Ben Hur and The Devaluing Of Jesus

As a child, I thought the movie Ben Hur was a story about how rockin’ cool it would be to row in a Roman ship, then become an awesome gladiator, and be able to kill people by running them over in a chariot!

Sure, there were boring parts to the movie where people talked to each other about weird political stuff, but mostly it was about throwing spears, riding horses, and killing people.

It’s a somewhat different movie when you watch it as an adult.

The first thing I noticed is that Ben Hur was actually subtitled “The Story Of The Christ,” which was a bit strange because it’s a story about Judah Ben Hur and his interaction with Rome through the Roman occupation of Judea. Jesus pops up once to give Judah a drink of water, and then reappears at the end, but that’s about it. At best, it seems like the subtitle should be “The Story of the Roman Occupation of Judea.”¹

Anyway, to the point:

I was pretty disappointed about the portrayal of Jesus in Ben Hur. In all, I felt the movie, and this type of portrayal in general, devalues Jesus both as a man and as a great prophet.²

Jesus was Black, Fool!

Firstly, Jesus was played in the movie by a blond white guy. You only saw the back of his head, but when you saw it you were like “whoa, did that dude just step off a Viking ship?”

Were we really so stuck on the “War of the Crusades, we can’t equate Jesus with those damn non-Europeans” view? Really people? They couldn’t have casted him as a dark, scraggly haired man from The Levant? Is it really so wrong to say that Jesus Christ probably looked a hell of a lot more like Saddam Hussein than like Tony Blair?³

Just once I want to see Jesus played by a Black guy. Like a full on, “big ass nosed, nappy haired, Nubian Prince dude” black guy.

“Lawrence Fishburn plays Jesus!” That would so rock!

Yeah, I know people would freak out, but if it’s okay to cast him as a blonde, white guy, aren’t we saying that it’s pretty much okay to cast him “any random thing that we are pretty much 99% certain he was not?”

There’s at least a strong history of Nubians in that area at the time, so whose to say Jesus wasn’t Black? There’s a hell of a lot greater chance that Jesus was Black than Blonde.

Value and Validity

Doesn’t this devalue the man? Doesn’t it send a message that equates to “Look, we’re just not going to accept that he wasn’t white, so we’re going to reshape him into what we want him to be, and that’s going to be white… like us?”

Sure, it’s all been said before, but it’s important to say it again because it also sends another message that you may have missed. That message, sent to everyone who is unfortunate enough to not look this way is this: Even if God himself looks like you, you still don’t look right.

It also sends the conflicted message that, basically “what he actually was is completely unimportant, except that it’s completely important.”⁴

Again, I’m likely misunderstanding the Christian viewpoint of this issue, and I acknowledge that I have a lot to learn about Christianity. It just seems that it would be so much more powerful to say “Jesus wasn’t at all anything like our dominant Western cultural idea of normal or beautiful. In fact, he was someone that our dominant culture would probably marginalize, but his message was so clear, so powerful and so True that we believe it anyway. The Message of Jesus is so important that I will follow him even though he looks like the images we see on TV of suspected terrorists.”

Now that would be powerful.

I firmly believe that the “H” in “Jesus H. Christ!” stands for “Hussein.”

Jesus… simplified

The other aspect of the portrayal that stymied me (and which incidentally proved that I will never understand) is the reaction of people to Jesus in the movie. People were awestruck simply by his presence, which I just don’t buy.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he wasn’t a powerful figure. Everything that I’ve read about what Jesus actually said is beautiful– the Gospel of Thomas particularly touches me. I’m sure that I would love to be around him as a man and a teacher. That said, I’m also sure that if he simply walked past me down the street and I didn’t know who he was, I… well… wouldn’t know who he was.

In the movie, people who didn’t know anything about him instantly fell to their knees when they saw him walk by. Judah Ben Hur himself was blown away just by being next to him. I asked Jessica (a Catholic) about this and her voice noticeably quivered when she said “That is who Jesus was, just seeing him walk by changed your life.”

Really?

This sort of exemplifies why I will never understand, and could never be a Christian. Because, while I have no doubt that listening to the teachings of Jesus would likely touch me dearly, I just don’t buy the whole “just seeing him is enough” rubbish. I’m sure many would disagree with me when I say this, but I just respect the man too damn much for that.

It’s hard to explain, but if I were Jesus– trying to bring a deep, complex and difficult message to people– I’d get pretty damn grumpy if people ran around falling at their knees just seeing me. I’d start yelling “Stop freaking out you idiots and listen to me!”

Beauty in The Complexity Of Truth

By all accounts, Jesus had a pretty rockin’ great message, by all accounts he was an amazing person. It seems devaluing to allow ourselves to distill this entire person, message, god and all down into “just seeing him is enough.”

Spirituality, morality, politics, humanism. Everything I read about Jesus tells me that these were the topics he was wrestling with. Anyone wrestling with these topics would appreciate their complexity. Anyone wrestling with these topics would encourage argument and discussion. Such a person would not be happy with “just seeing me is enough,” if only because anyone who believed that wouldn’t have been worth talking to about complex issues like spirituality, morality, politics and humanism.

Religion is complex, spirituality is complex. Jesus had to be a complex man. I can’t believe otherwise.

I find it very easy to believe that the people of his time listened to Jesus, thought about what he said, and decided that his message touched them. I find it exceeding hard to believe that the people of this time saw Jesus walk by and suddenly decided to throw away their entire spiritual foundation without even hearing him speak.

People are more complex than that. I like to think that no-one would think so little of their religion that they would just toss it aside at the first sign of a hot blonde guy walking by. I want to believe that Jesus wouldn’t want people to so easily toss aside their religion just because he walked by.

Because really, wouldn’t it devalue him if all the people who followed his message were those that cared so little about messages and meanings that they’d toss aside such ancient truths so easily?

And Jesus Said: “Don’t Follow Me”

It comes down to this: I respect Jesus too damn much to become a Christian.

Seriously. He’s in my top 10 “Amazing people with whom I’d love to share a bottle of wine and talk all night” list.⁵ But I have to believe he’d actually want to talk, and not have me just fall to my knees and fawn.

I want to believe that Jesus would say something like “If you would follow me, then don’t follow me.”

Even better: I want to believe that Jesus would say something like “If you hear my message, and believe in these words, then I don’t ever want you to become a Christian.”

Sound crazy? Maybe to you. It’s a beautiful thought to me.

The Dalai Lama once said “Don’t study Buddhism to become a Buddhist, study Buddhism to become a better ‘whatever you already are’.”

I have to believe that Jesus thought the same thing.

I have to believe that Jesus didn’t say “you are evil unless you obey (select parts) of what I say.”

I have to believe that Jesus said “There are truths that transcend any one religion– that transcend even the concept of religion. There are truths which touch us all, together, as cousins, as humans, as the god that we are. Don’t follow me, don’t be a Christian. Honor your religion, honor your culture, honor your ancestors. Walk their path, not my path, and be the god that you are.”

If Jesus said that, I’d sure as hell be a Christian… and that’s a beautiful paradox, because if he said that, then I wouldn’t be a Christian.

That’s why I’ll never be a Christian.

1. Well, actually, there’s a “little boy” part of me that thinks it should be subtitled “The story of how rockin cool it would be to be to row in a Roman ship, then become an awesome gladiator and be able to kill people by running them over in a chariot!” but that’s a bit long for a subtitle, at least a subtitle that’s not on a loquacious Victorian novel. [↩]
2. It also seems to devalue him as a god figure to those who worship him, but that’s coming from someone who doesn’t, so I’m probably misunderstanding that part of the portrayal. [↩]
3. To be fair, pretty much everyone in Ben Hur was white– even the great Arab king. It was the early 60s, so unless you were playing a cook or a shoeshine boy, you were white. Hell, most of the Puerto Ricans in West Side Story were white too, so I guess that’s to be expected from a movie from that age, but it seems like we still have a long way to go. [↩]
4. Now the argument has been made to me by many Christians that what he was, the color of his skin and hair, was completely unimportant. It’s the message that Christ sent to us that is important. My Christian friends, I really want to believe you that this is the case, but it strikes me that if the color of Jesus’ skin and hair is truly unimportant, we wouldn’t be holding on to the Northern European image we have of him. It seems that the color of his skin and hair is actually pretty important to us in reality if we’re honest with ourselves. [↩]
5. Actually that’s a lie, I don’t have a list, it’s pretty much just Jesus that falls in that category. Maybe The Buddha too, but I’m fairly certain that I get what he was saying– there’s been a lot less fucking around with his message. I really want to drink with Jesus so I can figure out what’s true and what’s just Post-Roman religio-political bullshit. [↩]

One Response to “Ben Hur and The Devaluing Of Jesus”

1. kmcdade says:

   March 27, 2010 at 1:53 am

   Hold on, there's a hot, blond guy walking by…

   Seriously, this post delights me because these are the same kinds of things my husband and I (who do consider ourselves Christians) discuss often. And I agree about Ben Hur not really being a story of the Christ. And I think Lawrence Fishburne is teh awesome. And so are you.