"Lamb" takes Jesus and his best friend, Biff, from adolescence to death. The novel ostensibly fills in the "missing years" of Jesus' life, and does so with outrageous, over-the-top experiences but with a plausibility that makes clear what might have transpired in Jesus' life to convert him from something of a brat to a man with a spectacular new vision.
Drawing on real theology from many sources, Moore creates a Christ figure that is rich, inclusive, and passionate in the real sense of the word. His is not a cheap suffering as portrayed ghoulishly in Mel Gibson's icky film. Christ is also not the perfect, infallible person of your childhood Sunday School. He is a man bound on a mission to understand if he IS the Son of God, and if so, how is that made manifest? His supernatural powers, used poorly in adolescence, are enriched and turned toward an entirely new universe of perfect love. He learns that love from a source I won't spoil here, and realizes that the tribal narrowness of his time can and must give way to universality and the embrace of passionate good over rule-bound self righteousness and ritual.
This book is bawdy, delicious in its tweaking of conformity, and extremely funny, ending with the answer to a long-standing joke. It is also passionately loving, deeply enriching, and weaves the best of all faith understanding into an amazing new insight into who was Jesus the Christ and how and where his spectacular vision of paradise on earth may have arisen.
I laughed until I cried and then cried from the sheer beauty of the story. It is passionately funny, wonderful, and the most hopeful book I've ever read.Get more detail about Lamb CD: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.
No comments:
Post a Comment