A lady saw the face of Jesus in her grilled cheese sandwich. A man sees the face of Jesus in the condensation on the drivers side window of his truck. A teenager saw the face of Jesus in the wood grain pattern of his bedroom door. A old lady sees Jesus in the water stained wall of her home. Have they really seen Jesus? Has Jesus chosen to reveal himself to these people in this way?
This new Jesus Hybrid gets so many miles to the gallon its a miracle!
I’m just going to come right out and say it. No. No they are not seeing the face of Jesus and no he is not revealing himself to them in these ways. Frankly I think Jesus has better things to do than to appear to people in tortillas and tree trunks. I do not think that is how God works. And if you want to get technical, we don’t even really know what Jesus looked like. And this may come as a shock to some, but Jesus wasn’t white. So the “Jesus” that people claim to see is merely just a image of man that was created to be a visual representation of Jesus. We have no idea what he actually looked like, but If God was going to send his son to live among the people in biblical times then Jesus would have ended up looking like them. Which is not white.
What the Pope uses to iron his hat?
So why do so many people see the face of Jesus in so many things? There is a scientific explanation to this.(“Oh no he did not bring science into this! Science and Religion have no business being together!”) It is called Pareidolia
Noun
pareidolia: /pær.aɪˈdəʊ.li.ə/
- The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer; such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals or seeing shapes in clouds.
There have been tons of studies on this phenomenon. The studies prove that there is an area in our brain designed specifically for facial recognition. The NY Times did an article on this.
“Some patients have strokes and are then able to recognize everything perfectly well except for faces,” Tsao said. “So we started questioning whether there really might be an area in the brain that is dedicated to face recognition.”
Tsao’s investigation yielded a surprising related finding: areas of the brain she had identified as face-specific occasionally lit up in response to objects that bore only a passing resemblance to faces.
“Nonface objects may have certain features that are weakly triggering these face cells,” she said. “If you go above a certain threshold, they might think that they’re seeing a face.” In the same way, she said, objects like cinnamon buns, rocky outcroppings and cloud formations may set off face radar if they bear enough resemblance to actual faces.
Brings new meaning to "I am the vine, yo uare the branches"
So why the face of Jesus? Two possible explanations for this. Have you ever sat and watched the clouds to see what kind of shapes and objects it form? I’ve done this before and am horrible at it. I had a friend that could see tons of different shapes in the clouds and I couldn’t see it until they pointed it out to me and my brain connected the dots to make that particularly cloud look like that particular shape. So really it’s all about the power of suggestion. You wont see it until someone suggests that its there. A second explanation is simply that Jesus is one of the most widely recognizable faces on the planet. More people have seen a picture of Jesus than any other person in history. So if your brain is going to facially recognize an image of a face it will more likely be the face of Jesus than your next door neighbor Bob. That and the face of Bob appearing in a wine stain in your carpet isn’t going to draw any media attention. Not everyone knows Bob.
Kosher Skillet with all new Non-Stick Jesus Coating!
With all that said. No, Jesus does not intentionally appear in inanimate objects to speak to you or give you a sign or send you message. Secondly, our brains are wired to recognize faces and things that look like faces. Thirdly, the power of suggestion is often very powerful., and the human mind is extremely creative.
For further Jesus related entertainment visit the site “Stuff That Looks Like Jesus”
To read the full article at NY Times go here.
