True story: I had a friend who was what sociology of religion types call a “seeker” — someone who flits from religion to religion trying to find one that satisfies a spiritual/social/psychological/whatevever need — and who had recently converted to Catholicism after taking a tour of duty through several Asian faiths (he’s since moved on to something else, last I heard). He was also very deeply involved in martial arts, of which many have a mystical/spiritual element, and that was one of the reasons he had sampled Eastern religions (another reason being that it was — and probably remains — trendy for college students to “get into” Buddism and the like).

As seekers sometimes do, he was beginning to hybridize things and interpreting Catholicism to be compatible with various tenets of other faiths. He had a theory — and I swear I’m not making this up — that Jesus was a Ninja. It went something like this: Very little was written about a large chunk of Jesus’s life (mostly everything from his childhood to his final years), and there are lots of theories as to what he was up to during that time. There is even some serious, scholarly speculation that Jesus spent those lost years travelling around Asia, learning ancient Chinese secrets or somesuch. So the theory went that while in Asia, Jesus trained in the martial arts, and that’s why he was able to kick the moneychangers out of the temple: he went all Bruce Lee on their asses.

That’s what this cartoon made me think of:

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 7:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.