Of 50 years as a sculptor, my most requested of a sculpture is of jesus. Then alway ask what does jesus look like? They commonly show me Westernized paintings, starting from the 1500Ad and most obvious worshippers have been Europeans, historically. Although in China, he is depicted as Chinese; the Coptic church in Ethiopia depicts him as black, and so on. Everyone paints Jesus to look like themselves. So I may as well, do a self protrait or not at all, I pick not.
The Church has actively encouraged this. They point to how Jesus' physical appearance is never described in the Bible, and say that this is on purpose: Jesus is for everyone, not for one specific ethnicity.
I can not, carve or live a lie.
Everyone thinks Jesus is part of their culture. This is strange in itself and then they do not even use his real name.
There is many names forJesus in dozens of books. Many copy cat stories or made up adopt fairy tales for him. The Bahai faith believe in Jesus and say he looks like the hunchback of notredame. The differences between Catholics and other Christians is down to their interpretations of the scriptures, rules and laws. There is no other person in human history like Jesus with more wrong translation, contradiction and no real picture ID. Yet I get hassled for ID everywhere I go.