"As soon as men who believe they are doing God’s will get hold of power, whether it is in a household, or a village, or in Jerusalem or in Rome itself, the devil enters into them."
Phillip Pullman's forthcoming book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, looks to ruffle some feathers by taking a swipe at organized religion by the looks of it. It is essentially a re-telling of the life of Jesus, creating a split between, Jesus and his 'evil twin,' the scoundrel who becomes the Christ. There is quite a lot of recent stuff challenging conventional theological positions on the Jesus/Christ issue--Deepak Chopra's book, The Third Jesus, took a similar path , although with an entirely different device. Enhanced Editions has released an App for the iPhone featuring the book. I read Nick Cave's last book, The Death of Bunny Munro, the same way and really got into the experience.
I love this statement on Pullman's website, laying out his view on the author's role,
"As a passionate believer in the democracy of reading, I don't think it's the task of the author of a book to tell the reader what it means.The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting between the words on the page and the thoughts in the reader's mind. So when people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one, I have to explain that I'm not going to explain.Anyway, I'm not in the message business; I'm in the “Once upon a time” business."
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