Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.

I was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.

Now, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href="http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href="http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase">Dionysus</a> or <a href="http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666">Julius Caesar</a>.

The reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:

"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light." (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)

If someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.

I can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.

It wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father." (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)

Human Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”

Do you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.

If Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href="http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”