Modern vs. Traditional: Why Realistic Photography is Changing How We See the New Testament

One night I was up at 3 AM retouching a photograph of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I'd shot the scene in a desert near Mexico, thousands of miles from the actual Holy Land. This was not the pristine, stained-glass world of traditional Christian art. This was a guy with a camera, a trampoline for the angels, and a prayer that wouldn't stop running through his head.

And somewhere in the middle of all that mess, I felt something I'd been chasing for over a decade: the actual presence of Christ.

Nobody warned me that would happen. But then again, nobody had done this before. The closest thing to it were filmmakers like Mel Gibson with The Passion of the Christ. But large-scale photography depicting the life of Jesus? That didn't exist. There was no playbook. I set out to make modern Christian artwork, and the art remade me.

The Evolution of Modern Christian Art

In 2007, painting was king in the world of Christian art. When I pitched a large-scale photographic series depicting the life of Christ, people tilted their heads at me. Photography? Of Jesus? But I believed something then that I still believe today: photography is the native language of the last several generations of humans. We think in photographs. We feel in photographs. And if I could create images of Christ that felt less like artifacts and more like memories, present, human, and near, something important could happen.

That project became Reflections of Christ.

My first scene was the angels announcing the birth of Jesus. We had models bouncing on a trampoline in a studio to get that feeling of weightlessness. The images were retouched by Robb Carr, a world-renowned artist whose credits include Michael Jackson's Thriller album cover. When I finally had something to show people, the skepticism faded. They could see it. Christian art photography wasn't just possible. It was powerful.

When the first public gallery opened in Mesa, Arizona, seven hundred people showed up on night one. Over the next six months, hundreds of thousands followed. A documentary went viral. And I started hearing from total strangers who told me that one of my images made them see Jesus differently. Not as a figure in a stained-glass window, but as someone real. Someone close.

That's what I'd wanted all along: realistic pictures of Jesus that make you feel like He's in the room with you.

The conversation around Christian modern artwork has opened up since then, and I think that's a good thing. Artists are preachers, and we preach from our own experience with Jesus. That's what makes this work different from illustration or decoration. I'm not trying to paint a historical scene. I'M TRYING TO CREATE AN ENCOUNTER.

Faith in Modern Culture: Addressing Deconstruction and Doubt

We're living in a time when faith is getting deconstructed from every angle. Public figures walk away from Christianity and announce it to millions. Musicians, pastors, authors. Some of them I respect deeply.

In 2020, Jon Steingard, lead singer of the Christian rock band Hawk Nelson, publicly announced "I no longer believe in God." As a pastor's kid who spent his career in Christian music, his departure shook the faith community. He described years of private doubt before going public, and his story resonated with thousands who were quietly wrestling with the same questions.

I don't know Jon's heart, and I wouldn't pretend to. What I do know is that faith is a journey, and sometimes people hit stretches of that road where belief just isn't there anymore. I've felt the edge of that cliff myself. I would never shut the door on anyone. The God I believe in doesn't shut doors on people, and I think the Christ who went after one lost sheep out of a hundred is still going after every single one of us, whether we're looking for Him or not.

A couple of years ago, for a short season, I found myself reflecting quite seriously on questions of faith and my place in the universe. God? His holy Son? I really had to ponder those concepts. My faith, like that of so many of us, is more complex in its foundation and growth than it was when I was younger.

Here is what I found on the other side of that season: I had to be converted to Christ, again. It was a call to step up my game. A mandate to invest something of myself into a process that I had left to others.

And this is where art intersects with doubt in a way that I think matters. When skepticism rises, when people are walking away from faith, the demand for relatable, honest expressions of Jesus rises with it. People don't want a sanitized Sunday school portrait anymore. They want something that meets them where they actually live, in the mess, in the questions, in the 3 AM wrestling matches with God. That's what realistic Christian art can do. It doesn't require you to check your brain at the door. It invites you to bring your whole self, doubt included.

I have faith that Jesus Christ lived and died and lived again. AND every once in a while doubt creeps in about all of that too, reminding me that I HAVE FAITH and that I might be wrong. Doubt is uncomfortable. But when we pretend like doubt doesn't exist, we are changing the quality of our faith from courageous to ignorant. Let us have courageous faith, taking decisive action with humble hope. That is a brave and faithful and meaningful life.

That kind of honesty is what modern Christian art paintings and photography have the freedom to express. And it reaches the people who need it most.

The Rise of Realistic Jesus Art: What Did He Actually Look Like?

Sometimes I think people get a bit uneasy that I created art with an ethnic Jesus. So I've started to tackle it head on.

One day I was chatting with two friends at divinity school and Jesus' physical appearance came up. These were very smart, faithful guys. Friend one (African American): "He's black." Friend two (South Korean): "No, He's Korean." The conversation was tongue-in-cheek, but it begs an important question.

Forensic anthropologists estimate that Jesus was around five feet tall, weighing around 110 pounds, with olive skin, dark eyes and hair. But the Bible doesn't ever get specific other than Isaiah saying He isn't much to look at (53:2).

For centuries, the Western world inherited a Eurocentric Jesus from the master painters. If the early artists like Michelangelo (circa 1500) had depicted Jesus with darker skin, would racism be less rampant in Christian history? Maybe. But then again, the original disciples frequently had problems singling people out for ethnicity, and they were staring right at Jesus.

So here's my bold take: I DON'T CARE HOW WE SEE JESUS. I CARE HOW WE FEEL HIM.

The shift toward historically informed depictions of Christ is important, and I respect the work that forensic science and archaeology have done to help us imagine a more accurate Jesus. But at the end of the day, the power of an image of Christ is not in its anthropological precision. It's in its ability to bring you closer to Him. When I was little, we were taught to "picture Jesus," and so that was where I defaulted as an adult. But the more I grew up, the more I realized that we'll all see in Him things that we recognize in ourselves. That's the emotional reality that sets realistic Christian artwork apart from the traditional modern christian paintings of centuries past. A photograph doesn't just depict. It invites you in.

The Cheeto-Jesus lady at the gas station in North Texas who found a Cheeto that looked like Jesus praying? She was probably a sweetheart. People find Jesus in pancakes, wood shavings, sky lights. Google it. Sometimes I receive angry DMs telling me "you don't know what Jesus looks like," and then the person proceeds to explain what Jesus really looked like.

What I care about is this: does the image bring you to your knees? Does it make you feel something real? Because if it does, the artist did their job.

Archiving and Illuminating: Photography as New Testament Art

Photography is jarring. We believe it. We perceive objectivity in the medium. People lean on it and are addicted to the comfort that a photograph provides. That's what makes it such a powerful tool for engaging with the New Testament.

There's the archival side of this, the extraordinary work being done to photograph and preserve ancient manuscripts, scrolls, and artifacts. High-resolution imaging has revealed details in biblical manuscripts that were invisible to the naked eye for centuries. Multispectral photography can recover faded text on documents that scholars had given up on. This kind of work is quietly revolutionizing our understanding of how the New Testament was transmitted across generations.

But there's another side of photography's relationship to scripture, and it's the one I know best: visual storytelling. When I was creating Reflections of Christ, the process of making the images was as powerful as the images themselves. Just ask my wife. Over those four months of creation, I was different. She could see it. My friends could see it. Something in my countenance changed, and it testified more powerfully than any finished photograph.

We were simultaneously creating a soundtrack for the physical gallery over at producer Jason Barney's recording studio. Moments in that environment were special, but perhaps none more than the first time Hope Shepherd walked in with a beat-up cello case and skater shoes. Clyde was plucking away at "In Humility Our Savior" on the piano and Hope joined in impromptu, before tuning or warming up. The feeling of power in that room was among the strongest I've ever felt. As Hope played, I was filled with light, and I felt the Savior asking me the same question He asked Peter on the beach. Only now He was asking me about the creative process and photography itself. Do I love Him as much as I love creating these images of Him?

For over a decade I had longed for a fiery, palpable, witness of the Savior. For some reason, God found it best to let me experience the absolute love of Jesus as I was recreating His life by photograph. I have gotten to imagine Gethsemane. Picture the crucifixion. Let Him teach my child. Witness walking on water. In my mind, I have felt the tokens in His resurrected hands and looked into His eyes.

Photography doesn't just preserve the New Testament. It brings you inside it.

Popular Mediums: From Canvas to Camera

The landscape of Christian art modern audiences engage with has changed dramatically. For most of Western history, the conversation began and ended with painting and sculpture. The great masters, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, defined what Jesus and the New Testament "looked like" for entire civilizations. Their contributions are extraordinary and should be honored. But we now live in a visual culture that speaks a different dialect.

When I started Reflections of Christ, nobody was using photography to depict the life of Jesus at this scale. Painting was the tradition. Photography felt like an outsider move.

Today the field has expanded in ways I never anticipated. Digital painting, 3D rendering, mixed media, and of course photography are all being used to tell the story of Christ. Each medium brings something different to the table. A traditional oil painting carries the weight of centuries of sacred tradition. A photograph carries the shock of perceived reality. Digital art can push into the surreal and the symbolic in ways neither painting nor photography can easily reach.

Then there's AI-generated imagery, which I'd argue is a radical departure from all of the above. Not because the technology isn't impressive. It is. But because it requires almost no effort from the person producing it, and in many cases it's directly pulling from the work of artists past without their consent. Here's the thing: art that costs the artist nothing will move the viewer very little. The power of art is not just in how it looks, but in what it costs the artist to make it. I prayed on my knees until I fell asleep trying to figure out how the angels should look. I was up at 3 AM retouching to sacred music, and those nights changed me. That process bled into the images. You can feel it. AI lacks affect because it lacks effort. And when we're talking about depicting the Son of God, effort is not optional. It's worship.

What matters is the spirit behind the work. If you're choosing christian artwork, modern or traditional, for your home or your worship space, my advice is simple: choose the piece that stops you. Not the one that matches your couch. Not the one that signals your taste. The one that makes you feel something about Jesus that you don't want to forget. Our collectors are getting younger and younger. Gen Z and younger Millennials are starting to wear their faith in Jesus on their sleeves, their tattoos, and the walls of their homes. I love the commitment.

A friend of mine, Tony Sweat, who is an art professor and church historian, wrote a paper about the effects of inaccurate art on the minds of believers. His thesis was that when we have been raised on one version of the story, and when we have mentally accepted an artist's rendition of it, then when more information comes out, a cognitive dissonance occurs. We've seen this play out repeatedly. Believers discover that a scene they've visualized their whole lives didn't happen quite the way the paintings suggested, and instead of reconciling, they revert to what they thought all along, making all study and prayer on behalf of the art a waste of time.

This is why I care about realism in modern christian artwork and photography. Not because every detail has to be archaeologically perfect (I shot scenes for Reflections of Christ thousands of miles from the Holy Land, after all), but because an artist has a responsibility to tell the truth as best they can. If you're staring at the sun and telling yourself it's not shining, your art will increasingly get less impactful. The goal is to help people see Christ more clearly, not to reinforce comfortable fictions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is God portrayed differently in the Old Testament vs. the New Testament?

This is one of the most common questions I hear, and I understand why it feels that way. The Old Testament God can seem like fire and judgment while the New Testament God seems like grace and tenderness. But I believe the character of God is consistent throughout scripture. What changes is our vantage point. In the Old Testament, God is working through covenants, through nations, through prophets who are themselves imperfect vessels. The expressions look different because the contexts are different. But the same God who thundered from Sinai also whispered to Elijah in a still, small voice. And the same Jesus who said "neither do I condemn thee" also flipped tables in the temple. God is not a different character in each testament. He is a complete character across both.

Was Jesus short or tall?

Based on the forensic anthropology work that has been done on first-century Middle Eastern remains, Jesus was likely around five feet tall and approximately 110 pounds, with olive skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. That's quite different from the six-foot, light-skinned, flowing-haired figure that most of us grew up imagining. Isaiah 53:2 says of the Messiah, "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." In other words, He was not physically striking by the standards of His time. The beauty of Jesus was never about His appearance. It was about what happened when He looked at you.

How does modern Christian art differ from traditional art?

Traditional Christian art, the great paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance and beyond, often depicted Jesus and biblical scenes with a formality and grandeur that reflected the institutions commissioning them. Cathedrals and wealthy patrons wanted images that inspired awe. Modern Christian art tends to prioritize intimacy and personal encounter over institutional grandeur. Photography in particular carries a sense of immediacy that painting doesn't. When you see a photograph, something in your brain registers it as "this happened." That's why photographic depictions of Christ can hit differently. They feel less like a memory of the past and more like a moment you just walked into. The best modern Christian art doesn't just show you what Jesus might have looked like. It helps you feel what it might have been like to be in the room with Him.

Will husband and wife know each other in heaven?

I believe with everything in me that love like the kind Tara and I share doesn't simply vanish when the body gives out. The God I've come to know through years of prayer, doubt, and returning is not a God who would craft something that sacred only to let it dissolve into nothing. I think when I take my last breath here, I'll stand before my Creator first, and in that holy moment I'll finally see clearly all the things I spent a lifetime squinting at. But when that meeting is through, I believe with my whole chest that Tara's eyes will be the first ones I find, and I will know her, and she will know me, and whatever forever looks like, we will walk into it together.