If Jesus came back to Earth now, I don’t think he’d be a prophet. 
I think he’d be a blogger.
He’d set himself up with the latest ipad in today’s churches of consumption – shopping malls – and would live-blog his experiences. Of course he’d been dressed in the very latest cool-garb a la the late, great Steve Jobs. No shirt and tie for the Lord. He’d want to present as one of the people, the ultimate creative. He would be well-versed in the ‘brand of I’.
His brand would be of course – I am the one.
It would be bigger than Nike’s ‘Just do it’.
He would, like Jesus of old, hang out with all the dregs of society. He wouldn’t cast aside chavs, or football louts and even City bankers would be welcomed into the blogging audience. Restricted by local licensing laws, brought about by general loutish behaviour on the high street in the wee hours of Saturday mornings, he wouldn’t indulge in turning water into wine.
Instead he’d magically turn Maccas into food and Starbucks into coffee – to feed the masses.
All that ate with him would not suffer indigestion, or gain three stone and die from the complications of a heart bypass operation three years later. It would be as if they’d dined on yoghurt and green tea.
But what would he blog?
Now this I’m a little hazy on….of course there would be pithy posts on how he healed the afflicted, and cured their addiction to Call of Duty Modern Warfare. How he made the crippled, walk (by cancelling their bus pass!) How He would make the blind see – past the dubious ‘talent’ displayed on Britain’s Got Talent, and how even could bring the dead back to life.
Or, in other words, he canned Eastenders. People actually got up from their sofas and turned the tele off.
And. Went. Outside.
An excellent communicator he’d be a dab hand at Stumbleupon, Facebook blog-post scheduling, and even automatic tweeting – without it looking obviously automated!
It wouldn’t take long for Jesus the blogger to build up followers on Twitter and Likes on Facebook. In fact I reckon he’d even beat that Scottish schoolgirl food blogger, who built up over 2 million pageviews just blogging about her school dinners. For Jesus the blogger, it would probably take less than four days to have his social media community established.
His Linkedin connection would be the most sought after Linkedin connection of all time!
Then of course his many followers would set about sharing his words, retweeting his messages in 140 characters and generally making a big buzz. His blogposts would glean thousands of comments, so many in fact that his followers would have to start answering on his behalf.
The Pope and his friends in Rome would be the first to start answering back on a pp/Jesus the blogger, proxy. Before long the evangelical followers in the southern states of the US and the messianic missionary followers of Africa would get into the act also. After a while commenters wouldn’t know if they were interracting with Jesus the blogger, or one of his accolytes. Some wouldn’t care, just as long as their comment was seen on the pre-eminent blog of all.
The one blog to rule them all.
The blog’s content would change too, inevitably hijacked by various companies proferring competitions and advertorial mentions. No one had time for the old stories any more. The old stories that had touched their hearts, and made them laugh, and cry. Had inspired them to live, not die. Now, they were more in favour of the SEO Black Hat, than the old hat.
No one can say for sure when Jesus the blogger slipped away.
When the celebrity buzz took over like a celestial wagging the dog. The day, authenticity died.
All anyone noticed was the blog book deal and the blog YouTube channel, and the blog merchandising. The real message dissipated like snow on sodden ground.
All that remained was the commercial machine, its grinding wheels of falseness and the cult of celebrity.
Image: Flickr CC
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariareyesmcdavis/
