I recently came across a brutal review from a devoted Christian on goodreads of a novel called Insane Entities, he called it blasphemous and asked for it to be removed. The novel 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?
Faith is fragile. Any belief in something unprovable, based on no more than a feeling is on shaky ground in the first place. Some people base their entire personality on this thin ice. Anything that rattles their perception of self is dangerous for them in the most personal way. It shows them their weakness. Eroding someone’s cornerstone could cause psychological meltdown of their carefully crafted delusions leaving only the questions they have learned to fear the most.
I used to feel insulted by stuff like this when I was Christian, so I get it. For many, religion provides a sense of purpose and meaning, and questioning that can feel like a direct attack. The thing is, for some, logic itself becomes a threat. It shakes the foundation of what they hold most dear, and that’s uncomfortable. This review, for example, comes from a book that explores the idea that a hypothetical god-like entity must be fundamentally twisted in order to make sense in a logical framework. It’s a challenging perspective, but one that makes us rethink how we view divinity in relation to the world around us.