Lynch Mobs

One of the most fascinating aspects of this trip has been meeting Jim Lynch. My Dad has a good friend in Jim; but is also a bit of a co-worker in his artworks. Jim is a fascinating guy, a freelance artist who does both painting and sculpture. He has done large scale work for Disney World, Caesar’s Palace, and numerous Mardi Gras floats and lived in New Orleans for about 5 years doing this. Dad has helped him by photographing his paintings to make prints—which came out quite professionally good—

But Jim is world-famous for building a 62-foot statue of Jesus for a church on I-75 in Ohio. He started work in 2004 and then the statue became even more famous because lightning struck its right hand last June and it burned to the ground, also doing some damage to the church itself. A thousand questions could be raised about this and probably a thousand thousand lessons learned even by individuals who mostly have not seen the statue. But to talk to Jim about it is a thousand times better than seeing the statue, which is, after all, just a statue.

As a giant ”object lesson ” it may prove much higher than 62 feet—and much longer than I-75!!! I am just now going to read Jim’s take on it, edited by my Dad but as yet unpublished. My Dad and my sibs are all published writers but Jim isn’t too good at it—great with visual-spatial though.

The statue is only of the upper half of Jesus— the Renaissance version of Jesus with long mane, perfect for Jim and his long gray locks—and it is supposed to look like Jesus coming up from the waters of Jordan after being baptized by John; Jesus looks like he is grinning from ear to ear and his hands are raised ecstatically in true charismatic style. You can of course see it on the web and youtube has footage of Jesus on fire. (I thought we were supposed to be on fire for Jesus, not the other way around!!!)

The statue did not win the hearts and minds of the townspeople—75% thought it was an eyesore, bad for business, bad for the town’s reputation, and the money better spent on the poor. Funny, these are the same objections registered by the people of Nazareth, and Judas, about the real Jesus.

I can’t help but wonder what Flannery O’Connor would say about this—it would make a great story for her and it recalls other authors who have used similar icons, such as a novel called, “The Gospel Blimp”, which portrays a church and a community chagrined and shamed by this aerial display of bumpersticker theology.

Obviously O’Connor was Catholic and would have a different take on it than an evangelical author—but the irony of O’Connor would be to use the situation artistically to show, shall I say as the madrigal song goes, “ He hath casted down the proud.” New York Times and Salon.com have been completely predictable in the mockery of the whole situation without knowing a single person involved. The Times in particular refused to publish even a few lines of John’s letter of response. The knee-jerk ridicule regarding this and similar “stuff white people don’t like” is over-common grist for significantly desperate comedians, columnists, and all the judges civilization can harbor.

We went from Jacksonville FL back to Milledgeville GA to revisit O’Connorville and to tour her home (Andalusia) where she did 90% of her writing. So it’s hard-and anti-productive to segregate these subjects and people: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” We shall see more but I may be thinking and writing about this outside this blog more than in it.

The computer is being particularly diific……………