BunGeeZus
Thursday, I am tasked with finishing what I started yesterday. I wrote that a friend promised to send me an image plucked from the seeming bottomless internet meme-well of Jesus bungee jumping…
Here it is. This may or may not evoke a bodily sensation. Maybe a tremor of horror, to glimpse the gentle shepherd of humanity, ‘high as a kite’ doing a stage dive into a mosh pit? Or do you feel shock of seeing the son-of-God in disconnect from a cross (essential enforcement tool of empire) sidestepping the agony ritual, attempting a wild embrace of humanity with arms wide open!
As a recovering Christian fundamentalist, this image prompted amused contemplation. I paused and thought how inescapable, how definitely our thought/feeling about the nature of reality (another way of saying “God”) is framed, held fast by events known first hand by our ancestors, happenings which they endured, and in which they participated. The after effects of past events envelop us…
I reflect upon the Platonic idealism that has shaped Christianity. Plato and his teacher Socrates survived the Peloponnesian War which lasted 27 years. War brought death by disease within the walls of Athens. War brought hunger on account of siege by Sparta’s army… Pericles himself, leader of Athens was taken by plague.
Further downstream in history was the English Protestant reformation in the 16th century. You know the saga of King Henry VIII arm wrestling with the Catholic church over marriage annulment to Catherine of Aragon, and the rise of Thomas Cromwell chief minister to King Henry. Thomas too was relieved of his head (by King Henry). The introduction of Calvinism, that austere riff on human nature – formative of Puritan selfhood, etc., etc. All of that and much more says that events have a life of their own, – that the future, our present is formed by the rolling hairball of struggle for power, the essentially irrational. The future is really open and undetermined. There’s no design. It’s improv!
To say more plainly, Jesus as Lord, icon of reality in the West, the revelation of God, has been and is, massaged. Jesus is made-over into anything whatever a people need, or insists that he become. So, go ahead. Be my guest!
Why not a bungee jumping Jesus?
Why not?
4 thoughts on “BunGeeZus”
To me, the image encompasses a humanistic representation of what many people idealize as a god-like figure. As a supposed teacher, if he actually existed, he would have needed at least a modicum of humor to connect with his students/flock. This characteristic is something we humans are in desperate need of during these very dark days. Unfortunately many people would take deep offense at the idea of Jesus bungee jumping. Oh well!
Indeed! What we need is/are a leader(s), a human role model not adverse to risk, embracing the wild, uncertainty of existence. Where is the ironic Jesus?
Risk-aversity is not in short supply, which is why I recently read that online gambling is becoming more popular than reading as a leisure activity.
Correct me if you’re aware of a falsifying example, but as far as I know, all of Jesus’s Biblical risk-taking acts — speaking truth to power, protecting the disempowered, etc. — were in service to a principled good that justified risking a potential bad outcome. Bungee-jumping, in contrast, is risk wholly for its own sake. That doesn’t seem to fit into the Jesus narrative.
If Paul Revere had been shot by the British while trying to warn colonists of danger, he still would have been remembered as a patriot risking himself for good reason. A miscalculated bungee-jumper, on the other hand, will not be memorialized with “At least he got a final adrenaline rush” any more than someone who died in a head-on collision!
Nancy,
I don’t believe that Bungee Jumping Jesus was intended as a serious suggestion that Jesus might have enjoyed bungee jumping. Nor does it speculate that Jesus (if indeed he existed) actually did go bungee jumping. Sometimes the juxtaposition of the absurd is a statement unto itself without intentionally deriding a person or thing, be they fictional or otherwise. I guess I’m surprised by your comment based on your embrace of the humorous inanity of writing exceptional limericks.