Backstreet Faith

My fascination with the other Jesus –  not the always-crying-martyr –  began with my involvement with the Students Christian Movement (SCM) while in college. While continuing to be a practicing Seventh Day Adventist, SCM gave me the opportunity to explore the many facets of Christ; the Man, the God, the Activist, the Fighter, the Comforter, the Inspirer, the Healer, the Leader, the Vulnerable, the Servant and the Lover.

My search for the Other Jesus got embodied in a sketch, The Laughing Christ. I didn’t know the source of the sketch then, but the idea of a Christ who can laugh was inspiring enough. The sketch, which has several versions today first appeared in the December 1969 issue of Playboy magazine with an opinion  “For Christ’s Sake” written by theologian Harvey Cox.

Interestingly, more than the nude center-spreads of  the magazine, the sketch by artist Fred Berger ran into controversy. The Christian world doesn’t want to unsettle the image of Jesus as a one-dimensional saint. It is easier for us to conceive him as an all accepting sacrificial lamb ready to carry our selfishness, hatred and jealousy, so that we are not responsible for our actions.

The Gospel of Judas, discovered in the 70s and translated around 2001 has a few instances  of Jesus laughing. Believed to be written by the 2nd century Gnostic followers of Jesus, it portrays Judas as the only disciple who understood the mission of Jesus.

One day he was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples, gathered together and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed. (Gospel, pp. 20-21).

If Jesus was around in the 60s, I cam imagine him gleefully turning the pages of Playboy and perhaps mulling a parable on Vietnam, bra-burning, or a letter to the editor on Cox’s article, which I presume, took a non-conventional stand of Jesus. I saw a 1961 article of his condemning Playboy, but not from a moralistic vantage point.

“Thus any theological critique of Playboy that focuses on its “lewdness” will misfire completely. Playboy and its less successful imitators are not “sex magazines” at all. They are basically anti-sexual. They dilute and dissipate authentic sexuality by reducing it to an accessory, by keeping it at a safe distance.

It is precisely because these magazines are anti-sexual that they deserve the most searching kind of theological criticism. They foster a heretical doctrine of man, one at radical variance with the biblical view. For Playboy’s man, others—especially women—are for him. They are his leisure accessories, his playthings. For the Bible, man only becomes fully man by being for the other. Moralistic criticisms of Playboy fail because its anti-moralism is one of the few places in which Playboy is right.”

I hope this first entry answers the reason for naming the blog, LaughingChrist. The blog will attempt to reflect on contemporary faith issues and also my explorations of the same. It will not be always Christ(ianity) being written about here. I also love the Laughing Buddha, and Marx too (if he is allowed to laugh). I hope to write about the many enlightened masters, from Jiddu Krishnamurthi to Chogyam Trungpa, who has shown us the path of awareness and loving kindness.