"I had a dream, which was not at all a dream."

[George Gordon, Lord Byron]

I received the following message yesterday.

I am unsubscribing from your blog, and I do so respectfully.

Seeing that you've changed your "Name" to "Lord Jesus...", I am offended. I know that you do not mean to offend me personally and that we don't hold to the same belief system, but the person of Jesus Christ is my Lord and I owe him my life. You may think that my beliefs are hogwash, and that's okay, but when my Lord is mocked I take offense to it.

I've appreciated your cordiality and friendliness to me on your blogs in the recent past, but I cannot be "friends" with someone who mocks my God.

Where to begin?...

I was saddened to receive this message, particularly since it came from someone who I like and respect, despite our differences of opinion.  I don't think I've ever called anyone's beliefs "hogwash."  And I certainly intended no disrespect.

My first reaction was to consider removing the "Lord" from my screen name to salvage this MySpace "friendship" and prevent the potential loss of more friends and subscribers.  After all, my intention was never to mock God or to offend anyone, but to encourage an illuminating dialogue, to meet interesting new people, and to indulge in my love of writing.

I occasionally receive messages from "Christians" who haven't read my name correctly and believe I am calling myself Jesus Christ instead of Crisis.  One young lady repeatedly sent messages to my inbox to remind me "You are NOT Jesus Christ."  Well, I never claimed to be either "the Lord," "Jesus" or even "Crisis."  It's just a name.  There is already a famous writer who shares my real name, so I picked Jesus Crisis as a nom de plume.  And there are plenty of people in the world with the name Jesus.  Check a Mexican phone directory.  But hell, there isn't even a word "Jesus" in the Bible.  There's no English J sound in either Greek or Hebrew.  The English word "Jesus" is a bastardization of the Hebrew name "Yeshua" and its Greek equivalent "Iesous."  And the Yeshua who was crucified wasn't even the only Yeshua in the Bible.  In the Old Testament there's a book named after another person named Yeshua.  We call it "Joshua"... another bastardization.  And I don't think "Joshua" was claiming to be "Christ" either.  (The book of Sirach, in the Roman Catholic Bible and the Protestant apocypha, was written by a third Yeshua or "Jesus")

Perhaps I should also mention that the New Testament word kurios (translated as both "Lord" and "lord" by the King James version) isn't always used to refer to the Hebrew "Lord God" (Adonai), or to the "Son of God" whose name we mispronounce Jesus.  In the Greek-speaking world, kurios usually meant "Sir" or "Mister," and was used as a term of respect or recognition of authority.  It was never a title used exclusively for the Divine Being.  Nor was "Lord" a term meaning God when it was used to refer to "noblemen" like the English Romantic poet "George Gordon, Lord Byron"... or to literature's "Little Lord Fauntleroy"... or to the Bible's very own "Lord of the Flies."

So "Lord" isn't always "God" and "Jesus" isn't always the crucified one.  I do not claim (or even desire) to be either one anyway.  My profile picture is of Lord Byron - which should make obvious which "Lord" I meant.  At least I imagined so....

I had planned to feature George Gordon, Lord Byron, in todays' blog - thus my picture and name change.  I wanted to discuss how I ("Jesus Crisis") was feeling reinvigorated by contact with certain brilliant MySpace friends (like Smith and Lady K, who my wife and I were privileged to meet in person last night).  I've felt the poetic spirit (symbolized by Byron) re-emerging within me, after over 11 years of "misfortune" had seemingly suffocated it.  Thus as a graphic illustration of the Byronic spirit re-infiltrating my consciousness, I let the name of "Lord Byron" infiltrate my screen name "Jesus Crisis" to create "Lord Jesus Byron Crisis."  It didn't have a damned thing to do with God.  And I won't deign to mock God.  If he exists, I imagine he would be above any mocking by "insignificant" humans like me.  And it's not like he wouldn't get the last laugh if he wanted it.

Would I lose sleep if an ant stuck out his tongue at me?  Would I feel mocked and offended by that little ant's action?  Of course not!  And I certainly don't believe God would be more petty than I, if a few mere humans stuck out their tongues at him.  Goodness! I wasn't even sticking out my tongue at anyone.  I was attempting to honor a great poet, some great poetic friends, and a great poetic something inside of me.  It's saddens me that anyone, especially someone who called me "friend," would be offended without even finding out what my "name" meant.  A false assumption, derived without investigation of the facts, and subsequently held tightly despite any revelation of the real explanation....

So I can't, in good conscience, apologize.  I won't remove "Lord" or "Byron" or "Jesus" or "Crisis" from my name.  And perhaps if Yeshua from Nazareth is Lord God and does find an ant appearing to stick its out tongue at him to be terribly offensive, whether or not the ant really is doing so - I can't help but imagine that he would find his followers' insistence on calling him by the made-up and/or mispronounced Anglo name "Jesus" equally offensive.

"You're promising unfailing devotion to me and saying I'm the most important thing in the world to you.  You're also making plans to live in my house forever.  Couldn't you please, at the very least, make an effort to get my name right?  I'm the Lord, after all, and I'd appreciate it."

*UPDATE: It is the morning after I wrote this blog and I have decided to remove both Jesus and Lord from my name to avoid offending anyone else.

Until I can come up with a permanent new name, I will go by the temporary moniker "Britney Crisis."  It is meant to leaven the discussion with a dose of humor, not to offend anybody.  Hopefully Ms. Spears has a sense of humor.