Road to Cana
I’m reading/listening to Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (not finished yet) and am quite moved by it.
I usually chafe at Jesus movies and Bible fiction. I am deeply conditioned by my obsessive Protestant caution keeping watch for deviations from the canonical teaching.
This isn’t unique to Christians of course, when almost any beloved book (Hunger Games, Potter, LOTR) is turned into a movie the faithful subject everything in the film to enormous scrutiny. “Jealousy” is not “envy” and it has its place. We want to protect the good that we love.
Anne Rice noted in the CT interview when she publicly left the Roman Catholic church that she was very aware of the pitfalls of fictionalizing canonical material. It would probably be a morass that no one could navigate. Part of me hopes she doesn’t bother trying, another part of me does.
Jesus Fiction
I’m only tiniest bit familiar with the ancient literature that was not accepted as canonical but I can understand why such literature would arise. When there is something we love we want more of it. When there is something we care about we want to promote it usually within our own vision of what we found beautiful in it.
When a movie maker needs to turn a book into a movie there are many gaps that need filling in and the creator of this work needs to do so based upon hopefully some informed imagination, but imagination nevertheless. This means that the work is a product of their imagination, even more than “normal” life which is also, in some ways, products of our imagination at times.
So Anne Rice set about the task of writing a compelling non-canonical story about Jesus. I would not have picked up the book apart from a comment made by Skye Jethani in the Phil Vischer podcast. I’m very glad I did.
Right away I was surprised, and initially horrified that Anne Rice decided to tell the story in the first person. Of all things that both mystify and attract us about Jesus it is the question of what the interior life of the God/Man might be. Could anyone dare to try to portray such a thing and do so in a way that didn’t seem to betray one side of the other?
Other have also noted that portraying evil characters is almost always easier than good ones. This comment is often made of Aslan in the Narnia chronicles, but Aslan is of course a sort of allegorical figure. To try to enter and portray Jesus’ mind? Outrageously ambitious! But so far in my reading of the book I’ve found her treatment attractive and compelling. I’m VERY impressed. Continue reading →
Embracing Jesus-Fiction: Why Fiction Fuels Faith in a Skeptical Age
I’m reading/listening to Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (not finished yet) and am quite moved by it.
I usually chafe at Jesus movies and Bible fiction. I am deeply conditioned by my obsessive Protestant caution keeping watch for deviations from the canonical teaching.
This isn’t unique to Christians of course, when almost any beloved book (Hunger Games, Potter, LOTR) is turned into a movie the faithful subject everything in the film to enormous scrutiny. “Jealousy” is not “envy” and it has its place. We want to protect the good that we love.
Anne Rice noted in the CT interview when she publicly left the Roman Catholic church that she was very aware of the pitfalls of fictionalizing canonical material. It would probably be a morass that no one could navigate. Part of me hopes she doesn’t bother trying, another part of me does.
Jesus Fiction
I’m only tiniest bit familiar with the ancient literature that was not accepted as canonical but I can understand why such literature would arise. When there is something we love we want more of it. When there is something we care about we want to promote it usually within our own vision of what we found beautiful in it.
When a movie maker needs to turn a book into a movie there are many gaps that need filling in and the creator of this work needs to do so based upon hopefully some informed imagination, but imagination nevertheless. This means that the work is a product of their imagination, even more than “normal” life which is also, in some ways, products of our imagination at times.
So Anne Rice set about the task of writing a compelling non-canonical story about Jesus. I would not have picked up the book apart from a comment made by Skye Jethani in the Phil Vischer podcast. I’m very glad I did.
Right away I was surprised, and initially horrified that Anne Rice decided to tell the story in the first person. Of all things that both mystify and attract us about Jesus it is the question of what the interior life of the God/Man might be. Could anyone dare to try to portray such a thing and do so in a way that didn’t seem to betray one side of the other?
Other have also noted that portraying evil characters is almost always easier than good ones. This comment is often made of Aslan in the Narnia chronicles, but Aslan is of course a sort of allegorical figure. To try to enter and portray Jesus’ mind? Outrageously ambitious! But so far in my reading of the book I’ve found her treatment attractive and compelling. I’m VERY impressed. Continue reading →