So why isn't Jesus a big fat sinner?

On the surface sin seems to be a rather straightforward concept.  I'm (mostly) minding my own business and my brother pops me in the head with the sharp steel corner of the Lincoln logs container causing me to bleed like a stuck pig.  Sin?  Yes, definitely.  But against whom?  After all the irritating short one hit me but my blood is pooling on Mom's carpet and it's Dad's nap that was interrupted for a totally unfair lecture on how "Mom and me aren't going to be around forever, particularly if I don't get some sleep so cut it out unless both of you want to do some real bleeding" or something to that effect.

So  the little terrorist sinned against me, Mom, Dad, and me again when he beat the rap with Dad by lying through what was left of his baby teeth.  But from a Christian perspective none of those 'sins' are the real 'sins' or by themselves 'matter' any more than if I bit Fido (well maybe that would matter, so if Fido bit me).  This is because God takes all sin personally, so the mini Mohammed Atta who slept on the other bed in my room sinned against God.  It is in effect double entry sin bookkeeping where every sin credited to me is debited to God, or vice versa, I don't know accounting.  But I do know that it is most certainly not a good thing.  Probably the most un-good thing possible.

Because God is a sin absolutist.  One sin, many sins.  Little sin, big sin.  Red sin, blue sin.  It's all sin to God and unfortunately He's never subscribed to the so called 'humanitarian revolution' (probably because he's not human).  One sin gets you a permanent place in the Auschwitz of the soul with absolutely no chance of getting sent to the 'showers' or becoming part of any 'final solution'.   Sin makes Him that mad.  Now of course there's Jesus and his entire program of redemption which is fortunate and interesting and get's a lot of airplay at Church but I want to linger a bit longer on the 'trigger' event for all the damning and redeeming and Eastering and Christmasing, etc.:  The garden variety sin.

Specifically, does God sin?  Of course not! That's taken as a given isn't it? But why doesn't God sin? Does He commit 'sin like actions' but because he's God it's not sin because frankly there's no other God to debit God's sin to and every accountant knows that if you debit and credit the same account with the same value you end up with a big fat zero?  And since accounting is reality God cannot sin.  QED?  Or is He just perfect in the human sense of the word: Never doing anything naughty, ever? But how does that fit in with slaughtering every man, woman, child, goat, cat, rat and gnat in Jericho?  Or is slaughtering Jerichoites (Jeraboamians? Germaphobians?) not naughty?  If so, why?  Hmm.  I guess I buy the accounting explanation because I always trust accountants, particularly ones from the Federal government and large corporations who don't actually seem to make anything because God is even more powerful than the Feds and like BASF "we don't directly use things God makes but lots of things God made go into the things we use".

Which seems a bit unfair.  I (justifiably IMHO) retaliate against my brother's attempted fratricide by tripping the little mujaheddin into our cement pond filled with mosquito larvae and get written up with a big fat sin.  God trips Jonah down a whale's gullet and...Bible magic!  Well maybe I am being a bit harsh because I presume God has the same limited immunity that cops have when they pop a Crip in Oaktown in the mist of a drug bust gone bad.  I mean they're doing their job, just like God.

But what about Jesus?  How did the whole sin thing work when he was on earth and 'fully man yet fully God'?  Did he keep two sets of books?  His 'man' sin books debited against God the Father, and his (empty) 'God' sin books which automatically zero out? (As an aside:  it would be interesting to understand how God managed the accounting that transferred the sins of the world to Jesus' account and parked the liabilities therein in a set of off-heaven accounts at the First National Bank of Gehenna.  The accounting fees on that transaction must have been heavenly).

The reason I ask is because from my reading of ye olde Bible, well, actually ye new Bible app, I keep coming up with acts by Jesus that if yours truly did them would land me in jail, or at least make a lot of people pretty darned mad.  Let me give you a few examples:

Offing Pigs
So Jesus is casting out a whole mess of demons and as they get kicked out they charge into a herd of Gaderine swine who promptly run into the sea and become pork chops.  In America, the EPA would rule that the felony of 'negligently' disposing of 'toxic waste' (twice, into the pigs and then the dead pigs into the sea).  Or at a minimum it would be a tort (the bad kind as opposed to the yummy ones) under the common law.  To put it bluntly had I been casting demons before swine I most definitely would get butchered by the Feds for a serious crime and my mother for failing to think of the pig farming neighbors.  But Jesus is sinless.  Why?

Teenage Rebellion
Or take Jesus as a teenager, please.  He's in downtown Jerusalem with the family doing the high holy whatnot.  Mother Mary tells him to be ready to hit the road with his brothers at oh-eight-hundred but Jesus ditches and instead stays in the big city.  And you can understand why, after all in first century Palestine Jerusalem with it's temple, wild diversity and even wilder carnage would have been the equivalent of mega-mall with multiplex, go-carts, and video arcade attached.  With all that to look forward to, what self respecting teen would want to schlep back to a one donkey village like Nazareth?  So he didn't, he took in some lectures, watched some cows get their throats slit and so on.

Meanwhile, Mom and the bros spend an entire day humping their baggage back to Galilee only to discover that Jesus is nowhere to be found.  Mary panics, because after all God, made her the Son of God's earthly mom or at least His wet nurse.  So she and the boys drop everything and run back the 20 miles or so in the middle of the night in the dark.  She arrives panting, drenched in sweat the next morning and then searches for two full days in increasing horror and panic only to find Jesus lounging at another lecture.  She asks him in the most polite but obviously exasperated way possible WTF?  And Jesus respond's the way little shits the world over have been responding to their mothers for millenia:  "Why are you looking for me, didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?"  Succeeding in implying that Mom was both stupid and a lousy mother for not anticipating the whereabouts of her little darling when it was he who had ditched her.*+#

I don't know about your family dynamics but had I done that to my Mom my Dad would have kicked my ass all the way home.  So how did that one get accounted for?  Did Jesus consider Mary to be his chattel servant and not deserving of basic respect?  Did the Son of God only apologize in private lest he provoke the sin of lese majeste? Or did He just happen to be the only 'Holy' little shit around?

The Bank Job
A third 'incident' that I would have gotten 5 to 10 for but Jesus got great PR instead was the whole money changer at the Temple kerfuffle.  As the story goes, Jesus strolls, no strides into the Temple and in his best Claude Rains imitation is shocked, shocked! to find banking going on there.  He pitches a fit and 'drives' the bankers and company out of the building.  Hmm.

Let's pretend that I'm Perry Mason and break this one down into its individual components.  Jesus strides into the Temple.  How many times before the day in question had you visited the Temple, Mr. ben Joseph? Can't remember?  So you are 33? and you did your Bar Mitzvah at 13? Does that mean that you've been coming to the Temple for 20 years, say a couple times a year?  Is that reasonable Mr. ben Joseph?  Hmm and yet Mr. ben Joseph, this time, on your 41st visit to the Temple precincts you say that you and I quote: were "shocked, shocked" to find this banking and birding activity going on?  Had the rules for making offerings to your Father changed recently?  Ah, that's right you and your Father made the rules.  About eight or nine hundred years ago if I recall.  So how were your people supposed to fulfill your commandments without recourse to banking and other facilities?  What? You say that your Dad owns the facility and neither of you authorized the Temple Priests to lease this space to businessmen?  But the Temple authorities work for you don't they?  And if you didn't want them to do something you would have told them not to do it, right?  But for 20 years you saw the commerce going on here and didn't do anything.  Did you write a letter?  Have a copy?  Smite anyone? No? Hmmm.

And now Mr. ben Joseph, let us turn to the events of that day:  How did  you get a bunch of bankers, pigeon wranglers and other assorted mugs, thugs and pugs to leave the Temple on such short notice?  It says here in a follower's statement that you 'drove' them out.  Now bankers are fairly security conscious are they not?  Typically are carrying their working capital with them, right?  Usually armed?  With trained security guards, right?  Who also have weapons?  And the Temple guards also provided security, right?  So, exactly how did a mild mannered rabbi billed as "the Prince of Peace" with a handful of disciples drive a couple score heavily armed, trained men who were prepared for violence out of the most secure building in town?  Luck?  A holy terror?  Or is the reason that you drove them out on this day was because for the first time in 20 years you had a rather large mob at your back?  One provided by one Mr. Simon Zealot of 123 Suicide lane? Do you think that rioting is an appropriate way to resolve your Temple's personnel problems?

And do you know what happened to your lessors? What happened to their property that you dumped on the floor in the midst of this 'riot' that you provoked? Their guards? Do you care? How about the little birdies? And were you or were you not the perpetrator of a notorious incident of Grand Truancy 19 years ago on this very same spot?

Suffice it to say were I Jesus' lawyer, I wouldn't let this one go to trial.

You maka da mess, we messa you up
And that raises another rather ticklish question because of course, Jesus didn't listen to me:  The trial.  The local Governor, Pontius Pilate makes a big deal of saying that he found that Jesus had done nothing wrong, tossing Jesus back to the Sanhedrin.  Yet I know a bit about the Roman Empire under the Julio Claudians and the one thing that was definitely a crucifying offense (aside from calling them Julie) was a non-citizen inciting provincial violence and disorder that threatened Roman rule.  You know, doing something like leading a radical religious sect in a riot that trashes a big chunk of the banking system in perhaps the most volatile city in the Empire.  And this isn't a crucifying offense?  Methinks Pilate doth protest too little.  Pilate was a shrewd operator (at least until he made the mistake of going back to Rome at Sejanus' request and lost his head and everything he'd looted from the Jews) - he was going to 'off' (ancient Italian mafia term for kill) Jesus one way or the other but considering all the Zealots outside was happy to pin it on the Sanhedrin who clearly seemed more desperate for a dead Messiah than him.

Tiberius Claudius Nero is not mocked
And finally the pies or sin de la resistance:  contempt of court.  During his trial, Pilate asks Jesus some straightforward questions about what he had said in the past and instead of respectfully answering them Jesus gives flip, unresponsive answers like 'you say that I am', etc.  The type of answers that would put you or me in in a holding sell until we said we were very sorry your honor and we promise never, ever to do it again.  And don't talk to me about jurisdiction.  Ok, so Jesus didn't recognize Pilate's jurisdiction, still in our world the judge as a representative of Caesar (who Jesus was all for rendering to) is owed respect, respect that Jesus clearly didn't give.

So what's up with this Jesus cat?  Why am I a sinner and he's not?  Because according to the pastorate my and every other Christian's salvation seems to rest on the bedrock (sandstone? swampland? air mattress?) of Jesus being the absolutely perfect Son of the True God who unlike us dirty scum led a totally perfect life on earth.  But if he didn't then where do we get off?  Or if he did only via accounting gimmicks then do we get to use the same accountants?  And how much does that cost because nobody told us that we'd need to hire professionals to get to heaven.  And what happens if we get audited?

As I've said before:  hmmm.

*I suppose you could argue that Mary committed the sin of negligence for not making sure the Teen Deity was 'with the program' the previous morning but this is just a subset of the standard 'little shit' riposte:  "You never cared about me, you're just mad 'cause you'll get home late" - you see, I was a little shit once too.

+You could also argue that Jesus' real Father in heaven knew where he was and approved.  But that just compounds the sin, because then Father God also had an affirmative responsibility to tell Mary what was up because while they weren't exactly 'estranged' (but boy was it strange) Mary couldn't just ring His Dad up and check in.  Besides how many times have you dodged mom via dad or vice versa, the Communicative property of childhood requires that for major things like ditching mom because dad said it was OK you need to tell mom as well.

#And another thing: some people will make a big deal that Jesus was 'learning' to be God there which is obviously not true because he was running rings around the rabbis.  It's more like Teen Deity was showing off in front of his 'elders'.  Imagine a mature NBA MVP Michael Jordan going back and being a kid and hanging out with his little league basketball coaches.  Show off much?  Which of course would be another sin.  But there's only circumstantial evidence for this one.