“We regret to inform you that Jesus is imaginary. Well, this one is, anyway.”
Matt is sitting in a Portland cafe eating lunch with his very nice friend Jesus when a guy named Pete comes in and socks Jesus in the face. Matt is horrified, and doesn’t believe Pete that it’s okay because this Jesus is imaginary. He’s not the real thing, Pete explains, merely a Jesus created in Matt’s image. Matt scrambles across time, space, and Portland, Oregon, (with Pete the Apostle and a talking donkey named Daisy) trying to catch this Jesus and find out if Pete’s accusation is true. Along the way Matt discovers many other Imaginary Jesuses–Magic 8-Ball Jesus, Health Nut Jesus, and Perpetually Angry Jesus, just to name a few–bent on convincing Matt that they are real, but none can answer the one question Matt has for the Real Jesus.
Imaginary Jesus is a not-quite-true story by Matt Mikalatos. It pokes a tongue-in-cheek look at the way we envision Jesus. We’ve all decided, one way or another, what we believe about him, what kind of a box we put him into, what lens we use to filter all incoming information. We like our Jesus tame and understandable, but Matt Mikalatos writes a hysterically funny adventure that demonstrates, in the end, who Jesus is.
Download the first chapter as a .pdf file here.
This book was provided to me and the other members of the Christian Science Fiction Fantasy blog tour for review by Tyndale Publishers, but the opinions are entirely my own. Because I’ve set this to post during my vacation, the following list of participants in the tour may not be entirely accurate:
Brandon Barr, Keanan Brand, Gina Burgess, Beckie Burnham, Melissa Carswell, Karri Compton, Amy Cruson, CSFF Blog Tour, Stacey Dale, D. G. D. Davidson, Jeff Draper, Emmalyn Edwards, April Erwin, Sarah Flanagan, Andrea Graham, Tori Greene, Ryan Heart, Joleen Howell, Becky Jesse, Cris Jesse, Jason Joyner, Julie, Carol Keen, Krystine Kercher, Dawn King, Leighton, Rebecca LuElla Miller, New Authors Fellowship, John W. Otte, Crista Richey, Chawna Schroeder, Andrea Schultz, James Somers, Rachel Starr Thomson, Steve Trower, Fred Warren, Dona Watson, Phyllis Wheeler, KM Wilsher
Valerie, thanks so much for posting this! I really appreciate it.
Matt