by God
12 Now, I am a healer; I can raise the dead, and make the blind see; but when it comes to a hard-core sin addiction, there are no miracles, my son, only hard work.
13 And to begin that work, thou must remove thyself this day, to a gardened refuge not far from here: The Brighter Horizons Clean Living Facility of New Canaan.
14 It is thy choice; I cannot force thee; but knowest that if thou choosest not to go, it will have the following consequences: I will not die for thee, or anyone; and humanity will go unredeemed forever.
15 But it’s thy call.”
16 And the son took strength, and entered into the program; and committed himself to it, and reached inside himself to find the strength to confront that which he had undergone throughout his childhood.
17 (Suffice it to say, that his late mother could be extremely affectionate.)
18 And when it was over, he determined to visit his father, that he might humble himself before him and beg his forgiveness.
19 But when his father saw him approach he ran to him and embraced him; and told his servants to arrange a feast by preparing the fatted calf, along with a vegetarian option.
20 Now, when the elder brother saw this he was aggrieved, and said, “Father, all these years I have served thee, never transgressing against thy commandments;
21 Yet as soon as my prodigal brother returned, only then didst thou kill the fatted calf; which thou knowest I have had my eye on for some time, being a bit of a veal buff.”
22 And the father responded, “Son, thou art always with me, and everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate, for this my youngest son was dead and is alive again; was lost, and is found.”
23 And the brother said, “Come to think of it, thou hast never killed a goat for me either; or a chicken.
24 In fact, thou hast never slaughtered a single piece of livestock for me in thy entire life.
25 Not ... once.”
26 And the father said, “Why must thou ruin the moment?”
27 And the prodigal son relapsed into debauchery before the end of that month; so he returned to New Canaan, but left three weeks early, declaring himself “ready”;
28 Whereupon he stayed clean for two weeks, then relapsed again, big-time; and as of this writing he had checked in a third time; but lo, this is not uncommon.
29 For recovery is not a destination, but a journey.
CHAPTER 14
THE SOWER
1 Behold, there went a sower out to sow.
2 And it came to pass, that as he sowed, he stepped on a rake, which struck him in the nether regions.
3 And a passerby caught it all on his smartphone; and rushed home, to scatter the images thereof amongst his many acquaintances.
4 And some of the copies were sent to outdated addresses, and yielded nothing but error messages;
5 And some were devoured by spam blockers, and withered in junk mail folders;
6 And some fell into the hands of those with lives; and they perished in the trash.
7 But a few were received by the kind of people who find video of other people being struck by rakes in the nether regions most amusing;
8 And they distributed the images thirty-, sixty-, a hundredfold; until they became viral, and spread their meme around the world.
9 (This is not a parable. Knowest thou that viral video “Sower Gets Hit in the Nether Regions”? That’s how it happened.)
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
10 A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
11 And by chance there came down the road a certain priest: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
12 And likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
13 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was: and when he saw him, he broke down and wept;
14 For he saw that the man was his colleague in law enforcement, who had been but three weeks short of retirement.
15 And from that moment this Samaritan swore a sacred oath: to track down the robbers who had done this to his partner . . . and the two heartless bastards who’d left him for dead.
16 What followed was one man’s bloody journey into the dark night of his own soul; where he would find that sometimes, the line between justice and vengeance... is drawn in blood.
17 This summer, Taylor Lautner is ONE... GOOD... SAMARITAN.
THE SHREWD MANAGER
18 There was a certain rich man who had entrusted his riches to a wealth manager; and a rumor began to spread that the manager was wasting the man’s possessions.
19 So the rich man went to the manager, and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management.”
20 And the shrewd manager looked up, rose slowly from his desk, and said, “An accounting of my management? Thou seekest ‘an accounting of my management’?
21 Look around. Look at this office. Look at this view. Look at this pen. Platinum. How’s that? How’s that for an ‘accounting of my management’?
22 Listen, buddy: I’ve been spinning gold out of thin air since before bozos like thee were suckin’ on thy Mommy’s yaboes.
23 And as a result, I have grown wealthy.
24 As a result, my boat containeth an onboard lake containing a one to ten scale model of the boat itself, including its own lake and scale model.
25 As a result, my third house is to thy house, what my first house is to my third house.
26 Verily, buddy, I operate on intellectual levels whose very existence could not be dreamed of by the likes of douche bags like unto thee.
27 Thy money is fine, OK? Now go.
28 Go.
29 Go home to thy family and keep spoon-feedin’ ’em that bullshit about what a man thou art.
30 Mazel tov, fuckface.”
31 That manager died on the lam in Mexico worth $50 billion.
CHAPTER 15
THE SAYINGS OF JESUS
1 It is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle, than two camels.
2 What profiteth a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul? Besides the whole world, I mean.
3 With God all things are possible; but with money all things are probable; and with a good accountant they’re all deductible.
4 Judge not, lest ye be judged; unless thou art a judge; in which case, judge away.
5 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet when thou ... what? So I like flowers. So what?
6 If the blind leadeth the blind, both shall fall into the ditch; which is pretty funny.
7 Man shall not live by bread alone. Yet at restaurants it is easy to forget this and end up full before the appetizer.
8 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. Then one morning he bringeth me to the shed out back and boom!, he maketh me into lamb chops.
9 Do unto others as others would do unto thee the second thou turnest thy back, the bastards.
10 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Not that I meaneth to compare Ethiopians to animals. Ethiopians have beautiful skin, actually. Why would they want to change it? I love Ethiopians. Thou knowest what, forget this whole saying.
11 Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s. It might help to put them in two piles.
12 When thou givest alms, do not let thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing. Whereas with juggling the opposite is true.
13 If a man strikes thee on one cheek, turn to him the other. Then, having shown thyself impregnable to cheek attack, beat the crap out of him.
14 And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares; and their spears into pruninghooks; and their other weapons into other types of obscure agricultural equipment; and nation shall fi
ght nation no more, but instead do dull farming stuff.
15 He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. Then, stones 2 through 1,000 are open to anybody.
16 The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the goat. And the products of these unions shall be liambs and goatpards, respectively.
17 I tell ye, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Seriously. Try it. Hold on; I would get this on tape.
18 God never shuts a door without opening a window; for he wants thy house to be drafty.
CHAPTER 16
1Once his material was written, Jesus debuted it in his first major sermon, at a popular local venue known as the Mount; and on the strength of that appearance he gained a cult following.
2 Yet more than his words, it was his deeds that won him renown; for he had already developed a reputation as a miracle worker, one who could do for the sick, possessed, and deceased what a boutique hairdresser can do for the split-ended.
3 Miracles are a tricky business; their impact on an audience is matchless in terms of oomph, yet they tend to raise certain expectations that grow ever harder to meet.
4 We collaborated on 37 miracles during Jesus’s three-plus years as a minister, a rate of one a month; a good pace, coming not so often they were taken for granted, yet not so rarely that the crowd grew restless.
5 The miracles were of four varieties; the most common were healings, of which there were 19.
6 Blindness; deaf-muteness; dropsy; leprosy; fever; paralysis; internal bleeding; we had a nice mix.
7 The healings were always received with awe; for this was a period when the proscribed medical treatment for most of these ailments was hillside abandonment.
8 By the end the clamor for Jesus’s restorative gift became so overwhelming, we were obliged to stem the number of miracle-seekers, lest the rest of his ministry grind to a halt;
9 So H. G. devised a tedious series of questions on parchment that all would-be patients were obliged to complete in duplicate before they could even schedule an appointment with him; and this proved effective.
10 Eight other miracles spoke to Jesus’s control over nature: his supernatural ability to calm a storm, or walk on water, or provide last-minute catering when a horde of followers crashed what it said specifically on the invitation was a disciple-only dinner.
11 These I liked best, for they were on a grander scale; they were spectacles of a kind I had had little occasion to produce since Exodus, and I had missed the razzle-dazzle.
12 The Feeding of the Five Thousand was especially memorable; for not only did I turn seven loaves and fishes into food for 5,000 people, but I heightened the marvel by transforming the bread from white to ciabatta, and the fish from carp to Dover sole.
13 Seven of Jesus’s miracles were exorcisms; and of these I was highly dubious.
14 He believed himself to be removing demons from the possessed; the possessed themselves later believed this to be the case;
15 But I was witness to all of them, and in my opinion of the seven “possessed” souls, three were epileptics, two were schizophrenics, and one was manic-depressive.
16 Only one—the Gerasenes demonic—was legitimately possessed, and even this must be regarded with an asterisk;
17 For the demon in question, though powerful, was off-duty, and was using the man’s soul merely as a vacation home wherein to get away from the strains of his workaday demonic career.
18 Finally, three miracles consisted of raising the dead.
19 There was the young man from Nain, whom Jesus approached in the coffin during his funeral procession, at which point he sat up and began to talk; a tremendous wonder that overjoyed his mother, and finally gave authorities the eyewitness testimony they needed to arrest his killer.
20 Next came Jairus, who begged Jesus to save his dying daughter; when they arrived at his home she was already dead, but he “awoke” her; she instantly became a devout Christian, and 35 years later was devoured by lions in the Coliseum; such is life.
21 And the last was Lazarus; the brother of Jesus’s friends Mary and Martha.
22 As thou readest in John 11, Lazarus was four days’ dead and buried in a cave; and Jesus bade the people remove the stone from the cave’s mouth; and in preparation for the resurrection he said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.”
23 These words displeased me, for they sounded almost mocking; as if to say, “Well, look who has decided to take the time out of his busy day to hear me all of a sudden: Mr. Goddypants.”
24 Then Jesus added, “I know that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe thou hast sent me.”
25 This infuriated me.
26 It was not enough that my own son addressed me condescendingly; now he must embarrass me in front of his friends?
27 And right before asking me to bring one of them back to life?
28 I tell thee, I had half a mind to leave Lazarus dead; nay, to fill his orifices with an oozy surfeit of worms and maggots, that Jesus and his companions would know I was not one to be patronized.
29 But H. G. told me it would have looked bad not to revivify him; so I did.
30 I visited Jesus later, in his temporal lobe; and reminded him that he was only on earth due to my fatherly indulgence; and that I would tolerate no insolence when it came to—
31 But then he gave me the Look, and I backed off.
CHAPTER 17
1Word of Jesus’s miracles quickly spread through Judea like wildfire; even more so after he performed the Miracle of Extinguishing the Wildfire.
2 It was now time to choose apostles to disseminate his message; we had many candidates, and we researched them thoroughly; we visited their hometowns, and spent many late nights peering deep into their souls; for we could do this without waking them up, if we were quiet.
3 We deliberated for a long time on each one, but in the end I had the last word on the matter; and as thou knowest, the men I chose proved a veritable apostolic dream team.
4 Their very names are a roster of immortals: Peter; Andrew; James; John; Philip; Bartholomew; Matthew; Thomas; James; Thaddeus; Simon the Zealot.
5 Yea, eleven amazing apostles.
6 Eleven devout, loyal, incorruptible apostles.
7 How fortunate my son was, to be surrounded by eleven men such as these.
8 And how fortunate the Early Church was, to have these eleven champions; of whom only one would not die a martyr’s death.
9 That one was John, who died naturally at 94; but he wrote The Book of Revelation, which went on to inspire thousands of believers to give their lives, so he hath nothing to hang his head about in the martyr department.
10 As for the other ten: truly greater love hath no man, than that he lay down his life for his boss.
11 Of course the greatest of all was St. Peter; the rock on whom the faith is built; its greatest missionary, its first pope, the author of much of the rest of the New Testament, and the greatest doorman of all time.
12 Peter and his brother Andrew were the first two apostles; fishermen of Galilee; Jesus saw them casting nets in the water and said, “Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men”;
13 Which I swear did not sound gay when he said it.
14 There were the two Jameses; big-hearted, Christ-loving men they were; I remember not which one died of decapitation, and which by drinking molten lead.
15 There was Philip; a Hellene who was Jesus’s link to the Greek-speaking community; he won over countless converts with his weekly “Sunday Spanakopita Sermon.”
16 There was Bartholomew; nice guy.
17 Matthew was a tax collector; I recruited him because in any small group of church leaders it is handy if one is good with numbers.
18 And of course we had Thomas; “Doubting Thomas”; for when Jesus rose from the dead, Thomas at f
irst doubted it.
19 Thomas died preaching in India in 72 A.D., after angry Brahmins arrested him, stoned him, and stabbed him to death with a lance.
20 Was it pleasant? I doubt it.
21 As for Thaddeus, he was our very special apostle; no, he was not the smartest among them, and he could be a challenge; but when he hugged you, you felt hugged.
22 And finally, Simon the Zealot, with his constant zealotry and trademark zeal.
23 They were a tremendous group, these 11 fine men; they were, if thou wilt, the best and pious-est of their generation.