But all that fol-de-rol is just people appropriating Jesus to be a symbol for whatever mischief they've gotten up to. The Mad Muj use JC as a prop in their slaughter-a-thons and most of the LGBTQs are trying to resolve their mommy issues by chucking a queer Jesus in the old biddy's face. But when you get past politics, money and mummy how should we think about Jesus - as a man, not a symbol? And right up front I'll stipulate that Jesus is the Son of God and what I am not trying to do is get into a logical circle jerk that justifies His every tic and belch with the phrase "because He's God".
What I want to do is understand what made Jesus, the man - ostensibly the "Perfect Man" come to be admired by so many as the sin qua non of love, compassion, truth and justice. In other words I want to get past the obsequious fawning and grovelling that we all end up doing in front of the all powerful or (in the case of my marriage) the sexually unavailable and find out what made Him admirable as a man, using our, much lower man-based standards. So I won't let Him take any bases just because He's God but on the other hand, since He's 'perfect' He should bat 1.000 so he won't need any. Another way to put it is: what are the things that if I actually did what Jesus would do 24/7 would get a low percentile human like me admired or at least respected, which would be a big step up, lemmetellya. And I am sad to say that does not include playing with that 45,000 caliber Smiter 2000 with the classic wood grip that He hangs over the gates of Hell in His Holy Rumpus Room.
And to do this we must use the Christian Bible as our source document (yes there are other documents that reference Jesus but their provenance is iffy, particularly that one that had Jesus kicking Spartacus and Ben Hur's asses in a chariot race). That said, I think we need to look past the numerous 'everybody thought He was swell' passages to specific examples that directly address the issue of admire-ability. Because while I believe the Bible was written by God and am certainly not saying anyone was lying, let's just say that to me it reads a little like it was edited by Marketing, not Accounting.
That's why I think we need to take a 360 degree look at the Guy - think about Him and His life from all perspectives. One of the characteristics of ethical 'revealed' religions is that they have a dominant, linear narrative that heads from the dark, dim, sinful past to the sunny uplands of salvation and truth to be followed immediately by the offering and coffee. On the Tour de God there's often not much time to peer out the side windows and take in the collateral...um 'experiences' that God's entry into time and space provoked.
For example when "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the 'walls came tumblin' down'" there is no doubt that the faithful made out like bandits - OK so they would have liked to have kept the cattle and it was a pity that they had to slaughter all the purebred Corgis but still it was an awesome win. But what did the Jerichovians think about the Great and Swell Jehovah as they watched their children getting the Joshua Stroke or the Himmler Spike (don't ask)**. And they must have really been upset at the sloppy purebred puppy juggling. That is before they had their throats cut, of course. So was it "yaayhovah!" or "shit! not this again"?
But that was Big God's gig, not Man God's so technically Jesus is not eligible for a Gengis (pronounced John Kerry style: jen-jish) in the Most Creative Use of Infanticide in a Major Genocide category. Which is kind of a drag because God was the true innovator in top tier totalitarian terror technique what with his invention of urban firebombing, an environmentally responsible water soluble 'final solution' and best in class terrorization via multi-family first child murder. Not to mention his politically motivated terror famine to cement Joseph in power which anticipated by over 2000 years Stalin's Holodomor and Mao's Great Leap Forward or his achievements at Jericho and a stack of other...stacks of bodies where he made the death pits of Babi Yar and Katyn look like work of babababykyns. Suffice it to say that Jesus the man could definitely use the Big Guy's badass street cred right now. Because everyone has him pegged as a puss.
But that was Big God's gig, not Man God's so technically Jesus is not eligible for a Gengis (pronounced John Kerry style: jen-jish) in the Most Creative Use of Infanticide in a Major Genocide category. Which is kind of a drag because God was the true innovator in top tier totalitarian terror technique what with his invention of urban firebombing, an environmentally responsible water soluble 'final solution' and best in class terrorization via multi-family first child murder. Not to mention his politically motivated terror famine to cement Joseph in power which anticipated by over 2000 years Stalin's Holodomor and Mao's Great Leap Forward or his achievements at Jericho and a stack of other...stacks of bodies where he made the death pits of Babi Yar and Katyn look like work of babababykyns. Suffice it to say that Jesus the man could definitely use the Big Guy's badass street cred right now. Because everyone has him pegged as a puss.
So what is it about Jesus that makes him so special? I mean aside from the oh so typical Easter specials that make him so damn sthpethcial that I need to wipe the spit off of my laptop screen after I type the word. If you buy Hollywood, Jesus is just a First Century Fairy who doesn't do sex but instead swans around talking about love and forgiveness and how to be nice to your Mom while doing big time catering and fishing stunts on the side. Oh and holy bootlegging - he did a serious water to wine trick that today would have the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms busily crucifying Him all by themselves - no Sanhedrin or Roman Procurator needed, thankyouverymuch.
Which has got to piss Jesus off. After all we're talking about the Executive Officer in some of the most successful in percentage terms genocides ever recorded which when you take into account the primitive tools available - no poison gas chambers, machine guns or choo choos, just hand killing implements and the occasional holy demolition, is an even greater achievement than it first appears. He was yards better for Dad God than Himmler was for Hitler or Yehzhov was for Stalin and don't even talk to me about Li Peng - Mao couldn't wait to waste that incompetent - he was always saving people from certain death when he should have been killing harder. Even Pol Pot's posse was no match for the Young Exterminator, that Human Hound of...well that hates Hell.
And that's one of the strangest aspects of Jesus: the wide dichotomy in his behavior between when he was XO in the Army of God and working directly for the Big Guy and when he was out on his own doing His Ministry. So why was Jesus' Ministry so different from his "Maxistry" so to speak? Was it simply that Man God was a puss when he wasn't backed up by a genocidal army? Or had the Son of Man been infected by a bug he picked up slumming? And why did he decide to go to his gigs by foot or leaky boat rather than the heavily armed Cloud Copter 777s that usually whisked the Godhead around the battle space? Well I guess the answer was that Jesus was trying to "Go Man" for a while. Which certainly shocked the shit out of the men that he encountered, so much so that many didn't believe him. After all, if you ask this man, I would much rather 'Go God' for a while what with that sweet 45,000 caliber Smiter 2000 available for any petty disagreements along the way. I could have told Jesus that going man, particularly in the first century where you have fleas, eat with your hands and shit in hole was not an A lister's 'dream date'. But if there's one thing that Godhead is it's impervious to argument, advice or persuasion.
So one frosty spring night Jesus decamped from a heaving uterus into a (very bitter and irritated) cow's chow tray to the shock and then avaricious delight of a band of shepherds who made damn sure those wise men left Bethlehem no wiser but certainly a whole lot poorer.
Ok, so Jesus pops out of Mary and people think that's swell until they start trying to kill Him. So the in parentis locos, so to speak (and about this time they were definitely thinking it was loco for them to get in parentis with this baby) to the relief of the angrily lowing cows scooped Jesus up and high tailed it for Egypt to get away from the first century version of a D&C Abortion: Dissection and Cutting (the head off) that was the first abortion law in history that made really, really late term abortions both legal and mandatory at the same time. NARAL Pro Choice would have loved Herod the Great.
But what's so admirable about being born? I mean other than the fact that by doing so, Jesus invented Christmas which by itself is extremely cool and would have won Barack Obama another Peace Prize had the committee not been a bunch of atheist Norwegian Grinches who all really do live on the top off ice covered mountains and bitterly mutter at us happy Americans down where it's warm - which is why BHO got his first Peace Prize - they thought it would upset us - and it did!
And I'm sorry but getting chased out of your own country - a country that your Dad is God of and your relatives used to be King of even if you're new born is humiliating, not admirable - I mean who's the boss here? Jesus or some nappy headed Edomite with a really bad reputation in Family Court? Well at least Jesus got Great H in the end when his guts ate him or blew up or something and he ran out of time to kill more of his kids who really did turn out to be a bunch of pretentious little shits just like Herod claimed.
So chalk up Christmas as a 'collateral' win because Jesus really didn't do anything noteworthy, himself except tick off the cows and the King so we're still looking for our first sign of a truly admirable moment that Jesus can call his own.
In the next phase of the admirability sweepstakkes, Jesus and the "Rent-a-'rents" snuck back to Nazareth while everyone was distracted trying to get "Great's" guts back into him enough so that they could get the entire 'package' buried because boy did he smell. And then in fullness of time Jesus became a kid and once again the Bible says that he was a "particularly swell" kid or something to that effect to which I and every other parent says: "yeah, right - I'll bet his shit didn't even stink". But the real problem is that the only piece of evidence we have for Jesus' behavior as a kid (other than his perfumed poo) was the most notorious piece of truancy in world history. As I discuss in my (largely unread but at least my mom likes it) 'Why isn't Jesus a Big Fat Sinner?':
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 generally had a grand old time.
Meanwhile, Mom, Mr. ben Joseph and the little half-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 Mr. ben Joseph 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.
Okay, so there were probably mitigating factors and He was the Son of God and all but I don't think you can meet my requirement that if I did it it would make me admirable because had I done that, my dad would have kicked my ass from there to Nazareth. No sale.
This is the end of part one. Mostly because I've temporarily run out of steam to complete the outline that is beating a tattoo drum to the beat of Hava Nagila in my head. So I'm going to stop now and hit publish come what may. And what may is likely not a whole lot, given very few people read my stuff, but in fairness, I primarily write to make that man in my head stop singing that stupid Jewish song.
Which has got to piss Jesus off. After all we're talking about the Executive Officer in some of the most successful in percentage terms genocides ever recorded which when you take into account the primitive tools available - no poison gas chambers, machine guns or choo choos, just hand killing implements and the occasional holy demolition, is an even greater achievement than it first appears. He was yards better for Dad God than Himmler was for Hitler or Yehzhov was for Stalin and don't even talk to me about Li Peng - Mao couldn't wait to waste that incompetent - he was always saving people from certain death when he should have been killing harder. Even Pol Pot's posse was no match for the Young Exterminator, that Human Hound of...well that hates Hell.
And that's one of the strangest aspects of Jesus: the wide dichotomy in his behavior between when he was XO in the Army of God and working directly for the Big Guy and when he was out on his own doing His Ministry. So why was Jesus' Ministry so different from his "Maxistry" so to speak? Was it simply that Man God was a puss when he wasn't backed up by a genocidal army? Or had the Son of Man been infected by a bug he picked up slumming? And why did he decide to go to his gigs by foot or leaky boat rather than the heavily armed Cloud Copter 777s that usually whisked the Godhead around the battle space? Well I guess the answer was that Jesus was trying to "Go Man" for a while. Which certainly shocked the shit out of the men that he encountered, so much so that many didn't believe him. After all, if you ask this man, I would much rather 'Go God' for a while what with that sweet 45,000 caliber Smiter 2000 available for any petty disagreements along the way. I could have told Jesus that going man, particularly in the first century where you have fleas, eat with your hands and shit in hole was not an A lister's 'dream date'. But if there's one thing that Godhead is it's impervious to argument, advice or persuasion.
So one frosty spring night Jesus decamped from a heaving uterus into a (very bitter and irritated) cow's chow tray to the shock and then avaricious delight of a band of shepherds who made damn sure those wise men left Bethlehem no wiser but certainly a whole lot poorer.
Ok, so Jesus pops out of Mary and people think that's swell until they start trying to kill Him. So the in parentis locos, so to speak (and about this time they were definitely thinking it was loco for them to get in parentis with this baby) to the relief of the angrily lowing cows scooped Jesus up and high tailed it for Egypt to get away from the first century version of a D&C Abortion: Dissection and Cutting (the head off) that was the first abortion law in history that made really, really late term abortions both legal and mandatory at the same time. NARAL Pro Choice would have loved Herod the Great.
But what's so admirable about being born? I mean other than the fact that by doing so, Jesus invented Christmas which by itself is extremely cool and would have won Barack Obama another Peace Prize had the committee not been a bunch of atheist Norwegian Grinches who all really do live on the top off ice covered mountains and bitterly mutter at us happy Americans down where it's warm - which is why BHO got his first Peace Prize - they thought it would upset us - and it did!
And I'm sorry but getting chased out of your own country - a country that your Dad is God of and your relatives used to be King of even if you're new born is humiliating, not admirable - I mean who's the boss here? Jesus or some nappy headed Edomite with a really bad reputation in Family Court? Well at least Jesus got Great H in the end when his guts ate him or blew up or something and he ran out of time to kill more of his kids who really did turn out to be a bunch of pretentious little shits just like Herod claimed.
So chalk up Christmas as a 'collateral' win because Jesus really didn't do anything noteworthy, himself except tick off the cows and the King so we're still looking for our first sign of a truly admirable moment that Jesus can call his own.
In the next phase of the admirability sweepstakkes, Jesus and the "Rent-a-'rents" snuck back to Nazareth while everyone was distracted trying to get "Great's" guts back into him enough so that they could get the entire 'package' buried because boy did he smell. And then in fullness of time Jesus became a kid and once again the Bible says that he was a "particularly swell" kid or something to that effect to which I and every other parent says: "yeah, right - I'll bet his shit didn't even stink". But the real problem is that the only piece of evidence we have for Jesus' behavior as a kid (other than his perfumed poo) was the most notorious piece of truancy in world history. As I discuss in my (largely unread but at least my mom likes it) 'Why isn't Jesus a Big Fat Sinner?':
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 generally had a grand old time.
Meanwhile, Mom, Mr. ben Joseph and the little half-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 Mr. ben Joseph 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.
Okay, so there were probably mitigating factors and He was the Son of God and all but I don't think you can meet my requirement that if I did it it would make me admirable because had I done that, my dad would have kicked my ass from there to Nazareth. No sale.
This is the end of part one. Mostly because I've temporarily run out of steam to complete the outline that is beating a tattoo drum to the beat of Hava Nagila in my head. So I'm going to stop now and hit publish come what may. And what may is likely not a whole lot, given very few people read my stuff, but in fairness, I primarily write to make that man in my head stop singing that stupid Jewish song.
*Isn't it great fun the way that it sounds like you're puking when you say it? We don't use the puking phoneme enough in English.
**Ok, so you asked even though I told you not to. In truth, I'm sure Joshua guided as he was by the Triune God innovated both the stroke and the spike and that pissant Nazi just stole them. The spike or as the Nazis called it, the SShpike was the maneuver whereby the genocidaire of the first part took the infant in question and tossed it up in the air to be caught on the genocidaire of the second's bayonet or spear depending upon millennia. The stroke, which was typically used on larger toddlers was where the killer grasped the tyke firmly by the ankles and using a strong Tiger Woods downstroke smashed the little nipper's skull into a convenient wall. Typically you wanted a kid with a little more mass so that the cranium would explode and maximize that frisson of terror that the true genocidal artiste was going after. I urge you to read Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen and Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder to learn more about how our modern monsters updated the Master's methods while staying true to His Proud Heritage of Horror (Hey, He was the one that did the bragging, not me).
**Ok, so you asked even though I told you not to. In truth, I'm sure Joshua guided as he was by the Triune God innovated both the stroke and the spike and that pissant Nazi just stole them. The spike or as the Nazis called it, the SShpike was the maneuver whereby the genocidaire of the first part took the infant in question and tossed it up in the air to be caught on the genocidaire of the second's bayonet or spear depending upon millennia. The stroke, which was typically used on larger toddlers was where the killer grasped the tyke firmly by the ankles and using a strong Tiger Woods downstroke smashed the little nipper's skull into a convenient wall. Typically you wanted a kid with a little more mass so that the cranium would explode and maximize that frisson of terror that the true genocidal artiste was going after. I urge you to read Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen and Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder to learn more about how our modern monsters updated the Master's methods while staying true to His Proud Heritage of Horror (Hey, He was the one that did the bragging, not me).
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