100 The Jesus Doll - Can We Resist the Urge to Make Graven Images and Worship False Idols?

this week I came across something called the Jesus doll and now I'm putting the question to you does this break the church if so how and how do we fix it this is Church's lame Mark I've got beef

and it's not like Wendy's where's the beef I know I just immediately thought of that commercial right and it's not like going to Texas Roadhouse which I love that has fantastic beef I've got beef more specifically I've got beef with Christianity today they're stealing our stick huh that's not cool so in a recent headline Christianity published today publishes restoring trust in the church requires the whole truth and as a um what do they call it a subtitle our Christian institutions can't rebuild credibility if we hide our failings hmm who does that sound like to you mark I don't know like but there might be this podcast or YouTube channel that talks about similar things just throwing it out there have one good idea and they steal it away from you like that well there are no original ideas really truth truth now okay let's get to the real deal you know usually week after week we talked about how the church is broken but I'm going to kind of turn this episode on his ear and ask the question of you the audience does this break the church so I am going to refer you to the website jesusdoll.com

you heard that right jesusdoll.com and it is exactly what it says it is a stuffed doll of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Our Messiah our King our justification so this might be like you know I'm not sure like exactly who are who like our listeners are like age-wise but like this this seems like something that should have been in a Ren and Stimpy episode you know like where like you see like a child like cuddling this you know this like doll of Jesus that's got like legit thorns on its head like and the child just was bleeding onto it like that's the image in my head I mean I'm sure I'm a little bit off on that but just that's what happens to me yeah so for those of you who are listening in audio podcast land uh Jesus doll is an actual doll he is as Caucasian as Caucasian can be here is is is this beautiful brown color not at all the dark brown black color that we would see um somebody in the Middle East the biggest most anime friendly eyes that you've ever seen in your life and a a set of teeth and robes that are as white as snow and I'm not sure why maybe you can tell me he's wearing some sort of red vest I don't know if that has meaning or not um maybe he's got a job at Target now

would not sell this nonsense for sure and if you're familiar with Build-A-Bear where you can kind of put those little things inside the bear when you you squeeze it and it has phrases uh the Jesus doll Ox actually has 10 phrases built into it as well um it is sponsored by so like Fox News Newsmax uh Victory channel so all those places like they they know it they love it made by Christians for Christians to help raise children uh to them to you it's a tool put Christ back in Christian holy days as if he was ever taken out of Christian holy days what yeah this past Christmas we didn't talk about Jesus once in church well actually most churches didn't even open up on Christmas since church was on which since Christmas is on to Sunday how weird is that well you know you've you caught me I know that I'm being the old guy like get off my lawn kind of guy but like if there's one day of the year where you should have church it should probably be on the day Christ was born that's okay that's all right I'm not mad I'm just saying it's kind of ironic Islam you know you're not supposed to make images of the Prophet right and I feel like you know like while we don't have have that explicit role in Christianity maybe a little bit of thought should have been put into it before you like literally commodified Jesus yes it's interesting that you use that word commodified so I don't disagree with it um but like if it weren't for the the um tacitly endorsed commodification of Jesus would any Christian bookstore even exist you know what I mean because there's only a small portion of that store that's actually books uh most of the store is actually toys and clothing jewelry and like little stones with cute Engravings in them like Jesus is my comfort you know kind of things and very little of it is actually like Bibles and bible study tools yeah and a lot of times like even then I mean and this is just me speaking as like you know like a pretentious guy you you know went to grad school for the you know for Bible study it was like the stuff that you find in the Bible study section at most Christian bookstores isn't worth the papers printed on right in in my really not at all remotely humble opinion somebody's gonna get something out of it and that's good it's just right I'm super uptight about it it's interesting that um there there are always dollars in search of products and services and it's interesting to see how just how many dollars are in search of these products and services that are of very dubious benefit yeah it helps to raise your children what to me the biggest benefit is like oh look at my look at my checkbook for the last year and look at just how much of my money went to self-development self-improvement self-actualization to my to my zen of Jesus you know and that to me seems to be the biggest benefit is I just feel better about myself you know yeah you know and I I can get that uh for some people because it's like when you're you live in a culture that teaches you to consume and so you're going to go out there looking for Christian things to consume yeah so I'm not going to fault anybody that does that that is a to me that's a sign of an immature belief yeah um but like this doll I mean just looking at it it's like it's abhorrent to me because this is you know the high King Of Heaven um yeah that's one of my favorite uh names for Jesus you know the lion of Judah the King of Kings Lord of lords so turning that into a doll for like like the children to just card around and get covered in filth and mud and whatever yeah is weird like I think of like you go into a Catholic Church you know and you'll see the crucifix with Jesus hanging on it I mean whether or not you believe that's the symbol that we should be using that's neither here nor there it's like but like that's a piece of art it's meant to take us somewhere it meant to take us to a moment when you see like icons of Jesus or there's a uh I wouldn't see I don't know if it's famous but like um uh what's his name about like Earth was Arthur sellman I think is his name um there's a picture of Jesus he did it's just like Jesus kind of like in a somber like praying kind of a a posture that kind of art to me is like it's I like it it's good you know even if it's like you're buying that to hang on your wall in your house like that doesn't feel like just like the crass commodification of Jesus it's like it's it's something that we get that we can look to and be like but it inspires Us in some way I don't know what this doll is supposed to do like like the claims on this website are are just they're foul maybe one of the things that we don't do as much as we should have we do we should is is actually give the other side a fair Shake right so okay like if my baby's gonna have a doll that's gonna be their most precious memory of their childhood I want that memory to be of Jesus if my baby's gonna have this best friend throughout their childhood I want that best friend to be Jesus if my child is going to be soothed is upset and going to be sued by a something a toy or something I wanted to be sued by Jesus I get that I do what I don't understand is why can't we depict Jesus in a way that he most more likely was right why do we have to keep depicting Jesus as a white surfer dude even even to babies and infants who this is clearly marketed towards why can't we depict him as he is when these kids are so young that they have no concept of bigotry they have no concept of race relations they have no concept of what makes us us and them them it's just all us right and yet like if this thing is as popular as they would like us to believe it is the number one Christian toy ever what is the harm in actually depicting Jesus as he most likely was uh I mean I think the harm is that you don't get to feel that sense of racial superiority yeah I guess I mean it got to be too flippant about it but it's just like like that is that's the problem when we start to make images of Jesus at all is is that we give him you know European features or we give him this hair texture this skin tone it's like you're going to exclude somebody you're going to include somebody um yeah and and you know maybe that's like the wisdom that we should like look to it's like is you know am I portraying Jesus in a way that's you know anthropologically correct is it's almost pedantic because whether or not like you know this image looks exactly like some middle easterner it's kind of beyond the point it's like that's not what we're supposed to be worrying about with Jesus at all you know and I I just I'm not sold that a doll um regardless of what it looks like is going to do as much to like make Jesus a reality to that person to that child as the parents would just having that child being raised in a Christian environment and I don't know what the 10 things that this silly doll says or I'm sure that they're the most challenging things that Jesus ever had to say about wealth or you know caring for the poor or any of that stuff yeah so anyway like I said uh not not anyway I don't know why I just said that I'm really sorry I did not mean to say that as if like what you just said was invaluable I'm really sorry about that no I didn't dig it that way I just thought you were going to talk about like you know how to segue better or something yeah exactly yeah we need some professionals

I'm not the best person to actually have a um conclusion I would like to leave this up to the viewers and the listeners so regardless of if you are watching this on YouTube or whether you're listening to this on the show notes or or in the audio podcast I'm Gonna Leave a link to this in the notes um and if you don't find it anywhere else I'll also put the link on our website out of all of you know the 10 of you listening and watching right now I'm interested to see who actually buys this thing and I think um the voice of the people will say what the voice of the people will say oh yeah like I'm curious because I mean like I'm not going to ask people to tell me like hey do you think I'm wrong you're gonna tell me anyway no chance that's not gonna happen like we're you're gonna call me and Doris Scott probably both the devil or an atheists and whatever other you know insult you think is actually going to hurt our feelings don't do that actually like think like think about this thing and and yeah like our like am I being too like I don't have kids right so like am I being too harsh because I don't have to buy my kids toys to play with am I just being too uptight am I being too traditional I don't know like I really I don't I just don't get my gut reaction to this thing is it's it's worse than my gut reaction to Phil Collins baby Jesus oh wow that's strong because we were pretty we were pretty strongly disapprove of that uh of that particular um embarrassment yeah but I think maybe that was just more The Sensational horror yeah

thousands and thousands of dollars spent on that thing I think in general we are of the same mind that consumer that this kind of commodification of our savior is is a line that needs to be tread very very delicately if you are going to tread this line you need to make sure all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted and that the Messiah that you're going to represent is the Messiah that ought to be represented yes and so that like I I'm not saying I don't want anybody ever to produce a Jesus doll I'm just saying just like I want Christians to make good Christian movies I want Christian toy makers to make good Christian toys is what I'm saying so this is Church's lame Mark and I get together every week and we talk about the crazy headlines from churches and church leaders that break the whole body and and cause the church in America to lose credibility if you have something you want to say about the Jesus doll or any other toy hey if you want to tell us about the crazy Christian toy that you saw by all means uh leave us a comment and while you're there you know do all those other things uh you know give us a thumbs up like And subscribe it'll do all the clicky clicky clicky things and if you are listening to this in a podcast uh by all means shoot us an email churches named podcast gmail.com and we'd appreciate it if you'd hit the Subscribe button in uh Apple podcast and with that go in peace and serve the Lord amen hey this is Scott here if you've got something out of this episode would you consider clicking on that super thanks button down below and if you'd like to see more content just like this check out this playlist called Financial failure