by John Helfers
And now the savior’s job had to be done all over again—even as it seemed, the cynics cried, that humanity was well on its way to doing Old Testament Joe’s work for him by destroying itself. It was the first creature of its kind on the earth to have that capacity, so He wasn’t taking any chances, in keeping with His reformed New Testament ways of mercy and compassion, and had made sure by sending a team of twelve sons.
But with a dozen clones of Jesus claiming the same DNA, professed divinity took second place to the untangling of priority. It still seemed unlikely that the clone who prevailed in the highest court would be recognized as the Son of God, or even be nominated and win an election, but first things had to be decided first, by ID-ing the clone.
To comprehend how this case was presented and resolved—and recall that it was resolved—we must keep in mind the nature of the enhanced Supreme Court that sat in those decades before our New Enlightenment. It was a court that had refused to die, and so had in practice come to be ignored in favor of more accountable local and state courts, beyond which, in practice, no cases were allowed to proceed.
The Supremes became irrelevant primarily because of the often odd and one-sided decisions handed down during the White House residency of George W. Bush. These decisions still stood, but varied in their degree of application from state to state, even as the majority members of the court became hated and ridiculed pin-cushions, even within their own families, for their protection of large corporate structures, their championing of faith-based programs that violated separation of church and state, for their support of arbitrary deadline juggling by judges to confuse case filings, and their strengthening of an animal husbandry-like male control of women’s pregnancies—whose bodies belonged to the society at large when it came to childbearing, according to Justice Kennedy’s assumptions—not to mention the ways their decisions froze the country into a rigid de facto form of racial segregation by denying school districts, through a host of smaller decisions, any practical way to move toward a genuine integration of Americans, leaving that to happen locally, where and how it could. It became an obvious, much repeated complaint, that Justices Roberts and Alito had lied to the Senate during their confirmation hearings in their assurances that they would not weaken and disable lawful abortion, turn back the clock on segregation, or justify price-fixing for large manufacturers as a protection against those who would undercut them according to free market ideals. Even dissenters Souter and Ginsburg were seen as pitiable figures whose integrity was compromised by a corruption of judicial ideals, and so rendered ineffectual. Some states approved of the court, others did not, often over the same issues, producing, overall, a net independence of the states.
The members of the court lived concealed, protected lives, fearing laughter and contempt more than physical violence. The time when they might have shed their immunity to being moved by any group was long past.
It was to this exhausted, confused and cowering court, charged with decades of backward marching through one-vote victories and stalemated decisions, that the candidacy of Jesus Christ for president was brought, and the court welcomed the case—any case at all would have been welcomed; but happily this was also a case of great moment, and the justices were grateful to have such significance laid before them, given their irrelevant and vestigial state.
To see why and how the case was decided, we must keep in mind who these justices were, where they had come from, and where they saw themselves as taking an America of differing resurgent states, whose libertieswere controlled by lesser and greater hypocrisies of vice and self-interest, with restrictions weakening and falling away as one climbed higher on the pyramid of money-harvesting and the power it bought.
The most recently appointed justices were still John G. Roberts, Jr. (2005), the Chief Justice, and Samuel Alito, Jr. (2006), an Associate Justice. The other Associate Justices, John Paul Stevens (1975), Anthony Scalia (1986), Anthony M. Kennedy (1988), David Souter (1990), Clarence Thomas (1991), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993), and Stephen G. Breyer (1994), were all still sitting as of 2080, thanks to stem cell rejuvenation and replacement of all their organs, except their brains, of course, which could not be replaced without loss of memory. Only Thomas’ state was ever questioned, as it had been in 2036, when his skin had become miraculously lighter, but ever since that year his ability to raise his hand during deliberations had been accepted as sufficient if not conclusive proof of brain function, as the satirists put it in their more tolerant, even affectionate monologues and riffs.
Since no justice could be retired except under extreme circumstances of legal or medical challenge, the sitting court was seen as ‘‘continuing to sit’’ for as long as it wished, and acceptable to all despite its constant irrelevance through the absence of cases, a stability which no state wanted to alter.
‘‘First things first,’’ said Chief Justice Roberts. ‘‘Let’s establish who is here before us—before we consider . . . deeper issues.’’
It had been rumored for some time that religious experts intended to confirm divinity through a miraculous demonstration of some kind, and so establish God’s rule against the horrors of science once and for all—and make Jesus Christ, from the storied House of David, America’s permanent president, more powerful than any king, fulfilling the decades of longing for an American superhero who would bring order and justice, not from Krypton but from God Himself. His human mother, if she would so honor the country, would become the first lady, since Jesus was unlikely to marry, but she was still in hiding until the outcome of the case, and no one could explain how she would reenter human history—as the original or a clone from the tomb’s pasty residues. As the host mother of a clone, hers would also be a virgin birth, if that turned out to be the method. No one knew as the case came to trial whether the same mother of Jesus had hosted all twelve births.
‘‘Can anyone suggest,’’ Roberts continued, ‘‘how in . . . heaven we can decide this case?’’ He coughed once, then said, ‘‘Pardon me.’’ The word hell had struggled to emerge from his mouth, and I recalled the old heretical claim that both heaven and hell were in the same place, suggesting an agreement with Jesus saying that we should not search far and wide for wisdom because the ‘‘kingdom of God is within us.’’ As a Roman Catholic, this had always puzzled me, since from that notion it’s only a hop-and-skip to believing that hell is other people, made possible by their free will, a state of affairs which even the pagan gods had despaired of controlling. Humankind had made good its escape from its makers.
Thomas did not stir when Roberts asked the question. His eyes stared as if he knew all mysteries and had already made his decision about the twelve men before him, each of whom was a clone of the God-Man who had come to save humankind from itself. There was no doubt in his eyes, as if he were looking out through their dozen eyes, at the court, at himself.
‘‘I want to understand,’’ said Chief Justice Roberts, ‘‘how you can all come before us as the same person, and be represented by yourselves rather than legal counsel. Granted, you all look somewhat alike, but . . . do please explain, if you can.’’ He spoke in his secular voice, which I knew only disguised his deeper convictions.
The Twelve had all taken numbers. Jesus One got up and stepped forward from the seated eleven.
‘‘We should throw out the case for lack of credible evidence,’’ Justice Ginsburg said. ‘‘They’re merely twins of whoever is playing this game with us.’’
‘‘We should not have taken the case,’’ Justice Souter said, ‘‘but it’s too late now.’’
I saw the opposed fires in the eyes of the Chief Justice. Lacking a case in decades, his exiled court now had the
chance to mean something again, to alter politics, even reunite the country, he thought, as clearly as if the words were written on his forehead.
‘‘Yes,’’ Roberts said, ‘‘it’s much too late. So tell us, Jesus One, how is it possible for all twelve of you, political competitors all, presumably, to be defending against a suit from The League of Women Voters and the ACLU for fraud and racketeering . . . and all together? How . . . can you all be together?’’ Hell was again struggling to snake from his mouth, but he said, ‘‘How in God’s name can you all be together?’’
‘‘And why no lawyer?’’ Ginsburg demanded.
Jesus One said, ‘‘We can have no better counsel than Our Father in Heaven.’’
‘‘What?’’ Souter asked, appalled.
‘‘We are He,’’ Jesus One said. ‘‘How could it be otherwise?’’
‘‘He?’’ Ginsburg said. It was not a question.
‘‘I defend,’’ Jesus One said, ‘‘only our right, divine and secular, to run for office.’’
‘‘Indeed,’’ Souter said. ‘‘You can’t all be Jesus, of any kind. You are clones, exact twins, brothers without a doubt, but nothing more.’’
‘‘Certainly they can run,’’ Justice Scalia said as if it were a track meet, then smiled. ‘‘We cannot presume to circumscribe God’s ways, now can we?’’
I gazed at this intellectual warrior and wondered how this man who had outlived his nine children could ever smile, alive today thanks to the progress of medical therapies that he had sought to suppress.
‘‘If we decide for one of you . . .’’ Ginsburg began, ignoring Scalia.
‘‘Or for none of you,’’ Souter added.
‘‘What happens to the rest?’’ Ginsburg added.
‘‘She means if only one of you prevails,’’ Souter said unnecessarily.
Jesus One said, ‘‘All will find their place to serve.’’
‘‘The case here,’’ Ginsburg said, sighing, ‘‘is one of fraud, not of claims to divinity. I see no way, short of the miraculous, of deciding that any of you are the historical Jesus, or the son of God, or God, for that matter—beyond the fact that you have the same DNA, which I will, provisionally, admit.’’
Uneasiness quieted the justices. Long diminished in their influence and authority, a finding for this multiple resurrection of Jesus Christ, Son of God, member of the Godhead Trinity, might strike the final blow against the secular power of this Supreme Court, if not American judicial power in general, whatever its individual members believed or did not believe. As a court, their interests and fears were the same: continued survival or atrophy, and finally death. Enhanced, their bodies might persist indefinitely, but it would be a continuation of their living death, depending on how they decided this case. An excess of disagreements would hurt them all. The court’s resurrection and ascent might well be decided by this case, which God in his mercy, some of them believed, had given to them to save America—if they could stick together without seeming to do so. A court with renewed authority, whatever its biases, would have a chance to grow again, to seek new ways rather than sit stagnant and powerless. Any kind of court, as long as it was listened to and its decisions implemented, was preferable. It would at least have a chance, to progress through continued debate and internal conflict, I told myself, renewing my own hopes, so long delayed.
The irony was that in fact all the justices were squirming past their differences. In years past, Justice Thomas had lamented, usually to young clerks, that all those who had appointed him were dead, or so vastly changed that he had been forced to reexamine his loyalties. He felt sorry for himself and his previous ways, now so clear to him after more than a century and a half of life. ‘‘God, forgive me, I should have gone with the great ones of my people!’’ he cried. Even at the start of the twenty-first century, Thomas had spilled his guts to unknowing school age audiences, pitying and justifying himself as he hoped to forestall the incoming shell-fire of history, not about his love of pornography and Coca-Cola but doubts about his intellect and contempt for his loyalty to his masters.
‘‘The case before us,’’ Jesus One continued over the inner anxiety of the justices, ‘‘will be to prove the legitimacy of the candidacy of any one of us.’’
Kennedy cried out, ‘‘Are you planning a dynastic theocracy, in which sinners would be compelled not to sin!’’ It was a horrified statement of derision, not a question. As one of the five Roman Catholic justices, he valued the God-given necessity of free will, by which human beings could choose to sin or be virtuous—how else would they be capable of being praised or blamed? God-fearing men had known the worthier moral leash of divine command, and I often lamented its loss to free will. But that was another time and a god who had changed his mind and spared the rod.
‘‘Do you,’’ asked Ginsburg, navigating the singular, ‘‘propose to . . . demonstrate divinity?’’
‘‘All DNA is immortal,’’ Jesus One said. ‘‘But we do claim unity with the Father. We are, also, the Father, obviously.’’
‘‘Real contact?’’ Scalia asked as if there could be an unreal kind.
‘‘Obviously,’’ Jesus One said, ‘‘since We are also the Father.’’
‘‘And the Holy Ghost?’’ Ginsburg asked with a smile.
‘‘He’s everywhere, of course.’’
‘‘He?’’ Ginsburg asked.
‘‘Divine spirits can be anything,’’ Jesus One said. ‘‘Therefore He.’’
‘‘Secular reason,’’ Souter said, ‘‘does not recognize any of this kind of talk.’’ He sighed as if a devil were squeezing his lungs, but did not cough.
‘‘I speak with Divine Reason,’’ Jesus One said.
‘‘Seems hardly fair,’’ Souter added, clearing his throat.
‘‘And from the wellsprings of Divine Knowledge as well,’’ Jesus One added, ‘‘more than you can ever encompass.’’
Souter shook his head in dismay.
This wild form of discussion, keep in mind, was well known as the tradition of the Supreme Court’s historical informality. It was now back in force, and would run its course, even as these Twelve of Faith and God-hood passed judgment on themselves and the Court, claiming their own invulnerability to reason and evidence through a much maligned circular insistence. Another kind of court stood above the Supremes, a court of preordained decisions, proving its conclusions by knowing, enemies would say assuming, their truth from the start. Divine Reason, as always, was moving in mysterious ways. Inexorable and blind were the disapproving descriptions of the secular skeptics. Take your premise for a conclusion, with no space in between for facts or reasoning, and you can have whatever you want come out at the other end. No fairly played game can be won against you. Never visit a sausage factory. Their derision was without restraint.
Justice Thomas, holding his head up with his left hand, blinked several times, but said nothing.
‘‘Are you going to prove your divinity,’’ Souter asked, ‘‘or simply ask us to assume it? You can’t prove a conclusion by assuming it’s true.’’
‘‘We can,’’ Jesus One said, ‘‘by direct introspection of the preexisting truth wit
hin us.’’
‘‘Seems to me,’’ Scalia said, ‘‘that they don’t have to prove anything. They have a right to run, whoever they are and whatever they believe, and let the voters decide.’’
‘‘Not if they are a fraud,’’ Ginsburg said. ‘‘It is the answer to that question that lets them run or not.’’
‘‘And that is the point we must decide,’’ Justice Roberts said, ‘‘not the truth of the theology. If they believe themselves to be what they claim, they cannot be a fraud. Wrong, perhaps, but honestly so.’’
‘‘Even if they are a fraud,’’ Ginsburg quipped.
‘‘Even, if . . . by some external view, they are fraudulent,’’ Roberts said as if choking on the admission. ‘‘Unintentionally so,’’ he added.
‘‘That’s absurd!’’ Ginsburg shouted. ‘‘Ignorance of your own delusion, or of the law, is not a defense.’’
Thomas yawned, sat back, and stared, and this further sign of life sent whispers through the spectators. His fellow justices looked at him in wonder. Was he in doubt about something and about to question it? But after a moment, he seemed disinclined to contribute.
Thunder sounded outdoors. I mused about George Bernard Shaw’s challenge to God to strike him dead for his unbelief. Many of us were uneasy at this point, myself included. The spell of the discussion had taken hold. If the Bible can have it both ways, then I might just as well pray, nay demand, that the Lord tear open the sky and cure my doubts. Shaw, they claimed, had held up a watch and permitted God a few minutes to visit his punishment—but when the time had run out and Shaw declared himself still living, some were sure that his soul had not escaped an appointment with damnation. Many years later, in his late 90s, he died when a tree fell on him, some claimed.