This is going to be a post about religion, but not a religious post.  If you like these kinds of things, read on.  If not, skip to the next.  I won’t be offended, these thoughts aren’t for everyone.

(I posted originally “these thoughts aren’t for anyone”, which is probably true, but I changed it.)

I posted earlier about how “Bocchi the Rock” changed my life. Specifically, the phrase “I refuse to let it end like this”.  In that post, I mentioned that I see that phrase as a kind of mantra that I use whenever things seem at their worst.  It’s kind of a statement of acceptance, but also one of defiance.  I know how things are, but I’m not going to allow my life to be defined by how things are.

It struck me that Jesus was much the same way.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that Gotoh Hitori (Bocchi) is some kind of a Jesus figure.  She’s not.  She’s a socially anxious high schooler who sort of bumbled herself into a band.  Except, she didn’t bumble herself into a band.  She very carefully, if unwittingly, arranged the situation so that she could be successful.  She decided to wear that guitar on her back so people would talk to her, and, well, Nijika eventually did.  And she ended up in a band.  Her “I refuse to let it end this way” started much earlier than when she Bocchi’d all over the stage in Episode 8.  It happened in episode one, when she screamed internally “I’m going to be in a band or die trying” (or something like that).

If I had to ascribe any one character trait to Jesus as documented in the New Testament (and if you don’t believe he was real, treat this as a story, it’s just as effective), it would be “unconcerned”.  But that’s not a sufficient word.  There is a story about him being on a boat being tossed around in a storm, and he was below decks sleeping.  Everyone else was running around afraid they were going to die, but he wasn’t.  He was asleep.  Then, hearing how scared the people above were, he woke up, went upstairs, and calmed the storm by rebuking it.

I wonder if he said something to the effect of “I refuse to let it end like this”, and the weather listened!

This even seems to have been the case in his crucifixion.  He was scared, but he also knew that by allowing it to happen, he would fulfill his purpose in life, so he allowed it to happen.  He said himself that he could have called the fires of heaven down and stopped it, but he didn’t.  He said “I refuse to let it end like this”, but by allowing it to happen.  That’s such a bass-ackward way of seeing things, isn’t it?  But there’s a lesson here, even for us.  Even when you’re in a situation that’s highly constrained, like, for example, prison, or worse, there’s always something you can do or say or even think that’s in the same spirit of “I refuse to let it end like this”.  It’s not obvious or easy, and sometimes involves radical acceptance, but the option is there.

It’s always there.

Bocchi rebuked the storm – and literally, because there was a typhoon raging outside, and, as Nijika said, when things seemed to be at their worst she pulled through for them.  She refused to let it end like this.  And, in some ways, that’s the most Christian value there is.

Because that seems to be God’s entire way of interacting with the world.

Watching what we do, and when things are at their worst, saying “I refuse to let it end like this”, and, well… not.  Not letting it end like this.

And the mangaka probably has no idea what she wrote, there.