Why did I write this book? It has little to do with my education in Theology, which was a cheerless subject and typically carries the same mood wherever it goes. But it was a reason, I suppose. I learned a lot - and I wanted to make the difficult things easier for others. Education in our times is always ineffective unless it entertains. I wished to do something that had not yet been done, perhaps because it is seemingly impossible: to make theology fun. Theology is one of those things everyone engages in - for everyone thinks about God. Why not show these same people that other people have answered their questions centuries ago? Why not do it with illustrations and jokes? Why not? Life is unfunny enough as it is, and laughter is good for you. I noticed the power of comedy as a boy. It astounded me. I was 9 and my siblings and I had to stay at a friend's house while my hospitalized mother gave birth to her fifth child. The people at whose house we were staying went to our church. The father had a glass eye, the mother had big frizzy hair, the elder daughter had dark, dark eyes, the younger daughter had light blue eyes and I was secretly in love with her. There was an elder son, who had 'gone 'bad'. He had been imprisoned before, I heard. Violent temper. Prone to exploding. Well, this angry young man just so happened to stop by on the night of our sojourn in their homestead. He was, naturally, indignant about something. He slammed doors, swore, shouted, and I was terribly afraid. The girl with the blue eyes hid us in her room - but we were found and shouted at as well. Thankfully my father arrived. The shouting stopped. And a movie was put on in the living room. A comedy. A silly little film. A film of no artistic merit, no philosophic worth and no critical esteem. But it was funny. The angry young man peeped in as we sat about tentatively viewing the screen. He sat down and folded his arms and eyed the screen and then! He roared in laughter! He buckled over, slapped his thighs, threw back his head and filled the house with "Ha! Ha! Ha's!" It left me astonished - and not a little relieved. That stupid little movie had conquered a dragon! That was how I saw it. Our lives are infested with dragons and goblins and all sorts of nastiness and misery. And there's always questions gnawing at us. But big books purporting to answer our questions intimidate and repel. I'd like to answer some of the biggest questions - the sort of things people ask and get asked all the time. What I wouldn't like is to answer them in blocks of text in small print in a War and Peace-sized volume. Because no one would read it. I decided it would be best to put small snippets of text between big comical pictures with ridiculously awful jokes and who knows? Maybe theology will not seem so dusty anymore.
My name is Anthony Kottaridis. I was born in Sydney, Australia, on December 12, 1989. My father was the youngest of 7 children, born in a town in southern Greece, a country that was devastated by the Germans in WW2. My grandmother would cry every night remembering the horrors she had witnessed against the Greek people, or sub-humans as the Nazis called them.
My mother was born into a family of capricious fortune, sometimes rich and poor, with a father of Scottish descent and a mother of Jewish heritage. She was the second of three children and came to Christ at an early age.
As a boy I was thin and sickly-pale and bad at sports, but quite adept at drawing and sketching. I preferred to be indoors, as there were less insects. We were never well-off and moved house incessantly. At 15 I read Great Expectations by Dickens and I have been reading hungrily ever since. At 17 I began scribbling verses and stories. At 22 I finished my BTh and at 24 I finished an MTh. I began doing some assistant teaching, student paper marking. Dull and low-paying and depressing. What I truly like to do is write. I hope to do it for a living, for I cannot live without it.
