Talking Jesus

I know this may be a little late for Christmas tales since Christmas was over a month ago, but this year I received a present that blows every other gift ever out of the water. It was handed to me in a pretty standard-sized and -shaped package, wrapped in pretty standard Christmas wrapping paper by a dear friend who never got a gift from me in return. I tore open the wrapping and what did my eyes fall upon but a fully poseable, talking action figure of Jesus, God's Son, in all of His sweet plasticky glory. Hallelujah!

He was zip-tied into His display box, complete with a backdrop of the streets of Nazareth. "I come to life with just the push of a button!" said the box. And so the button was pressed. "John 3:16... For God loved the world sooo much that He sent His only son to die, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have eternal life,"

I find it comical that someone somewhere at some point had the very serious (although entirely ludicrous) idea that creating a talking Jesus doll would somehow further the kingdom of God here on the earth. Someone had to make the design for the thing, someone had to program the computer chip that controls the speaking, and someone had to manually place his little velvety sandals on his little feet. My guess is that most of the people involved were laughing to themselves as they did it.

And as much as I love to laugh about the silly idea of talking Jesus, at some point, I have to face the sad commentary that talking Jesus implicitly provides about the nature of religion in Western culture. We put Jesus in a plastic cast, give Him poseable appendages so that we can control Him, boil His teachings down to four sayings on a computer chip, make Him white, give Him a rock-hard six-pack, put Him in a box, and sell Him at Wal-mart. I'm not so sure I should be laughing.

Wwll anyway, I'll let you all do the rest of the analysis on that topic. In the meantime, I need to make a quick run to Wal-Mart. I need to pick up the talking Virgin Mary action figure.