Category: Crazy cousin

If you had asked me a year ago which biblical figure I’d be most interested in spending a few weeks with, St. John the Baptist would have been toward the bottom of my list. It’s not just that I don’t think I could stomach his preferred diet of locusts and honey, or that self-imposed isolation in a desert isn’t my idea of a good time. It’s that John’s apparent motives for his life and actions never struck me as compelling. In the words of one of my brothers, St. John often just seemed like “Jesus’ crazy cousin” — motivated, perhaps, by some kind of unrelatable, unappealing compulsion or mania. Not exactly my idea of someone I’d want to hang out with.