If you haven’t encountered Coffee with Jesus on Facebook or here — Michelle Francis Donnay at the blog Quantum Theology writes about how it often brings her up short about living her faith:
My regular spiritual reading list is almost impossibly eclectic. At the top of my stack at the moment are fourth century Father of the Church John Chrysostom’s reflections on Christmas, 20th century Christian apologist C.S. Lewis’ essay The Weight of Glory, theologian Karl Rahner S.J.’s Advent homilies — and Radio Free Babylon’s edgy (and occasionally over the edge) cartoon strip, Coffee with Jesus.
In the strip, Jesus wears a suit and tie, and cradles a steaming mug of coffee as he talks to a cast of characters that could come straight from my local Starbucks: a mother in a hurry, a local pastor, a salesman between calls. And when it appears in my Facebook feed, it always jars me out of my complacency.
The cartoon strip and St. John Chrysostom have more in common than you might think. They share an unflinching perspective on the lived Christian life. …
Radio Free Babylon’s Jesus, responding to a character’s decision to donate to a canned food drive, minces no words either: “And by ‘some stuff,’ you mean some rusty cans of turnip greens and other things you were never going to eat?”