The July issue of Playboy’s Portuguese edition features an unlikely cover model: Jesus.
Our Lord also makes an appearance within the magazine, posing beatifically next to semi-topless women.
The imagery has an ostensibly literary purpose: As Robert Quigley notes,
Last month, Nobel literature laureate José Saramago died: A national hero in Portugal, he was the only Portuguese-language writer to win the Nobel literature prize.
Saramago was an atheist, and one of his most famous novels was titled The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo), depicting a flawed and human Jesus: You can see the book’s title engraved into the headboard of the bed on the Playboy cover.
(Here is the link to Quigley’s post. Though the nudity is covered up, it is still NSFW—unless, perhaps, you work at a strip club.)
It would be easy to express shock and outrage at the blasphemously pagan Portuguese. But we Americans—both heathen and believer—tend to be disrespectful of Christ too.
Although its not quite the same as a Playboy cover, a few years ago the popular fad was having images of Jesus on t-shirts. Hipster shops like Urban Outfitters would sell shirts with ”Jesus is My Homeboy” and “Jesus surfs without a board.” More annoying that the imagery was the excuses some people made for them. Daniel Richards, a priest at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Tucson, AZ, said, “If Jesus is so reverent that we can’t laugh about him, then Jesus isn’t in our everyday lives.”
David Mills, writing at the time for Touchstone magazine’s blog, took exception to Richards’ claim:
One can just imagine the Apostles, whose successors an Episcopal minister claims to be, wearing such t-shirts around Jerusalem in the weeks after the Resurrection. One can imagine Perpetua and Felicity ordering one to wear in the arena. One can see crowds of Sudanese Christians standing before army firing squads in such t-shirts. One can . . . oh never mind.
One cannot imagine the young Mr. Richards wearing a similar t-shirt with a comic message about Martin Luther King or any feminist whatsoever, no matter how obscure.
The t-shirt fad has faded, but the disrespect is still with us. Of course this is nothing new. From Jesus Christ Superstar to the latest Jesus action figures, Christ has long been a staple of ironic American imagery. Still, it is rather disconcerting. As my friend Rusty Lopez once asked, “What is it about our culture that causes us to consider the creator of the universe just another one of the gang?”
Good question. The cause, in my opinion, can be traced back to American Protestantism, particularly in the popular strands of evangelicalism. As a religious movement we have almost completely abandoned the concept of a transcendent creator in favor of a God who is our “best friend.” I remember as a young Baptist how we would gloss over the commands to “fear God” in favor of singing hymns about ”What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Even the Gnostic literary critic Harold Bloom is able to see where we err, as he wrote in his book The American Religion:
The American finds God in herself or himself only after finding the freedom to know God by experiencing a total inward solitude. In this solitary freedom, the American is liberated both from other selves and from the created world. He comes to recognize that his spirit is itself uncreated. Knowing that he is the equal of God, the American Religionist can then achieve his true desideratum, mystical communion with his friend, the godhead.
The idea of Jesus is mainly our “friend” is deeply rooted in our particular religious culture. Our lack of reverence expresses itself in everything from our worship to our evangelism. How many times, for instance, have we seen an earnest Christian approach someone (including us) and ask, “Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”
While intended as a means of carrying out the Great Commission, the question is asking something else entirely. In essence, it’s asking whether we possess God rather than whether God possess us. God is, indeed, our friend. But there is something about claiming God as our “personal” friend that seems to imply that we are putting him in the same category as our “personal trainers” and “personal assistants,” people who serve us, rather than someone whom we are expected to serve. When Jesus becomes someone we can befriend he becomes someone we can take lightly.
Jesus, however, is not my homeboy. The term “homeboy” always implies a co-equal relationship and never refers to someone who could be considered either superior or an inferior. Jesus may be a friend, but he is not my “buddy.” Christ is my master, my redeemer, my Lord and my God.
The Christian music artist Nicole Nordeman, in one of her most poignant and beautiful songs, expresses the proper attitude a servant should take toward the Master:
Have I come to casually?
Because it seems to me,
There’s something I’ve neglected.
How does one approach a Deity with informality;
And still protect the Sacred?
‘Cause you came and chose to wear the skin of all of us.
And it’s easy to forget You left a throne.
And the line gets blurry all the time.
Between daily and Divine.
And it’s hard to know the difference.
Oh, let me not forget to tremble.
Oh, let me not forget to tremble.
Rather than laugh about him, as the Episcopalian priest suggests, or put Him in the toybox with Barbie and G.I. Joe, we should remember how his own friends viewed him when he walked among them and treat him with the fear, respect, awe, and adoration due our God.
July 7th, 2010 | 5:44 pm
Plus, Saramago was a communist. The end.
July 7th, 2010 | 5:47 pm
Insightful words. I certainly do not discount your observation as this sort of insistent informality with regard to ‘transcendent’ matters to be an aspect found in the American cultural inheritance of Evangelical Christianity. Certainly your point with regard to our spiritual individualism is a token reality of this.
However, I do think that far more evident of proximate variables deal with a blatant culture of informality and banality about nearly everything. Given the learned American experience of life based on consumption and surrounded by the 40 hour work week, phrases such as “Jesus is my Homeboy” allows most of us to deal with the transcendent that we are both uncomfortable with and most of all, have no cultural or behavioural vocabulary in which to encounter. Sure, Evangelicals have used many of these irreverent monikers because they seem to ‘work’ in making the Gospel message more individualistic and more palatable.
I am more interested by the immense culture of lapsed Catholicism that also seems to play on these themes in a different way. I think your example of the Episcopal priest, albeit not a Catholic, applies in this situation. In this way, irreverent informalities are a way to make sense of a Sacramental reverence within a culture where sacramentality simply does not fit.
July 7th, 2010 | 6:07 pm
No, you’re all mistaken. That’s not Jesus on the cover. Don’t you recognize that it’s Mohammad?
In bad taste, certainly, but I must say that the editors of the Spanish Playboy have the courage of their convictions, unlike the folks at Comedy Central.
July 7th, 2010 | 8:19 pm
It’s quite blasphemous as Katy Perry would say.
July 7th, 2010 | 9:00 pm
Though the t-shirt fad certainly has faded (but by no means disappeared), it is nice to hear criticism of it. It is, and always was, disrespectful and ridiculous, presenting the Incarnate Lord as no different than some college leftist’s pop culture t-shirt iconography of Che Guevara.
And as an evangelical, I do see how the often encouraged hyperpersonalization of Scripture–seemingly meant to be interpreted only by the individual and not within the faith community of a classically Christian church–has led to such ridiculous banalities.
I must say, though, that it’s easy to trivialize Jesus–I’ve done it plenty, I’m sure.
July 7th, 2010 | 9:10 pm
[...] forget how it all began.) Playboy Portugal managed, against all reason, to shock the wizened masses of the internet, where the Jesus photos immediately went viral. Shouldn’t that be worth [...]
July 7th, 2010 | 10:05 pm
[...] First Things (blog) [...]
July 7th, 2010 | 11:48 pm
Thanks for the mention, Joe.
One contemporary worship song, which distorts the “personal” aspect of our relationship with God, is… “I am a friend of God”. Consider the first line:
Who am I that you are mindful of me?
Wow. Are we really so relationship-deprived that we need to sing butchered scripture as some sort of pseudo-worship?
July 8th, 2010 | 2:41 am
[...] First Things (blog) [...]
July 8th, 2010 | 10:22 am
Why would they put an image of the early Kenny Loggins on the cover of Playboy?
July 8th, 2010 | 10:44 am
When I saw this photo, the first though I had was Jesus coming to heal the sick and lost:
“On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘ It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick . . . For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ ” Matthew 9: 12
July 8th, 2010 | 1:02 pm
Joe you write:
” ‘What is it about our culture that causes us to consider the creator of the universe just another one of the gang?’ Good question.”
Hmmm well what about what Jesus said about himself:
John 15:14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
Jesus isn’t just God he is fully man. In their eagerness to create an appropriately Greek, oh so sophisticated, and intellectually satisfying philosophical model of the Christian God many (Probably more correctly, most.) theologians have tended to de-emphasize Christ’s humanity. The Gnostics are the ones downplaying Christ’s humanity not the ones reveling in it.
Well… you keep your philosophy I’ll stick with the Bible… What a friend we have in Jesus.
July 8th, 2010 | 3:37 pm
The great thing about blasphemy is that it is a victimless crime. Oh, and some last words, so that we can go ahead and dispose of the on coming debate:
“When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
- Stephen F. Roberts-
Thanks,
D
July 9th, 2010 | 6:34 am
This post is completely ignorant about Portugal. For shame.
Saramago isn’t a “hero” around here. I quite like him, but many people said he should have renounced the citizenship because of the comments about the Church.
@ahem: And communist == bad, right? Sigh.
Yes, he was a communist, but he wasn’t a blind follower (unlike other people *ahem*). He thought for himself and was quite critical of most so-called “communist regimes” like Cuba.
@Pastor Spomer: PORTUGUESE, not Spanish, you ignorant.
July 9th, 2010 | 8:18 am
martin luther king and feminists actually exist though
but feel free to joke about them aswell
jeez get your panties out of a bunch
let’s assume everything the bible says is true
he’s all powerfull and mercifull and whatnot
you honestly think he would care about being in playboy or on some hipster’s t-shirt?
you people are stupid
July 9th, 2010 | 8:49 am
To Greg Marquez:
I’m not sure I’m buying what you’re selling in your comment. While it is certainly true that Jesus referred to his disciples as friends, that is a far cry from depicting him as our homeboy or chummy pal.Even the scripture you quote from John implies as much since Jesus states that we are his friends “if you do whatsoever I command you,” thus implying the authority of his person and teaching, clearly implying that he is not “just another one of the gang.”
Also, the last three comments before mine are just rude, intolerant and immature, especially zwenkwiel’s. Really, what is the point of leaving comments just for he sake of insulting other people and glorifying your own superiority?
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