God Is Disappointed In You (24 page)

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 grown 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.

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

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.