Don't Let the Title Fool You

I've always wanted a stage from which I could promote my heretical views, belittle clergy and question the meaning of existence and thought this would be it, but alas, too many years of Catholic guilt-loading for that to happen.

So what will appear here is a lot of drivel and very little having to do with theology or Communism; although, the early church had quite a lot in common with Communism. Of course, they were expecting Jesus to come back any minute and when He didn't, the novelty of sharing and sharing alike wore off pretty quickly and by then, all of Judea was in revolt and it wouldn't be long before the emperor, Vespasian, would fulfill Christ's prophecy by destroying the Temple in Jerusalem and just for the heck of it, besieging Masada--but that is another story and one that belongs to the Jews, not us.



I was thinking about this past Sunday's Gospel reading, "the Temptations of Christ". Monsignor tried to answer the obvious question (the one nobody but me was asking): if Christ was alone in the wilderness who would know about the temptations? Monsignor suggested that Jesus probably told the apostles one drunken evening when Thomas was telling one of his long boring stories about his wife's terrible cooking. "If you think that's bad, listen to this." Jesus, probably began. OK, Monsignor said nothing of the kind but that's how I imagined it. It reminded me of the time I tried to read Jim Crace's book "Quarantine" which was another imagining of the Temptations.

I heard about this book on NPR. Commentator, Bret Anthony Johnston, really, really liked this book. He said he read it every year and how the language was eloquent etc. I wrote down the title in my pda and looked for it; finding it eventually in the UNCG library. Maybe I was prepared for something far different (maybe too much build-up) but I barely got through half of it before I had to put it down. And here's the kicker, I don't remember why I found it so unreadable, but I did.

Maybe you should read it and tell me what I missed.