Jesus, in this case, is 37-year-old Neil Saavedra. With his tattoos, shaved head and proclivity for dressing in black, he makes for an unlikely incarnation of the blond-haired, blue-eyed, robe-wearing Son of Man whom we’ve gotten used to seeing on coffee cups and 3-D fridge magnets. But this is KFI, the radio station that plasters “Question Everything” and “The Straight Poop” in glow-in-the-dark orange letters across its billboards.
“In the agreed setting between the listener and me, I am going to pretend to be Jesus, historically to the best of my ability, theologically to the best of my ability. I do it in a controlled environment,” Saavedra explains. “Like a magician. If you go and see a magician, you have an agreement with that magician. You say, ‘I agree to you fooling me.’ Outside of that context, then, [the magician] becomes a con man or a shyster. I am not Jesus. I don’t think I am Jesus. I don’t want his job.”
Saavedra, who has a sound-bite-friendly sense of humor, politely lets his ever-ringing phone go to voice mail and tells me, “If Jesus were on MySpace and Neil were on MySpace, Jesus would have way more friends. But in my defense, he has had 2,000 years’ more marketing.”
For those of you who have never tuned in, the premise of The Jesus Christ Show, which airs from 6 to 9 a.m. on Sundays, is, in Saavedra’s words: “What if Christ were living in Los Angeles and he had his own advice show?” It is currently KFI’s top-rated weekend program, beating out Matt Drudge’s The Drudge Report.
If you've never heard the show, you're probably thinking that this is the most blasphemous and objectionable thing you've ever heard, but actually, Saavedra does a pretty good job and there's nothing slapstick or satirical about it. I've heard the show a time or two, and although it may not be theologically perfect, it's not bad. Read the whole article.
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