Those are some well-thought-out closing words by PrairieGhost and I think it’s for the best of all of us when I’m closing the comment section for this strip now.

I am heartened by the fact that most of the comments are intelligent and supportive, and the ones that are just people wanting to get offended at anything and everything are quickly buried by thumbs-down.

Let me say it again, though I know the ones that need to see it aren’t paying attention. If you see “religious nutjobs” and think, “how dare they say that about me!?” then you have just made yourself the nutjob. When we talk about “religious nutjobs”, we’re talking about fools like Fred Phelps, who honestly believes all the hardships in our country are due to our tolerance of homosexuals, and the fools on TV this year who were telling parents not to let their kids go trick-or-treating because “demons live in the candy” or the people who honestly believe Obama is the antichrist. If you’re getting offended by someone talking about nutjobs, then you’re either a nutjob yourself, or you are just looking for something to be mad about, which isn’t any better and is certainly not Christlike.

Let’s recap, shall we? This comic is about: how some people will claim to follow Christ, then behave in a very un-Christlike way. It is NOT–let me repeat that, NOT–about everyone who is Christian being a nutjob. If you honestly believe the comic is a slap at all Christians, then you’re trying way to hard to find something to be mad at, and you need to take a deep breath, count to ten, and step away from the internet. Mkay. We got that cleared up? Great.

Emily:
good point on the “didn’t come to form a religion” thing. The feeling you can get from a lot of the new testament was that – “follow me” exhortations aside – that Mr JHC’s main intent was to try and de-corrupt early judaism and get said religion and its people back on track. Born and died a jew after all. Then he has to go and get himself martyred and suddenly a load of people are deciding he is himself enough of a holy figure to stand in place of, or even higher than, Abraham and the like. It’s hard to tell even if “son of God” may have originally just been an honorific that then got twisted to mean something more literal

After all, as even my staunchly atheist father attests, there’s more actual evidence of his existence and life’s work than for quite a few other promient people in the Roman Empire. Debate the divinity side all you like but whatever the outcome, there are some grains of truth to all the stories.

And maybe there’s a lot more truth in Life Of Brian than it would first seem (and why it hits close enough to home that a lot of places banned it, even though the pythons went out of their way to make it “no, it’s NOT The Life of Jesus, just some random schlub who lived around the same time”)… perhaps it was all a big accident… just a kickass lay preacher trying to put a few things to rights, and suddenly everything gets WAAAAY out of hand.

Oh yah… and I forgot….

Chilled most of the time, and good for a story or two, but not afraid to kick ass when needs be, if confronted by bad dudes who are TOTALLY taking liberties with others’ good faith. Walk softly and carry a deceptively heavy staff.

Waaaow commentspam. I echo Mort.

So, still pushing forward with the “gentle controversy” initiative here It’s one way to get known I suppose. And oddly, I can’t help but agree here… no particular religious leanings expressed (either here or in daily life), but as a role model you could do worse than Jesus H. Christ-Josephson, Nazarene Carpenter.

There’s a Chrisitian Union advent countdown calendar poster put up on a noticeboard (or more accurately over the whole board in one of the buildings where I work. The square for 7th Dec caught my eye — two anthro hearts, one looking sad, the other comforting it, caption “What does it mean to live a Christ-like life?”. The particular wording seems odd – not “Christian”, but “Christ-like”, almost like they’re trying to emphasise the philosophy and distance the idea from what the church has become.

The conclusion I personally came to was that to live a Christ like existence, you’ve got to be a chilled out rock star. Be born out of wedlock into poverty. Get divine inspiration. Go out and spread your word to anyone who’ll give you the time of day. “All you need is love”, and money can’t buy it, nor the satisfaction that you can’t get none of on earth but awaits you in heaven, should you live right enough to earn the right to climb the true stairway and knock on that door. Get yourself some groupies. Be cool. Spread the love and what wealth your fame brings. Fight the man.
Then be killed before you’re 40, in such a spectacularly gruesome way that people remember it for thousands of years, and pernicious rumours are sparked that actually, you ain’t dead…

Now if that isn’t rock, what isn’t?
(Not to mention the totally metal beard and the ability to get an epic party started with just a few jugs of water, some bread and fish…. keeping your party trick of driving your mule ACROSS the swimming pool for when things are flagging. The good die young do they not …… and leave great-looking corpses)