“In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human perfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
3 comments:
That is an excellent point, and one that I would like to hear Joseph Campbell reply to. That being said, I think we would look at this Eastern version as a story about wisdom and mythic truth, whereas with the Christ story we are presented with the choice of worshiping the central character as our God. Not much room for God in our self worshiping culture anymore...
I've seen pictures (well, one picture, anyway) of a Chinese-looking Jesus. Makes about as much sense as his being a blue-eyed European, I suppose.
I have never had any problem with Jesus being presented as any variation of "race" if it helps some people--the important fact is his humanity, his incarnation. It is, perhaps, fortuitous, even providential, that no description of Jesus physically is given in the gospels: what is important is what he said and did. We are given neither excellences we can idolize nor eccentricities we can be prejudiced against.
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