Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

Alright, I read a book called Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, by Anne Rice. This post will mostly consist of my thoughts about the book and how they relate to my widening understanding of the person of Jesus Christ.
But before I get into that, I have a quick note:

If you’re Sarah, I’m sorry this one is so late. I hope I can still get some credit for it… And I promise these are my own feelings about the reading; I’m trying my hardest to block out what we talked about in class and retrace back to the ways I was actually shaped by the text.

If you’re not Sarah, you probably couldn’t care less when I posted this entry.

Anyhow.

It’s hard to read this book and not feel uncomfortable, I think. I’m just going to go ahead and say that upfront. Out of Egypt is a historical fiction piece about the way Jesus’ 7^th year on the Earth might have gone. It’s filled with adults hiding information from Jesus about the secret of his birth, surprising and unexplainable magic-trick “miracles”, and a frightened little boy struggling with his identity and getting very scared of the world around him.

Now I know this doesn’t exactly sound like the story of Jesus that you’re accustomed to in the gospels. However. It may be uncomfortable to read about a Jesus who thinks hard about the weather and makes it stop raining, but it is important for us as Christians to realize that Jesus was human. That’s the main message that I feel like Rice was trying to communicate, and there’s no point in reading this piece with any other motives in mind. I do feel like some of the scenes and characters portrayed in this story could have been pushing the boundaries of “blameless Jesus” and crossing over into “human Jesus who sins” (in the first 2 pages, Jesus kills somebody). However, this very fact, I think, gets us thinking harder about the box that we put Jesus in as a figurehead who can’t relate to our suffering, doesn’t understand our pain, and expects us to be perfect like him. The truth is that Jesus had all the same desires we did, and though he overcame them in the end, he probably still did get scared, confused about his identity, and yes – even make mistakes.

This brings me to one of the main thoughts that ran through my head as I dove into Rice’s interpretation of Jesus’ story: I think this depiction of Jesus has a tendency to make us uncomfortable because we’re always more skeptical about the side that we’re not familiar with. This is just a part of our nature, and as such it can be a gift that God gives us just as well as an obstacle to overcome.

For example, let’s take a look (yeah, once again…) at my own testimony. And this is a part of the testimony of every Christian, really… it’s just particularly important to my story. But when someone is brought to Christ, it’s through his power and intrigue that we’re drawn in. He relates to those who don’t know anything about him with that aspect of his being that we don’t understand. If we weren’t skeptical about the nature of God, there would be no reason to choose his story over others’. Now, that’s not to say that we have to be complete nonbelievers before we come to know God. But short of living directly in the Garden with him, we have no way of being able to believe in him with 100% confidence. And so when we are in that state of question, Jesus draws us in with his intrigue.

However, on the other end of the spectrum is the issue that this book is really addressing. Remember that we are always more skeptical about the side that we’re not familiar with. Now, the early church and writers of the gospels would have been a lot more familiar with the idea of Jesus as a human being… and it’s his divinity that would have been a struggle. Especially because of the way Christ’s teaching rocked their religious habits, it would be difficult for them to come to terms with Jesus’ divinity in much the same way that it’s tough for us. This is why the gospels (particularly John’s) focus so much on the identity and divinity of Jesus. His character, all things considered, is a difficult thing to understand. His divine purpose, his blameless nature, his place in the holy trinity… all of these identities transcend our full understanding. And so the early witnesses of Jesus probably would have been a skeptical bunch, and those who believed would have found it infinitely more important to make an account of his unfamiliar character so that the church could have a better understanding of it. This is why I think we don’t find a more complete narrative of Jesus’ life as a human being anywhere in the Bible.

But in our current society, of course, where stories of the triumph and passion of Jesus are told to children from birth, and his divine being is the center of countless sermons every Sunday morning, we might find it easier and easier to believe in his divinity. In fact, Jesus appears to us as God the Father: an un-seeable, all-powerful, perfect being who lives in heaven and has little to do with the Earth and our physical selves. I think this framework is only partially true, and Out of Egypt addresses exactly the remaining part of Jesus’ character that we are much less familiar with than our gospel-writing ancestors.

Of course, Jesus heals in physical ways, and he understands our struggles and confusions and temptations in the fullest extent possible. It’s important to see him like this, if not only to feel like we know him better, then to be able to live our lives in closer relationship with him.

Like I mentioned earlier, I thought Rice’s story could have been more careful about who it makes Jesus out to be – this is especially true for his miracles, which he performs without intention and which make him feel weak, and for the role models in his life, who teach him a lot about the law and the nature of God, but little about what he will need to know to fulfill the covenants he’s set to fulfill – but then it wouldn’t have been a very engaging novel. What this book does do for the Christ-following reader is give us more perspective on the world Jesus lived in. The book is very well researched and written in a very sensory voice. All aspects of ancient Jewish culture are present, from the way people talked about and lived for God, to their religious practices, to everything that led up to the appearance of and foreshadowed the need for a Messiah.

And all of these are very important lessons to apply to our faith.

So in conclusion, you don’t necessarily have to read this work of fiction in order to get an idea of the human life of Jesus and his struggles with his identity, but just remember that they are integral to living our lives in a physical and human relationship with Christ.