GLAMOURISING GODS- how we have tamed God to suit our eyes

GLAMOURISING GODS

I walk through the streets that flaunt a huge L’Oreal hoarding pummeling us to buy the nail polish without which we are not worthy enough. I enter the cloth showroom that encourages me to sin with a nefarious tagline- because it is so easy to forgive yourself. The roads are replete with advertisements showcasing blonde half naked women cajoling us to fall for temptation. As I move on there are flexi boards of colleges with beautiful teenage girls (and no boys for a co-ed institution) with small font description of their infrastructure. Enter my house you will find the plastic carry bags with women adorned by heavy jewellery foisting on us the philosophy that happy marriages are not possible with out gold and silk saris. I then enter my dining room and glance at the walls painted by fine distemper. I see a moderate sized rectangular wall hanging reminding that Christ is the silent spectator of this house. The other wall has a portrait of Jesus and a cursorial look at that frame triggered me to write these lines.

The Jesus in the picture is fair and blonde. His head has a circular halo about it. The hair is ochre in colour finely combed and falling graciously on the shoulders. His eyes are blue and eyebrows meticulously trimmed. His nose is in the right shape and the moustache below it is perfectly shaped that meets the beard concealing his cheeks and chin. His lips are shining with strawberry red. His clothes are a red cloak with a yellow overcoat held together with a golden insignia. The portrait is supplemented with another picture of Jesus on the cross. He is almost naked and a loincloth covers his modest parts. His body is muscular with 6 pack abdomen. He looks up to the heaven with a crown of thorns letting blood over His face. In short He looked handsome and irresistibly attractive. I wanted to check the authenticity of the Saviour’s portrayal. I browsed the internet, read the Scriptures, and referred to some books on the personality of Jesus. I was taken aback.

The greatest addiction of our civilisation is glamour. We want to be beautiful people. We spend hours and days to realise that purpose. We go on crash diets, shuttle through beauty parlours, go into bankruptcy buying cosmetics and spend our lives over trying to become an Angelina Jolie and a Tom Cruise. The fair skinned lady is a cynosure of all eyes. She is the one who is pursued by the best males. She is the one who appears in the TV commercials. She is the ideal lover, wife, sister, mother and grandmother. She is the modern day ambassador of feminity. In short a woman who is not fair and beautiful cannot, according to the ideals of this age, be a woman in the first place. She is looked down at home. She is berated in college, insulted at bus stops, humourised in movies and novels. By logic, we as a society cannot accept a dark-skinned, overweight woman as an exemplary woman. Men are rated likewise. A tall, fair, muscular guy is the best choice. If you have a tummy and a bald head, I am sorry you are not an ideal protagonist. You are more a villain who appears in B-grade Hindi movies. Ask an average bachelorette who her husband must be, the immediate rejoinder would be Ranbir Kapoor, or Mahesh Babu and co. You cannot be a good father even. In a famous car commercial, a father metamorphoses to Shah Rukh Khan once, he gets into the vehicle. So woe to all the children in this country whose fathers are not SRKs!!!!!

Dark skinned women are a bad choice for wives and daughter in laws. They cannot bear beautiful children and the glamour madness is perpetrated to the next generation. They are the unfortunate ones who shell out extra lakhs to see their marriages happen. They are the burden for the parents. How can beauty alone judge a modern Indian man or woman? Few centuries ago, a heroine was a warrior who fought against the foreigners or a Mother who spent her life in the care of the poor. But today a heroine is a glamour doll. Fidelity, patience, love, compassion, generosity, courage- are they virtues that can be totally ignored from the personalities of our youth? If we talk of progeny, the need for honesty is a more preferable trait than a zero size figure and hardworking nature over thick mascara laden faces. This disease of glamour got inoculated to gods also. The Greek gods were good looking naked men and women. The goddess of love Aphrodite was a fair lady with bare chest whose chief character was promiscuity. Apollo, Poseidon and the rest were all the stunningly glamorous, at least in the idols made after them. The Hindu God Shiva again has a sculpted body and beautiful eyes. Though the Hindu scriptures state that Lord Rama and Krishna were of dark complexion, we made them blue which is more acceptable. Jesus also has fallen to the hands of  these beauty hungry painters.

The Gospels, which narrate the story of Jesus, do not talk about His physical stature. But taking His origins and roots into account we can construct a picture of how He could have been. He was born a Jew which means He must have been of an ordinary tanned complexion. He would have never been what an American male looks now. Yes! He would have had long hair in the fashion of the Nazarenes. Our assumptions can stop right there. He would have been a very ordinary person physically. That’s why John the Baptist had to look for a Dove above Him to realise the Son of God. He would have been an over weight (I m suggesting a possibility), because of His frequent dinners with the sinners and tax collectors and for having invited a comment “Glutton”. He would never have afforded gold over His garments.

At another level, let me daresay, Christ would have been ugliest person we could have probably seen. May be a hunchbacked, beak nosed, pimple scarred, squint eyed and pot bellied human being. We do not want to imagine Him that way. We want Christ to be tailored to our tastes! We want to restrict Him to the dictates of our choices and desires. Isaiah in a prophesy about Jesus noted 700 years before He was born “He has no form or comeliness: and when we see Him, there is no BEAUTY that we should desire Him”.( 53:2). Christ came as a poor baby in a manger, so that the poor could relate to Him and accept Him. He came as a carpenter, so that the working struggling class could accept Him. He dined with marginalised, sinful, diseased people so they could let Him in. Surely by that rationale, He could have been in such a shape that would have made the ugliest come to Him and surrender. So what? If Christ did not bother about glamour and esteemed men and women based on their intrinsic worth, then how can I judge people on the skin deep attraction called beauty? If Christ did not care about beauty why should I squander my time and resources on such a thing?

Jesus came in the most radical form of life. He could not be tied down by any conventional standards of the expectant Messiah. That’s why He was rejected. Rejection we still see on the grounds of external appearances. And it is to them that Christ would relate to the most!  Let us look to men as they are. Let us look deep into them. Let us look at their hearts. Let us look at their characters. And we find a new form of beauty emerging- a more permanent one, a more desirable one, one that would love and serve people. That was the same beauty for which He came in the first place. That is the beauty with which He will bless us with when we let Him into our lives.