Jesus Neutron

Is there a more absurd way to spend a Wednesday morning than in pondering the nature of God and religion?  I pulled into my driveway yesterday afternoon and saw some piece of silliness hanging from my front door knob.  Typically coming and going through the back door, I recalled the flotsam this morning and went to investigate. 

It was an intricately die-cut door hanger sporting a crazy cartoon test tube with goony glasses and a jet pack inexplicably spewing pink bubbles all over saying, “Calling All Funologists!” I immediately licked my mental thumb and started working through the calendar wondering if one of my nephews was having some party or event I’d forgotten about.  Nope.  Then I noticed what looked like a logo tucked in the lower right corner.  This event was being put on by something called Group’s Power Lab.  There, in 10-point Comic Sans nestled below the company name and inside a Jimmy Neutron-style cartoon molecule, was the real meat of the thing: “Discovering Jesus’ Miraculous Power.”  Did our favorite Jewish carpenter load all of his magic into a pink cartoon jet pack?  I would have been less surprised to see Him as Felix the Cat, (“…Whenever He gets in a fix He reaches into His bag of tricks!”).

We turn over the giddy piece of paper thrill to find that we’re being told to “Plug into Jesus’ power at Power Lab!”  [Huh?]  Are we somehow trying to equate Jesus with science?  The invitation goes on to tell me where the adventure is, when the fun takes place, the time the excitement will begin, and who I can call if I want to join my new friends!  I fully expect to find Mr. Wizard in a cassock and collar changing a beaker of water into wine while climbing a rock wall at Gymboree. 

We graphic artists, typically being a most unwilling sidecar to the marketing world, understand the manipulation factor of good advertising.  I’m disgusted that this outfit and the sponsoring church might feel justified in disguising their indoctrination sessions as some kind of metaphysical adventure.  And it’s not only because I don’t espouse their belief system.  They’re clearly desperate to engage today’s youth and feel they can’t do it by honest means.  Hey, let’s ensnare overwrought mothers with this promise of an exciting week at camp for their little carpet monkeys.  By the time they realize it’s a religion thing, the kids will already have a cup of the Kool-aid in their sticky fists.  Perfect!  Let’s turn Jesus’ completely legitimate and beautiful message of love and compassion into a chocolaty river to be sucked down by all the little Augustus Gloops in the neighborhood.  It’s reprehensible.

All but the most hard-boiled of us acknowledge some sense of a larger/higher power.  I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I believe in Good.  If being made ‘in God’s image’ is true, then it seems we all have the ultimate power for goodness in us.  I believe that the only real evil is the hatred, malice and violence of which we are all capable.  I believe that having a God or a Devil nearby gives us permission to attribute or blame our actions on some will other than our own. 

Oddly, my beliefs along these lines are considered heresy by most Western standards of religion.  But this strange piece of chicanery hanging on my doorknob and portraying God as a wacky bubbling jet pack is perfectly okay.

Post Script:  A little extra sleuthing turned up this super-peppy audio companion piece: “Power In The Blood!” – yep, really.  “There is power-POWER, power-POWER, wonder-working power in the bloooood of the laaaamb!”  If I didn’t know better, I’d be thinking this outfit might be working for the Other Guy.