Jesus Christ, Superstar

Daddy, you asked for just thoughts, not a paper. Well, this is a stream of thoughts I had today... completely raw and unedited! lol just for you. so if it's crazy... and bold... well... it wasn't really meant for publishing :) haha

Moral standards change over time; through generations and within lifetimes. Personal experiences and social events affect our morals. Virtue: behavior showing high moral standards. It has often been said that morality and the human conscious of good and evil has derived from the existence of a higher being, or God. Christianity as a religion points to God as the source of wisdom in determining good and evil, and Jesus Christ embodies this wisdom in human form. If God is the Christian’s source of wisdom concerning good and evil, then Jesus is the ultimate virtuous person, and being such he becomes the symbol &/or representative of our faith.

But, is it the historical person of Jesus Christ, and all the virtues he embodied that plays the role as our representative? Or is the Scriptural depiction of Jesus traded in for a more culture-conscious Jesus?

As moral standards change over time, or even as some virtues become more emphasized than others, the human embodiment of a virtuous person looks different. This may be compared to the acknowledgment that the definition of a “beautiful woman” changes over time as perceptions of beauty and sexuality are transformed. This may explain how one generation viewed Aphrodite as the depiction of female beauty and sexuality, while another looks to Marilyn Monroe. This, experience and event informed worldview/morality theory may also be revealed in one generation’s veneration for someone who has “accomplished the American Dream” compared to another’s admiration of the apparently contradictory globally-aware justice-advocate.

Seeing Jesus as a virtuous person in perfection, the church adapts his image to fit the most admired virtues of the day. During WW1 the church promoted Jesus as a Grand Soldier, a 1999 campaign add for a church event depicted Jesus as Che Guevera, and shirts declaring “Jesus is my Homeboy” were mass distributed in 2007. Whether or not one receives these statements as blasphemous or not, she must ask if these depictions have been developed by the culture or for the culture? And, is it possible to distinguish between the two?