Completed version of the toon first posted as a black and white on the last Sunday Funnies at Stop The ACLU. A follow up to this toon is in progress and will be posted later tomorrow (Tuesday).
I frequently receive subject suggestions for new cartoons, which are usually more appropriate to the cultural milieu than the ones I decide to embark upon. William Scott Conway from Christian Board.com and Clive Sinclair Lewis, In The Wardrobe writes 'This might be an interesting thing for you to do a cartoon on. What would Faithmouse have to say about a liberal instructing the Christian church on how to show love'? Jack Melanson of Jesus Christ Garments suggests 'I sure would like to see a cartoon about the British hierarchy of the
Roman Catholic church declaring parts of the bible to be untrue'. A great idea as well, and from the Times Online article referred to by Jack I discovered this very intriguing bit of information-
A Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word.
Now, that's a cartoon.
To William I offer this Bob Geldorf toon I drew during Live Aid. To Jack I emailed these thoughts-
That's a great idea, Jack. I missed the story, so thanks.
Catholics in Great Britain have caught the same disorder the Anglicans have long suffered from. Faith means trust in that which those not in the spirit find utterly impossible to believe, and that faith is in turn a gift from God. These faithless religious pronounce the cross moot, which is why church attendance is so dismal in Britain. As a Catholic I know that scripture is true; the difference I might have with Protestants on the validity of scripture is that some parts of the Bible may be considered teaching stories, poetry or prose, but all books are true and equally significant. Viewing scripture as revelation or as the record of revelation is comparable to the difference between considering a biography of a historical figure or a novel about a great literary one; I know Christ is real and so do you, but this is a gift and it's a product of that gift that we can afford to give the benefit of the doubt to those who seem to do a better job than we at following the example of Christ the literary figure than Christ the savior of the world. However, even the most faithless of theologians (who are only acting their faith in the first place since it springs primarily from themselves) must admit that the 'plays' the thing. When you start to pick and choose what you can accept from scripture, you destroy the spiritual significance of the timeline of Christ, which is the true 'story' of scripture. The Bible is the living record of the need for, promise of, and the first coming of Christ. When you merit as useless that which you decide you can't use, you create a secular document and faith, which I suppose is the intention. Catholics, most of us at least, are better than that.
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