The Beardless Jesus : Part 1 (Scarlett meets Professor Buck)

When Scarlett attends a lecture by the unconventional Professor Buck, she’s challenged to reconsider long-held views on biblical teachings, cultural practices, and her own religious upbringing. Along the way, she discovers that her professor was actually a Mormon missionary, long ago, who served with her grandpa. As she considers new ideas she faces the internal conflict of a loss of certainty. Sandra learns about the beardless Jesus—who was a Nazarene but not a Nazarite—and how this revelation shifts her understanding of Mormon thought and theology and her place in its world. "Scarlett sat in stillness, quietly considering this new figure of Jesus. A beardless Jesus? That didn’t sit well with her. She had heard the stories from her youth—the Prophets had seen Jesus and knew what he looked like. And wasn’t there a painting of Jesus in her chapel, dressed in a red robe, that they said looked like the actual Jesus? Like the painter had contacted the prophet and asked him what Jesus looked like, and then painted him based on that description?"