We all see many things when we drive. From traveling to our jobs, to school, or just running errands, one can never predict what is around the next corner.
Of the many things I did not expect to encounter on one of my drives through downtown Los Angeles was having a Flannery O’Connor moment. It came in the form of a billboard. No graphics. Just bold type in white against a blackish background. In those bold letters, it read “Jesus is NOT God.”
The billboard directed those intrigued by this proclamation to find out for themselves by
checking out the website.
When I got home, I decided to check it out, thinking it might be some kind of marketing hack or your average atheistic evangelical “outreach.” It proved to be another one of those native-born “religious” movements that claim they have found all the answers to the mysteries of the world that the Catholic Church has been hiding from us for all these centuries.
I tried navigating the organization’s website so you wouldn’t have to. It did not go well. My faith was never in danger, but my sanity took a beating. There were dozens of videos on everything from something called the “luni” calendar and why there really is no such thing as movement in the universe. Besides denying the Trinity, this offshoot of small “c” Christianity had so many citations of ancient writings as well as scripture that the software inside my brain switched to “safety mode.”
After a reboot, I took another stab at the website to see just what they were all about. It was another act of futility. The only two things I came away with were that this group believed the Earth was flat. I do not say that to be snarky. They really believe the Earth is flat as a pancake — and they can prove it. But be forewarned, their “proof” will make your head hurt.
The second tenet I understood was that this group believes a reliance on science has corrupted the Catholic Church. Ironic indeed, as so much of the secular world insists the Church has been “anti-science” since Galileo.
I have since seen that billboard in other parts of Los Angeles with similar slogans, and the last time I did, it hit me: If Flannery O’Connor were around, she would have had a field day with these billboards. They made me think of her profound, enigmatic, and thoroughly captivating first novel, “Wise Blood.”
The billboard questioning the divinity of Christ came through like a rough draft of “Wise Blood” and that book’s tragic literary creation, Hazel Motes, a wandering and wondering soul looking for meaning in all the wrong places, who eventually moulds his growing disbelief into his own religious movement, the Church Without Christ. Things did not go so smoothly for Hazel, as I suspect they will not for this new rootless branch of theology.
Like the billboard campaign, the 1950s-era novel can be a bit of a challenge. But unlike the billboard’s premise, O’Connor’s life was nothing without the divinity of Christ, and her stories were peopled by characters navigating the very world the billboard proposes, which leads to tragedy and absurdity.
O’Connor’s worlds are never flat, and they are always in motion, whether in her epic “Wise Blood” or in any of her equally surprising and challenging short stories, especially “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” And the grandmother in that story finds out the hard way what a life without Christ is really like.
O’Connor looked like a mild-mannered librarian and lived a quiet life made all the more silent by chronic illness. But she was sustained by her deep and abiding faith in the Church and most profoundly in the Real Presence. The result is rich, complex, and ever-relevant Catholic literature.
So, in a way, I should be thankful for those garish billboards. My curiosity was sated by a rudimentary glance at the billboard’s website, but its very presence sent me thinking about one of the most important Catholic authors of the 20th century.
I think I will dust off my old paperback of “Wise Blood” and visit Hazel Motes one more time.
