Punk Rock Jesus

My daughter (Rachel) and daughter-in-law (Abbye), as well as Rachel's dog, Piper, visited us for the last 10 days.  It was a wonderful visit, full of good times, love and laughter.  I continue to enjoy the freedom that retirement has brought, able to entertain without concern of having to go to work, able to be spontaneous during visits from my children without concern for responsibilities that could occur if still tied to a job.  

During their visit, I read my first graphic novel, Punk Rock Jesus, written by Sean Murphy, which I borrowed from Abbye.  Not sure how representative of the genre is this book, but the graphic novel is certainly a different form of literature, a different way of expressing ideas and messages, as compared to what I am used to, and especially different from the recent books I read by Vera Brittain and Dorothy Lessing.  Still, if retirement is not an appropriate time to seek out new forms of art, then what is the point of working all one's life if not to expand one's experiences rather than seeking a comfortable bubble.

Anyway, reading a graphic novel strikes me as taking some practice; I am afraid that I most likely did not get all the meaning behind the book as desired by the author as the pictures tell as much or more of the story than the words, and I am more used to seeking meaning in words primarily.  I would imagine that were I to start reading only graphic novels, then over time I would be able to retrain my mind to seek substance in the pictures first, words second, but since I needed to be conscious of this process, needed to make myself look at the pictures more intensely than I usually do, it made the process of reading the book more labored.  This is not to say I didn't enjoy it, I did.  Perhaps the best way to describe it is that even after taking lessons in a foreign language, the experience of reading a book in that new language would be similar in that the process of converting the new language to your native one would most likely interfere with the story.

Before I get into commenting on the book, I glanced through some previous posts which touched on the topic of religion.  This first one, linked below, was written in April 2017, and discussed the never ending battle between science and religion.  I wrote it after reading about Galileo in one of the Lapham's quarterlies that I love so much.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2017/04/science-vs-religion.html

The second one is from January 2016, called the Intermixing of Religion.  It was inspired by 2 separate articles in the Smithsonian Magazine, one concerning the search for historical Jesus and the other about his mother Mary.  

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-intermixing-of-religion.html

OK, so what is Punk Rock Jesus about?  Well, yes, it is about someone called Jesus who joins a puck rock band, but that happens far into the book.  Much of the story involves the process, and how science and religion react to such a possibility.  

In a nutshell, a company called Ophis led by a man named Slade creates a reality show based on the idea of cloning a genetic Jesus from the Shroud of Turin, called the J2 project.  Simply put, the virgin mother to be is watched live on TV throughout her pregnancy, as is the birth and early life of the new Jesus.  While it is certainly a dark novel, with all kinds of negative viewpoints of science, religion, god, and people in general, and features an ending for the cloned Jesus not unlike that of the original Jesus, it does not reflect pure hopelessness, or at least I didn't take it as such.  I though it more a lesson in how most people have good and bad in them, even someone purportedly cloned from Jesus.  And, while our suspicions that the whole J2 project is contrived merely for TV ratings are realized in the end, it is still interesting to see how an ideologue, whether controlled by science or religion, can be blinded to do, think or justify almost anything.   

From this respect, even the character of Jesus becomes a victim to the extremist type of thinking that complete devotion to a belief can often lend itself to, as he completely rejects the notion that he is Jesus, turning to purposeful chaos and self destructive acts to vent this reaction.  

I know this sounds a bit far fetched, perhaps even blasphemous to those who consider the original Jesus to be the actual Son of God, but I think by remembering that this person was not really cloned from Christ's DNA, it might be easier to accept such a reaction.  To me, remembering the day when true believers in American democracy attacked the officers stationed at the US Capitol building to interfere in the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, due to a misguided belief in a man rather than our country, should remind us that such blind devotion can lead to all sorts of actions, sensible or not.

I imagine that the tension between science and religion will be with us for quite some time, Star Trek not withstanding.  While we are at least not arresting scientists in the name of God, I do fear that there are those on the far right who may not stop at just disagreeing with Fauci and his attempts to help us handle Covid should they gain power in our government this fall. 

And, of course, which particular religious tribe you belong to will also continue to cause violence and death in our world, which reflects again on our vulnerability to words which inflame our differences, even though those words are supposed to be a reflection of god's representatives, words which if they really were "of god" would certainly not encourage prejudice, distrust, hatred and violence.

In the end, I don't know enough about the author, Sean Murphy.  Don't know how much of my own philosophy I am projecting onto the lessons of his novel.  But I am glad that I had the opportunity to encounter Punk Rock Jesus, and that Murphy chose this particular topic for his book.  It offers a unique view of religion, something we need, will continue to need for the foreseeable future.