Zeal with a Side of Crazy

There are times, times when I am feeling unmotivated to do work, times when I am bored, times when I am procrastinating, I find myself randomly reading blogs of people I have never met. The words of complete strangers, that I often stumble across through however many degrees of separation out there in the blogosphere, call to me during these times. And even though I have found some amusingly well-written blogs out there (as well as some poorly written annoying blogs), I rarely find any that I feel compelled to grace with a follow-up visit. Still, it's highly entertaining to see what one can dig up on Blogger.

Aaaaanyway, one of those times when I am feeling unmotivated to do work settled around my shoulders, and as I browsed around the blogosphere I came across The Jesus Christ Fan Site. Yes, that’s right. In case you weren’t aware, he’s got his very own fan site. Who knew? Heck, for all I know, there could be multiple fan sites.

Perking up a bit at this discovery (after all who doesn’t love a good Jesus Christ Fan Site?), I anticipated the blog was going to be kind of humorous, expecting it would most likely be sincere, but intentionally cheesy and goofy (I mean, c’mon, it’s called The Jesus Christ Fan Site!). Wrong. It’s more of a disturbing, fanatical, non-humorous virtual shrine. I imagine it would be like stumbling down into someone’s basement expecting to find a ping pong table and a game of Twister, and instead discovering scary-ass pictures and candles glowing ominously in the corner. Go if you must, but I warn you that it is rather frightening (if you scroll down and read the Declaration of a Jesus Christ Fanatic, you’ll know what I mean).

Also, if scary is your thing, in the spirit of my blog-browsing through random degrees of separation, I clicked on Tamara's Blog. Again, if you go, remember that I have warned you.

Even living here in the “Bible Belt”, but still being rather insulated from religious culture as a whole, I guess I sometimes forget how crazily fanatical people can become. And certainly not only Jesus Christ Fans can be fanatical, but I haven’t as of yet come across any Buddha Fan Sites or Vishnu Fan Sites (don’t you worry, I’ll keep my eye out!) It makes me wonder what causes this seemingly insane fanaticism. It’s so foreign to me, I can’t even wrap my brain around it. Being passionate about something I can understand. Having conviction about something I can also understand. But fanatical thoughts and behaviors transcend passion and conviction and roll right on in to Crazytown.

Dictionary.com defines fanatic as:

1. a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal.

2. a person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm.

3. c. 1525 “insane person”, from L. fanaticus

4. a person motivated by irrational enthusiasm.

Is it only a certain type of personality who is susceptible to fanaticism? Or, given the right circumstances or catalyst, is no one immune to fanaticism? It makes me wonder what drives a person to irrational thought, unreasonable zeal and uncritical enthusiasm. Maybe an outrageously traumatic event in someone’s life would propel them towards the dark side, like (excuse me while I show my geek) Anakin Skywalker who became fanatical in the eradication of the Jedis after his trauma.

So there ya go. You never know what you’ll find in the depths of the blogosphere.


“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject” ~ Winston Churchill