

Jesus harshly rebukes those who pay lip service many times in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it mention lip service. Jesus hardly spares his criticisms against the Pharisees as accounted in the four gospels. In Luke 18:9-14, the famous parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Jesus says that rather than the self-righteous Pharisee who boastfully and publicly prayed for his own sake, the sinful tax collector who prayed honestly with a broken heart “went home justified before God.” (v.14) In the midst of his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:5, Jesus refers to the Pharisee as a hypocrite, preaching “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.”

These two passages are probably most often taught on the sincerity and humility in prayer. However, Jesus also teaches us an essential lesson about dangers of hypocrisy in our lives, challenging us to be genuine.  We don’t necessarily pray in public places in loud voices, in order to show off our righteousness. However, we often pay lip service, lifting up insincere words to God, just like the Pharisees did.

In the parable, the Pharisee prays to God and praises God insincerely. The heart motive is all wrong. Who knows, if those same words came from a humble and sincere heart, God may have been pleased. A lot of times our words and thoughts to God lack sincerity in the exact same way. We don’t necessarily do it for show, as the Pharisee did. But we all have many different heart motives, heart motives that aren’t humble and genuine towards God that results in us paying lip service again and again.

I don’t write this as criticism for others. I write this as a reflection on my hypocrisy and as a rebuke to my sinful self. I have been struggling in this aspect of my faith for some time. Take the simplest acts of faith in my life for example. When I thank God for my meal, “God, thank you for blessing me with this food,” am I truly grateful? If I’m not, I’m paying lip service, which is a form of hypocrisy. When I sing worship songs, when I sing “I love you, Lord” and “Your grace is enough,” do I really believe that in my heart? If I don’t, I’m paying lip service to God. I want to be sincere and true in my faith, starting from the smallest actions. Many times I was discouraged by my failure to be genuine to God who has given me life, who has blessed me incredibly. But I find hope in the salvation made possible by Jesus Christ, who died and rose again for my failures and sinfulness. Every time I feel as if I am failing in my Christian walk, this hope pushes me to try again, to continue to strive to be more like Jesus every day.

Jesus wants all those who believe in his name to be genuine. Are there ways that we aren’t being genuine to God, areas in our lives that we are being dishonest to God? Jesus calls us to recognize these areas and wants us to change them so that we can become more and more like Jesus, until he returns.

“I am busy” is a phrase that is understood all too well by college students, myself included.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents were in town visiting me for Junior Parents Weekend. We explored downtown Boston. We traveled through every nook and cranny of Harvard Square. We toured museums, listened to lectures, and ate some pretty good food. While I enjoyed my time with them immensely, I was also a little worried about the week ahead. Midterms, lab work, readings, and meetings all had to fit into four short days, after which I’ll finally reached the freedom of Spring Break. Until that wonderful moment, I was the definition of the word “busy.”

As I was sitting at church last Sunday morning, I was reflecting on a principle that I find pops up fairly often in my life. Being busy usually makes for an excuse to not study the Word, to forget to pray, to rely on myself for strength—all things that, obviously, pull me away from God and His good and perfect will. What I’ve also noticed about myself, though, is that generally I really am not too busy. While I feel like every waking moment from that weekend was spent doing something with my parents, I know that I also spent some time on Facebook. My emails were all read and organized into their respective folders. I even caught up on the news. All of these things, though not bad in and of themselves, are things that should not come before my relationship with God.

When I think back to stories that we read in the gospels and in Acts about the drastic changes that the Disciples made in their lives to follow Christ and to serve Him more fully, I am humbled and embarrassed; what sacrifices have I made in my life? Why can’t I manage to take even 30 minutes out of my day to give to God, when some of them left everything to serve Him? In Matthew 10:38-39, Jesus says, “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” Am I really “losing my life” for Christ when I allow for my own volitions to take precedence over God’s?

1 John 2:17 says, “The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” I don’t know about you, but I would love to live in the presence of the Creator for the rest of forever. I hope that as the world passes away, my lusts go with it. After all, when Christ comes, I know I won’t be too busy for Him then—so why pretend like I am now?