God Is Disappointed In You

by Russell, Mark

  “But, you don’t have any sheep…” Peter replied as Jesus vanished. “Well, that was weird.”

  “Oh, I think I get it!” Simon blurted out, “It was a metaphor! I think he wants us to take his teachings to everyone in the world who, in this allegory, are his sheep.”

  “Well then, why didn’t he just say so?”

  Part Seven

  The Acts and Letters of Paul

  How to piss off friends and alienate strangers. In which many gentile converts nervously await the verdict on circumcision.

  It was easy for people to love Jesus Christ. He told great stories, he healed the sick, and chances were good that when he visited, he’d leave you with some free fish. Christ was easy. Christianity was a pain in the ass. First, there was the question of what exactly Christianity was. Was Judaism a gateway religion for Christianity? Or were Christians their own religion, completely separate from the Jews?

  Furthermore, how do you convince people that Jesus Christ was the long-awaited Messiah, sent by God to liberate Israel from foreign rule, without someone pointing out that Jesus was dead and the place was still crawling with Romans? How do you convince pagans that Jesus isn’t simply one more god they can throw onto the pile of gods they already worship?

  Luckily, a guy named Paul came along who seemed to have answers to all these questions. In fact, lots of people, many of whom were more respected than Paul, had their own versions of Christianity, but Paul was smart enough to write his down. Kings may have money and power on their side, priests have tradition. But, in the end, writers always win. Kings die and traditions change, but nobody outlives a book.

  The Book of Acts

  After Jesus Christ rose from the dead, his disciples couldn’t wait to annoy the world with the good news.

  Now, there is no better way to start a new religion than on a stomach full of waffles, so the disciples went out for breakfast.

  They realized that if they were going to spread the word of Jesus Christ throughout the world, then they had a bit of a problem. They all came from the same place and spoke the same language. So how were they supposed to preach in other countries? As they argued amongst themselves, they started mumbling in strange words.

  The other diners in the restaurant thought they were drunk on syrup or something, but they weren’t. They were speaking in tongues. God had sent The Holy Spirit, who was sort of the George Harrison of the Holy Trinity, to lend a hand. The Holy Spirit had given them all the ability to speak in foreign languages. So problem solved.

  With their new foreign language skills, the disciples broke up into small groups and began traveling the world. Like Jesus, they popularized their message by performing magic tricks along the way.

  At first, they focused on preaching to their fellow Jews. Peter and John went to Jerusalem. On their way into the city, they healed a crippled man who made his living begging by the city gate. Having use of his legs again for the first time in decades, the beggar started dancing behind them as they walked into the city. When the people of Jerusalem saw this guy who’d been crippled his whole life running and prancing around, they began to wonder if there might be something to this new religion.

  The temple priests arrested Peter and John and discussed what to do next.

  “I thought this whole Christian thing died out when Jesus was executed. Now we have to deal with this shit all over again?” one of them said, gesturing at the beggar who was still dancing outside the temple.

  “Well, those two guys definitely healed that beggar, there’s no denying it,” another one argued, “and we can’t very well punish them for giving a man his legs back, so I think we should give them a pass on this one.”

  They brought Peter and John in before the court and announced their decision.

  “Okay, we’re going to let this one go. But you’ve had your one warning cripple. Understand? Any more miracles like this one, or any more preaching about this Jesus guy, and the two of you go straight to jail. Got it?”

  But the second Peter and John got back onto the streets, they ignored the warning and went right back to telling people about Jesus Christ, giving money to the poor, and healing the sick. Peter got so good at healing lepers that he would line them up in two rows and then cure them by running down the middle, high-fiving them along the way. The disciples were winning converts left and right, so the priests decided that a little tough love was in order.

  They grabbed the next Christian they found, a guy named Stephen, and stoned him to death for blasphemy. When the crowd gathered to kill Stephen, a nice young man named Saul volunteered to hold their coats.

  “What a helpful young man!” they said as they handed Saul their wool coats, “I wish more kids today were like you.”

  “Have fun at the stoning!” Saul replied.

  When the disciples heard about Stephen’s death, they scattered in fear. Some went to Samaria, some went to Gaza, others set up shop in Damascus.

  Despite being on the run, Peter, John and the rest of the disciples continued preaching and performing miracles. The priests in Jerusalem soon realized that snuffing out this new cult was going to take a little more elbow grease than just stoning one guy, so after he returned everyone’s coats, they enlisted Saul to track down and arrest Christians when and where he could find them.

  Saul was traveling to the city of Damascus when he was blinded by an intense light. Then a loud, booming voice bellowed from the sky.

  “Saul! Saul! What the hell, man?”

  “Please,” Saul asked timidly, “who are you and why did you blind me?”

  “This is Jesus Christ! Yes, that Jesus Christ! You think you’re doing God’s work? You are killing the people I sent to prepare the world for God’s kingdom. Not the best way to get on God’s good side, Saul! Now, go into town and await further instructions. I’m very disappointed in you, Saul!”

  Saul stumbled blindly into town, where a local Christian took him and cared for him until his eyesight returned. Saul converted to Christianity and spent a couple of months learning about his new religion from Peter and James.

  Nobody matches the zeal of a new convert, or gets as much done as someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Saul had both those things going for him. After his crash course in Christianity, Saul made it his mission to convert pagan gentiles to his faith.

  He changed his name to Paul, which he felt was less Jewy.

  The rechristened Paul was released into the streets of Damascus like a pit bull, performing miracles, telling everyone about Jesus, making fun of their religions, and generally riling people up. He became so unpopular that the other Christians had to hide him in a basket and lower him over the city wall at night, just so he could get out of Damascus alive.

  Having escaped Damascus, Paul traveled to Antioch, where he told the locals that if they believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not only would Jesus forgive them of every rotten thing they’d ever done, but he would give them everlasting life, too. That seemed like a pretty good deal to the Gentiles, and Paul won many converts. But when he tried to preach in the synagogues, his fellow Jews were a little put off.

  “We already know about God,” they said dismissively. “And who is this Jesus character, anyway? What chutzpah to think that he can forgive my sins!”

  Some of the Christians who’d stayed behind in Jerusalem came out to Antioch to meet all these new Gentile Christian converts Paul had made. “Wow, so all you Gentiles are Christians, now?” they asked, impressed. The men nodded. “Really? You’ve all been circumcised and everything?”

  “What?” the men asked, smiling nervously.

  “Well, of course, you’ve got to get circumcised. You’ve got to become a Jew in order to convert to Christianity. Christianity is a Jewish religion, after all.”

  This bit of fine print caused something of a furor in the Christian community. The disciples and the other church leaders held a conference in Jerusalem to discuss whether gro
wn men had to get their foreskin lopped off in order to become Christians.

  After much wrangling and debate, they arrived at a fateful decision. They immediately sent an urgent letter to the Gentile Christians in Antioch letting them know that no, they did not have to get circumcised, but that they shouldn’t interpret this as an open door policy for all the other pagan stuff they used to do. They could not, for instance, worship idols, monkey around with prostitutes, or eat anything which had been strangled to death. But, as far as circumcision went, they could keep their little pagan dongs intact.

  With the circumcision matter settled, Paul continued on to the city of Philippi. He was on his way to a prayer meeting when he encountered a young oracle telling people their futures.

  “Hmm,” Paul said, stroking his chin, “Poor girl appears to be possessed by demons.” Paul walked up behind her and performed a quick exorcism. Satisfied in having done his good deed for the day, Paul was surprised to find himself being arrested. His exorcism had taken away the oracle’s ability to see the future, thus robbing her of her livelihood. Now she wanted to press charges.

  The cops roughed Paul up and threw him into a dingy, rat-infested cell. They would have left him there to rot, but Paul happened to mention that he was a Roman citizen. When you were running a Roman puppet state, beating up and detaining Roman citizens without a trial wasn’t a winning strategy. So the jailor and the city elders dusted Paul off, let him out of jail, and walked him to the gate, hoping that he would see this incident as a funny mistake, something they could all laugh about later.

  Paul left Philippi and traveled the world, preaching the word and angering many diverse people in exotic locales.

  In Ephesus, Paul told the crowds that as gratifying as it may be to worship a ten-breasted woman, Artemis was, nonetheless, a false god. Which would be a little like standing outside Disneyland and accusing Mickey Mouse of being a child molester, as the whole town made its living working at the Temple of Artemis, or selling little silver action figures of the goddess. There was a riot, and the whole town came out to defend Artemis, adding Ephesus to the long list of places Paul barely escaped alive.

  In Jerusalem, Paul went to the temple to pray. When the locals recognized him, they went berserk. Here was the turncoat whom they’d sent out to knock some sense into the Christians, who instead went into every synagogue in the world to convert Jews to Christianity, convincing them to turn their backs on the Law of Moses. A mob formed and dragged Paul out of the temple. They handed their coats to another nice young man and prepared to stone Paul to death, just as they had done to Stephen.

  Luckily for him, a couple of Roman soldiers noticed the commotion. They handcuffed Paul and made him sit on the curb until they could get to the bottom of things.

  “Okay, what seems to be the trouble here?” the soldiers asked.

  Everyone in the crowd started shouting over each other, demanding Paul’s death.

  Addressing the crowd, the soldier said, “Now come on, you know I can’t kill him. But would it make you feel better if I flogged him a little bit?”

  At this point, Paul once again played his trump card. “You can’t flog me,” he said, “I’m a Roman citizen! I have rights!”

  “You’re a Roman citizen?” the soldier asked, to which Paul nodded.

  “Shit. Looks like we’ve got to take this one downtown.”

  So the soldiers carted Paul off to Caesarea to await trial. The way the Roman legal system worked, if you wanted your trial to come up on the docket anytime soon, you needed to lubricate the wheels of justice with a few well-placed bribes. Paul apparently didn’t know this, or he refused to take part in this particular nuance of the Roman legal system. After a couple of years in jail, Paul got sick of waiting for his trial and appealed directly to have his case heard by the Emperor of Rome, which was his right as a Roman citizen.

  Soon after filing his appeal, as fate would have it, Paul was finally summoned before the governor for his long-awaited trial.

  “What’s he accused of?” the governor asked.

  “He worships some dead guy who he says came back to life and is now a god,” the clerk said.

  “How the hell am I supposed to investigate something like that?!” Turning to Paul, he said, “Okay, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Paul told the governor all about how he was blinded on the way to Damascus, and about how Jesus had appeared to him in a vision and gave him the power to heal people, and about all his misadventures and narrow escapes telling people about Jesus.

  “Well, Paul, that’s about as crazy as a story I’ve ever heard, but there’s no law against crazy, so I suppose you’re free to go.”

  As the governor rifled through the paperwork to sign Paul’s release, he came across Paul’s appeal to Rome. “What’s this? It says here that you’ve already petitioned to have your case heard by the Emperor. Why’d you go and do a silly thing like that? Now I can’t release you. I have to send you to Rome to stand trial.”

  “That’s okay,” Paul said, “I wanted to go to Rome, anyway. And that Nero seems like a reasonable young man. I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

  Paul was never heard from again. That is to say, he never left Rome alive. He spent the rest of his life in jail, which gave him plenty of time to write letters. Until the day he died, he would continue annoying people for Christ, if only through the mail.

  Paul’s Letter to the Romans

  Dear Romans,

  Okay, apparently I got some hecklers out there, some wise apples who feel qualified to question my teachings. I don’t suppose any of them were blinded on the way to Damascus, or had Jesus personally appear to them in a vision, but whatever.

  First off, allow me to make this clear: Christianity is for everybody.

  I realize most of you are Jews from the old country, but that doesn’t mean you get to look down on the pagan newbies. In fact, if anything, you should admire them— they have enough faith to accept Jesus Christ without knowing anything about God or the prophets. So mad props to our Roman friends.

  What’s more, just because you were born Jews, that doesn’t mean you get to moonwalk into Heaven just by following the Laws of Moses.

  The Roman Empire has laws, too. Not breaking them doesn’t make you a holy man, it just makes you someone who doesn’t like being nailed to wooden objects.

  So it is with God’s laws. Look, your soul is like a snarling dog.

  The Laws of Moses won’t tame or change your soul, they merely provide a cage to contain it. But salvation is not about staying inside a cage.

  It’s about transforming your soul so you don’t need a cage to begin with. It’s your soul which will live on in Heaven, not the cage. Do you think God wants thousands of feral dogs running loose in Heaven, chewing up the furniture? He does not. He wants your soul to grow, mature, and transform itself into something worthy of Heaven.

  On the other hand, just because your salvation does not come from following the law, that doesn’t mean you get to go buck wild on Earth, either. I know the expression goes “that when in Rome…” but I really wish you wouldn’t take that so literally. Especially when it comes to orgies. Let’s face it, Rome is full of deceitful, idol-worshiping, effeminate drunks and whores (present company excepted, of course). The less you learn from them the better.

  I’m not saying you should look down on your fellow Romans.

  The whole point of Christianity is to let sinners find forgiveness. Just that you should be the ones rubbing off on them, not the other way around. And really, it shouldn’t be that hard to win them over.

  In other religions, you have to bathe in cow blood or cripple yourself crawling to a shrine to get absolution. For us, all we have to do is admit we were wrong and believe in Jesus Christ. Our religion is much more efficient, and way easier on the knees. But we have to stop thinking of ourselves as a side gig for Jews. We’re our own religion now, open to everybody. Everyone needs
God, not just Jews.

  While it’s easy to become a Christian, living like a Christian can be tricky and difficult, like giving a turtle a massage. Especially since life is so full of fun and temptation.

  So maybe, as Christians, it’s simply better that you think of yourselves as dead people. The law, hunger, fear, lust: none of these things apply to the dead. So think of yourself as dead people and act accordingly.

  Preach the gospel as if you have no fear of being arrested, live as if you don’t need to sin, and love each other as if you have no fear of being betrayed. It’s kind of liberating being dead, isn’t it?

  My congratulations on your recent death,

  Paul

  Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians

  Dear Corinthians,

  I hear you guys are having trouble keeping it together. A lot of you are forming factions, wasting your time arguing over scriptural minutiae, and trying to one-up each other with the clever arguments. Knock it off. Trying to top each other like this is pointless. It’s just a game of intellectual gin rummy designed to show off how smart you are. It does nothing to bring you closer to God.

  Do you think God is impressed by your wisdom? Are you impressed by a cockroach who figures out how to crawl into your sock? We are all mere insects compared to God. Besides, I hate to break this to you, but we’re not exactly converting people by the power of our intellectual arguments. I’ve won more converts than the rest of you combined, and I’m a homeless guy in a wool skirt.

  Let’s be honest: what we are asking people to believe doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. All we can really do is tell them about Christ, and hope they bite. Either the stories about his miracles and coming back from the dead work for them, or they think we’re crazy. That’s it. In the end, God does not call us to be debaters or professors or philosophers. He calls upon us to be fools for Christ.