Jeff Monas

Still Being Jesus Jeff Monas

'Still Being Jesus' is an account of the historical Jesus being continually reincarnated after his death on the cross. Yet rather than returning to be worshiped, he has chosen to simply live in the periods he finds himself. The story begins with Jesus describing his first reincarnation 150-years after his death, taking the reader back to Palestine after the Jewish revolt and the destruction of The Second Temple. Once there, Jesus comes face to face with the legacy of Christ, and is forced to confront the fact that he is no longer in control of his own story. In the ensuing chapters, Jesus recounts some of the lives he has lived where significant personal experiences occurred. In Arabia during the rise of Islam, as a Cathar before the massacre at Beziers, as a young African man captured and brought to a Jamaican sugar plantation, and a coal miner growing up in Yorkshire during the rise of the industrial revolution. These different lives are told by including the compelling issues that changed humanity in these periods, as well as portraying Jesus personal views while he lived anonymously among friends and family, trying to make the best of each new life he experienced. There is no biblical theme here. This is a story about humanity, with Jesus as the central character expressing his opinion on issues like the hypocrisy of organized religion, the abhorrence of the slave trade, and the despair and bleakness brought on by the industrial revolution. Yet the underlying message is that there is always hope, through good and bad, and there is always progress toward a brighter future where people are less intolerant and more inclined to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. The thread of the story is survival, but there is also a message that we can do more than just survive. Jesus argues that we have advanced by increasing our general understanding of morality and justice, just as much as we have advanced due to our science and technology. Yet the story of humanity is obviously not over, and in fact appears to be at one of its most critical points as we move through the nuclear age and continue to deal with our modernity. Yet the answer to one central question always remains hidden to him, why is he still here?