Is this blasphemous?

By Tom Quiner

I laughed out loud when I saw the cartoon above.

I thought it was brilliant in the way they depicted the potential orneriness of the Christ Child, who we Christians believe never gave His Mother a cross word .

The cartoonist surely had a twinkle in his eye as the gentle humor of his creation came alive on the page.

Some 26.5 million people “LIKED” this page on Christopher West’s Facebook page. Mr. West is a leading Catholic writer and speaker on human sexuality, with an emphasis on the teachings of Saint John Paul the Great’s “Theology of the Body.”

Mr. West said he received some 11,000 comments, some of which were critical, such as these:

“Thought it was funny a couple weeks ago & was gonna share it, but that’s kinda glorifying disobedience which suggests that Jesus was a sinner since birth when In fact he was the only perfect human to walk the earth.”

Humor is all about juxtaposing things that seemingly don’t go together. The cartoon humanizes Jesus, but it certainly doesn’t suggest Jesus “was a sinner.” The laugh comes in seeing his defiance juxtaposed against him standing on the water. Sadly, once you begin dissecting humor, the fun is gone.

Here’s another comment:

“This isn’t even funny if you knew your bible you would know it wasn’t factual and offensive.”

All I can say is, “lighten up.”

And of course, here’s the inevitable profane response from the atheist who uses comments like the one above to justify their own rejection of religion:

“I have come to realise why I am not religious. Reading some of the posts on this has proven how delusional some people are. Yes it’s your beliefs. Good for you. Don’t hate on ones that don’t believe. I don’t believe or care for religion, it starts and creates wars and kills people. Want to argue that? Shall I get the number of deaths by religions from round the world, and you can’t say they aren’t religious people cause that’s just a cop out and basically putting it under the rug, it’s a problem and has been for the past 2000 years. Even Jesus got killed on a cross. But some of the posts by very religious people reminds me of listening to my bipolar friend who thinks he’s an American spy. Gtfo over it. It’s a f**k**g joke. Your lives must be very sad.”

His life doesn’t exactly come across as a barrel full of laughs either.

True to form, by inference, he lumps Christianity into the same category as Islam, which is proactive in their desire to kill infidels at the same time Christians are proactive in their desire to forgive and love non believers.

I find one consolation in reading these comments from sour puss Christians and atheists: at least they’re not going to go out and kill people over it.