I recently came across a brutal review of a novel that takes religious concepts and twists them into something… unsettling. It got me thinking—why do people react so strongly when a book dares to reinterpret sacred ideas?
One scene in the book hit me particularly hard: a character with three eyes, one weeping while the other two smile as he knots a corpse like a bag. It’s gruesome, sure, but the hidden symbolism makes it even darker—it reflects the Christian Trinity, with Jesus suffering while the Father and Holy Spirit remain distant. It’s a powerful and eerie take on an old concept.
It seems like books that tackle religious themes in unconventional ways always get the harshest criticism. Do you think that’s because people fear reinterpretation, or is it just resistance to any challenge of belief?
That seems like a fairly wide metaphorical leap. Are you sure that’s the intended interpretation? Because it just sounds like body horror to me. The third eye has a lot of symbolism in several religions, and comparing a corpse to a disposable vessel isn’t particularly Christian, either.
Either way, yeah, faith is powerful and fragile. It’s a function of humanity, an intellectual crutch that gives people the strength to stand on an idea that isn’t supported by reality. It is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of the unseen. People who embrace faith for what it is will see it carry them through whatever criticism they face. People who use faith to construct delusions, whether knowingly to benefit themselves or unknowingly because it is all they have ever learned, will meet criticism with anger and resentment.