Kazantzakis Nikos
RATING: 9/10
When was the last time you read a book that dripped into your soul? Never have I been so transformed since the days I read the Last Temptation of Christ. Never before have I understood or been made to understand the appeal of a particular belief or religion than during the nights that I struggled through the Last Temptation. What is to be made of an atheist's love of God? An atheist then and I remain an atheist now, yet I finally understand. A book controversial enough to be banned by several countries and churches is what was necessary.
This book awakened something within me: I became the Wild Man. I know now that the God of Israel is a God of the desert. I need to go spinning down asphalt miles to meet him, windows down and one long holler. I am become the Wild Man, twitching in various poses just like Jesus' father. Just as the jets fly overhead, on their way to liberate Iran, you can find me speeding down those asphalt miles windows down and name of ADONAI one long yell.
I'm writing this review to accomplish something never before done in the history of ACX book reviews. I am going to write a book review that is genuinely a review of a book and not just an extremely long summary of it. I'm writing this review to try and pin down the madness, the sweetness within that this book has revealed. But beyond everything, consider it an atheist's love of God that brought me here -- consider it the path that began in those halcyon days I contemplated the stained glass of the Church of Our Lady down the road and stood beside the maid who guided me to the right page, winded past the Goan Catholic from my childhood, to Roger Ebert and the movie of the Last Temptation of Christ from Ebert's list of the Greatest Movies, to the Lutheran who betrayed me, to the city in which I finally lived fully independent.
But from long I sought to understand the appeal of Christianity. Through The Last Temptation of Christ I finally found a perspective that I could understand: Christ as fully human, a man in history, with all of the temptations and struggles of ordinary life. The burden and the self-doubt, the constant struggle in the achievement of greatness. Christ as an expression of liberation of the Israelites during their hour of need. Christ as fully human, Christ as someone and something I can relate to.
If you are a Christian, then this book review will deepen your faith. For the brilliance of Kazantzakis was to portray vividly (so boldly that it affected the sensibilities of several different Church authorities and national censors) Christ whom we only see as God breezily captured in perfect snapshots skipping from one miracle to another as Christ the man terrorized by God. Christ the Man, who later introduced the entire notion of God as Love truly wrestles with the God of Israel his Father. If you are not a Christian like me, this book review will provide a unique perspective that worked for me at trying to comprehend the central figure in the world's largest religion. Western civilization is Christian civilization, so by coming closer to understanding Christ perhaps we will come closer to understanding Western civilization itself.