FAITH & ARTISTIC ATTACKS

Danish cartoonist Kurt_Westergaard, in 2003 published this cartoon depicting a Jesus that has exchanged the cross for the silky suit and leather brief case of the business world. Many, I am positive till date know nothing about it. Probably because the few that did see his satirization of commercialised Christianity, didnt bat an eye. This was some two years before Kurts other cartoons. You know about them! (Jyllands-Posten) In same 2003, celebrated American author Dan Brown wrote the The Da Vinci Code which has since gone to become a bestseller and its movie rendering, a blockbuster. None questioned his right to publish. Today Dan lives in his Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S home, a happy man, the only tag on his head being the fame and fortune the code has brought him. Making the rounds as I write, is Karen Kings (of the Harvard Divinity School) Gospel of Jesus Wife. A purported 4th C Coptic gospel papyrus discovered and transcribed. It links Christ (?) to a wife during His earthly ministry. Questions are being asked about the genuineness and the integrity of this discovered fragments of scroll prompting religious and intellectual discuss. Some sweet, some sour, some bitter and some anywhere in between. The theological seminarians, academicians, scorners and mockers of the Way will no doubt have a field day while the ecstasy and frenzy of this discovery lasts like all the others before it, but I can bet you, no true believer will as much as break a sweat about the Hollis Professor of Divinitys work. I do not mean to denigrate anyones creed and belief system neither do I intend to disallow anyone a vent for their anger (so long as they remain within the limits of civility). Stacking side by side these episodes of unprovoked artistic attacks at the very soul of one Faith with similar salvos directed on a counter perspective brings me to conclude that: 1. To the believer, issues of faith can never be explained from the position human emotion and intellect. Attempting to do so will equate to caressing ready tinder with a smoulder. 2. No amount of disdain & contempt by a mortal is sufficient enough to reduce the Deity of a believers Subject of worship. Charles Haddon Spurgeon aptly captured my position when over a century ago he uttered these words: 'Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion! Unchain it and it will defend itself Shalom! Sam. 20th September, 2012. Abuja.