Seeing God in Ourselves at Christmas
I recently came across the work of Indian Catholic artist Angelo da Fonseca. I’d been searching for depictions of the nativity from other places in the world when I lingered on one of his pieces. Not recognizing the name, I looked him up.
I learned that da Fonseca was the first Indian artist to depict Jesus—and other Biblical scenes—as culturally Indian. This approach was considered subversive by many in the religious community, so he was more or less scorned by the church. At the same time, his overtly religious themes made him somewhat unappealing to the art world, so while his work is highly regarded now, he still remains relatively unknown.
I think his pieces are beautiful. Seeing images of Jesus from other places and cultural traditions has always been meaningful to me. For me, I guess they speak to the humanness at the heart of faith—a universal pull to find God in the familiar.
What if the Christmas story invites us to see God in ourselves?
During the Christmas season, Christians often talk about Jesus’ birth and humanity in a way that tends to disparage the human experience—why would God ever become one of us? Why would he stoop so low? In this telling, to be human is, of course, a great humiliation, a disgrace.
I think it’s because we have this bent towards shame. How easy it is for us to see the worst in ourselves and others, and believe that none of us are worth the trouble. If we’re honest, that’s exactly how we package God’s love and deliver it to those around us most of the time.
(Even though you’re really quite terrible,) God loves you. Isn’t that great?
I can’t help thinking we’ve had it backwards for such a long time.
That’s why, even in the midst of this framework of shame, we still find ourselves longing to catch glimpses not of a God who is unfamiliar in glory and perfection, who deigns to loves us in spite of ourselves, but of one who reflects our humanity back to us, the way we were meant to see it—tender, cherished, whole.
Maybe this year, rather than marveling at why God would ever choose to be human, we could try seeing the Christmas story as a reminder that our humanness is sacred and beautiful.
Maybe it always has been.
Maybe each day, including Christmas, our only job is to believe it.
Photo Credits
Nativity, 1954. Watercolour. Courtesy: angelofonseca.com | Madonna, 1942. Oil on Canvas. Courtesy: angelocfonseca.com | Nativity, 1954. Courtesy: The Jesus Question| Madonna and child, 1940. Watercolour on paper. Courtesy: Heras Centre Photo Archive, Mumbai
Why shame?
Why, you may be wondering, a podcast about shame? While I’ve been known to question my fair share of Lutheran doctrine, openly doubting a core belief of the church that raised me—and adding yet another thing to the growing body of evidence that I really don’t belong there—is not actually my idea of a good time. If I’m honest, this terrifies me a little bit. But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten just a little bit better at not taking criticism of my faith personally. In my twenties, when I first started to really question, hearing someone doubt my faith was devastating. Now, though, I realize the questions aren’t going anywhere, and…neither is my faith, apparently? Trust me—it surprises me too, sometimes.
And that’s actually part of the reason I’m doing this.
It’s often hard to understand how I’m still here, while so many of my closest friends have left. Over the past months, I’ve had conversations with people from different parts of my life and this common thread of self-hatred kept popping up, along with how that attitude began at a really young age as part of their religious upbringing. That’s something that resonates with me, too; if you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear some excerpts from 16-year-old Katie’s prayer journal and the self-loathing is pretty brutal—sometimes to comic proportions, but also, like, pretty sad ones, too.
The difference is, though, I stayed.
This podcast is, in part, an attempt for myself to unpack that and talk honestly about why I’m still here, examining what negative beliefs about myself I’ve let go of or held onto from that time in my life.
Just as importantly, though, this podcast is about honoring the stories of people who have been really hurt by the way shame was integrated into their lives through the church. It’s about holding those experiences up as true and real, not making excuses for them or dismissing them as rare exceptions. It’s about grieving with them, and celebrating the healing they continue to find.
This is not a Lutheran podcast. Or an atheist or agnostic or Christian podcast. (I’m not actually sure about that last one. Maybe it is.) It’s a podcast about shame, and how it erodes our hearts and creeps into our relationships to sow seeds of fear and mistrust. It’s a podcast about faith, and how it can or can’t evolve with us as we grow and change. But maybe more than anything else, it’s a podcast about knowing we are loved and all of the many ways we fight for that truth—for ourselves and for others—every single day.
Wherever these questions may find you as you read this, I’m grateful you’re here.
Until next time,
Katie