According to a new study which a team of psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently conducted, it seems that the face of God is in the eye of the beholder. Most Christians think that the Almighty looks like a white guy which is, in fact, normal. People tend to see God as looking similar to them. Even the experts are saying that from the earliest representations, from Michelangelo to Monty Python, God has been depicted as a white, Caucasian, bearded man.
What’s even more interesting is that when the researchers asked 511 Americans to detail how they see God, most of them choose a younger-looking, friendlier version. The researchers wrote that these results may not resemble the authentic depiction of God in many cultures, but this is the so-called American God. It seems that people like to see God as resembling a normal person, more approachable than the one from the Sistine Chapel paintings, for example. This further proves how different people living now are from those living back in the 16th century. Still, they have one thing in common: they are white.
What does the face of God look like?
According to Professor Kurt Gray, who is the lead author of the study, people tend to think that God really looks like one of them. The fact that God seems to be white is because of the fact that most people who took part in the study were white. Gray also said that it was surprising to hear women describing God as male, and even some black people saw God as being white.
For millennia, people have been led to believe God was a white guy. It seems that this idea is still not completely gone from the people’s minds. They are still projecting their own image into a divine figure that listens to their prayers and helps them.
Image source: wikimedia