03/13/2026
Why not both?
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JOKE-OGRAPHY:
In John 9:1-7, Jesus heals a man who was born blind. He does this by spitting on the ground to turn some dirt into clay, then He rubs the clay on the man's face and tells him to wash. When the man washes, he can see.
In Genesis 2:7, God takes some dirt and molds it into the first man, then breathes the breath of life into his nostrils to make man a living being. It's a beautiful marriage of humility and dignity where mankind is made of the same basic particles as the rest of creation while also being elevated over the rest of it by a touch of the Divine.
In this cartoon, the narrator, Boethius Clunderwink (a storied stage name) wonders if Jesus meant to harken back to one of His fathers in the action of using dirt to heal to blind man. In a way, Jesus was giving new life to the blind man, and as with all His signs on earth, this act was a way of ushering in a new creation, so it makes sense to refer to Genesis 2:7 as a potential parallel. On the other much more mundane hand, a popular pastime of earthly parents upon seeing their child get not-too-badly-scraped is to tell them to "rub some dirt on it." This might not be sound medical advice per se, but the idea is to encourage children get up and handle minor pain so they can continue having fun. It's possible that old St. Joseph encouraged young Jesus in the same age-old way when He was young.
Of course, this cartoon also outs Boethius Clunderwink as a potential logical and religious heretic, because the binary question he's posed falls into a logical fallacy called the False Dichotomy IN ADDITION to falling into the classic heresy of Nestorianism. You see, Jesus wasn't imitating God OR man. He was both fully imitating God AND fully imitating man.
