“BE GOOD”

” “Be good.” Every time God thinks about the marvelous simplicity of that sentence, his unique and original commandment, another thought automatically takes over: that asshole of Moses. What kind of arrogant dickhead throws the one commandment he has been given down the toilet and pulls out ten invented from scratch? “[1]

At the end of June, the Einaudi promotion arrived in the bookstore, when placing it on the relevant shelf a cover leaps to my eye: a smiling and winking Instagram Jesus on a red-orange background. The title “The second coming” is a nice provocation and considering that it is next to tomes of a certain socio-political importance it makes me laugh. It intrigues me. I read the plot. I read the opening words. Irreverent.

I’ll put it back.

Three days later I take it back, I read the first five pages. I laugh. I cry. I ponder.

I’ll put it back.

A week later July arrived and it will be that a bit of the sea is ahead of me, that it will soon be my birthday, that that cover smile makes me tenderness, I decide to buy it.

God really is coming, and he is going to be pissed. Having left his son in charge, God treated himself to a well-earned break around the height of the Renaissance. A good time to go fishing. He returns in 2011 to find things on earth haven’t gone quite to plan…
The world has been rendered a human toilet: genocide; starvation; people obsessed with vacuous celebrity culture; ‘and,’ God points out, ‘there are fucking Christians everywhere. God hates Christians. There’s only one thing for it. They’re sending the kid back.[2]

It is not a book for everyone!!!

must say that at first the black and almost blasphemous humor takes off guard, but then the clouds clear and it remains a brilliant book! Able to say what many think with a disarming lightness. Well, personally I would have purged the language a little to be able to export it to more audiences, because if the plot is difficult but intelligent and could really do good, the use of profanity and blasphemy drives away a good chunk of readers.

Attention I do not mean that it is offensive, on the contrary, I agree with 90% of the things he says, but I would have said them differently!

I like how he treats free will, God loves man and his ideas, starting from the majestic monuments up to music, cinema and theater. But one day he minds that humanity has something wrong, that project on which he has used so much energy, preaches a religion in his name that does not do him justice and so he sends his son.

“Literature. That was good stuff. Nice that they had invented it. “[3]

But it doesn’t make him rich and powerful. He sends him to a remote country in the States penniless and with the ambitions of a musician!! Poor and inadequate. Like the first time.

And like the first time he has one important message for us: BE GOOD!

Be good. Nothing could be simpler and clearer. Yet humanity is lost anyway.

Niven is certainly provocative but he is right, if Jesus returned, with His message of hope and aggregation, he would be flexed and sworn. He would be insulted, laughed at, he would be told that he is a do-gooder of the f **. Because every time someone makes a gesture of kindness the rest of the world looks at him waiting for him to ask for the bill. There is nothing more hated than someone who is truly selfless. Is it because he makes us feel bad?

I am very happy to have read it and to have given it to those who I think can appreciate, laugh, cry, reflect. BE GOOD.

At the end of this reading, I had two thoughts well impressed in my mind: I am very proud of what I do to the extent that I can, and Dear Jesus, please do not give up on humanity even when it deserves it …