Like Lambs to the Slaughter?
“If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.
All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.
May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.
May you find perfection, and know it by name.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
“Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” is a book by a guy named Christopher Moore. He is brilliant and crazy, with a dash of heretic thrown in there for fun. But regardless of his disregard for biblical truth and subsequent neglect of the biblical timeline, Mr. Moore managed to make me not only re-fall in love with the idea of who Jesus (Joshua, in the book) is as a man, but he also taught me more about communion (read the dang book to find out how!*) and what it means than anyone before.
“This story is not and never was meant to challenge anyone’s faith; however, if one’s faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Before you go off and buy the book on my recommendation (which I do recommend, so you should!…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves) – because who wouldn’t want to read this book based upon that first paragraph – let me offer my thoughts. This book is COMPLETELY heretical, but COMPLETELY awesome. It challenged tons of my assumptions about Jesus as a child and as a man. What must it have been like to be Jesus’ friend?! What must it have been like to play childhood games with him and go through puberty with him?
“Nobody’s perfect. Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him….”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
One of the main themes of the book is the process Jesus goes through to learn how to be the Messiah. What must that have been like for Jesus? Did he have to learn what the title “Messiah” entailed? There is something so honest in this question and though I don’t doubt the sovereignty of God (nor do I think that God asked his friends to sin for him and then describe that sin so that he could understand sin…he does that in the book), I do appreciate that the book shows Jesus being honest about his thoughts. Reading the book made me wonder how honest I am with mine.
If I’m honest, I’m a liar.
I sometimes fake my knowledge to hide how little I know or I don’t ask questions because I don’t want others to have the upper-hand. I don’t want to appear uninformed or weak to my peers. How sad is that…?
“Faith isn’t an act of intelligence, it’s an act of imagination.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
I would never offer this book to a new Christian, that could be dangerous! But for someone with an old faith (you come up with an appropriate definition for “old faith” for yourself), “Lamb” can challenge you to analyze how much you know and how much you thought you knew about Jesus, his life, and your faith. I mean, did Jesus ever wonder what his childhood friends felt? Was he tempted as a child? Did he have a best friend? The Bible doesn’t answer these questions, but do you still wonder?
There are hundreds of questions that formed in my mind while reading this book and the fundamentalist Christian that resides in most people who were raised in a Christian home (but many of us fight the fearsome beast) reared its ugly head and said, “wait a second! don’t you go questioning ANYTHING!” But the human part of me said, “what’s wrong with asking a question!?” Round and round these two forces went. Honestly, its a war that’s not over, though the skirmishes are fewer and further between these days (mostly little rebel land disputes on the outer rims). Which side won? The side that believes there is nothing wrong with asking questions and searching for answers. I don’t think that was Moore’s intention when writing this book, but I’ll take what i can get.
“The medium obscured the message.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
*Oh all right, I will give you a teaser about why communion became more real to me…
This book made Jesus more HUMAN. That doesn’t detract one ounce of his God-ness, but Moore made the experience of the first communion and the pain of death and the fear of death and the reality of death so much more IN-YOUR-FACE REAL.
mysecondcupofcoffee 