Because Christmas is quickly approaching, I decided to start looking for Jesus in the easiest places to find large numbers of people: big box stores. More specifically, I’m looking for large images of Jesus, not thumb-sized Jesus Babies tucked away in a little mangers.

I started my hunt at Lowe’s two days ago. I found huge Santas, reindeer, snowmen, elves, penguins wearing hats and fashion-model angels, but no Jesus. How odd, that when a celebration is supposedly only about Jesus, you won’t find any prominent images of Jesus. You’d expect to see huge inflatable images of Jesus on the roofs of the stores and on their parking lots. You’d expect to find life-sized Jesus images on people lawns. You’d expect to see large statues of bloodied Jesuses on crosses, his alleged moment of glory. But, except for those little Jesus babies you might find in an occasional manger kit, that doesn’t really feature him, you won’t find Jesus, even though he is the purported reason for all the fuss. Nor will you find stores promoting his alleged teachings. Such strange compartmentalization.

Why is it that we don’t see a life sized Jesus statue trying to get us to buy that new iPod? Or a Jesus image urging us to buy a life-sized Santa? Apparently, the image of Jesus doesn’t sell plastic goods and gadgets. Is that because Jesus is never alleged to have said anything about going into debt by buying lots of consumer goods. Is it because it would be tasteless to buy all of this crap with the image of the alleged creator of the universe, the man who allowed himself to be tortured to save your eternal life, staring at you?

Or is it because we don’t really believe the things we say about Jesus, and that we actually don’t believe in Jesus, but we only believe in belief?