The Last Testament: A Memoir (28 page)

⁸
Perhaps thou hast even viewed his face appearing miraculously on French toast, or pancakes, or waffles.

⁹
(He appeareth only on breakfast foods; for lo, it is thy most important meal.)

¹⁰
And particularly likely art thou to know something of the manner by which Jesus entered the world, and the manner by which he left it.

¹¹
For the tale of his Nativity is heralded in song continuously for a month in thy home electronics stores;

¹²
And his birth in a manger is re-created on lawns up and down thy street each December to celebrate him, and to send a message to the Hirschfelds next door;

¹³
And thy very calendar is commensurate with his age; though he was actually born in 5 B.C., so it would be more accurate to say thy very calendar is commensurate with the age it would be polite to tell him “he doth not look a day older than.”

¹⁴
As for his death, the story of his miraculous resurrection, and subsequent discovery of dozens of chocolate eggs, is celebrated annually;

¹⁵
And the cross on which he spent his last agonizing hours trails only the swoosh as the most recognizable symbol in the world.

¹⁶
Yea: I venture to guess thou hast heard the story of Jesus told in dozens of ways; by apostles, and carolers, and priests, and filmmakers, and even former Chicago frontman Peter Cetera, on his 2004 Yuletide classic,
You Just Gotta Love Christmas.

¹⁷
But thou hast
never
heard the story of Jesus as told from the perspective of He Who Sent Him.

¹⁸
Because for me, the story of Jesus is not that of a prince and redeemer saving the world, but a father and son saving their relationship.

CHAPTER 2

¹
T
hou wilt need some backstory.

²
At a certain point in the Old Testament—sometime between 2 Kings and 1 Chronicles— I began noticing within me the stirrings of a vague dissatisfaction.

³
Professionally, things had never been better; my Chosen People were thriving (relatively); I was smiting like never before; and I was taking in the sizzling goodness of dozens of oxen a week.

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Yet my all-consuming focus on Creation had come at the expense of my transpersonal life.

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For millennia I had found it sufficient to be my own companion, and to spend what little downtime I had contemplating my own glory; but now I longed for someone special to contemplate my own glory with;

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A soul mate who would love me, not because I did what I did, but because I am what I am.

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Well, I must have been watching out for me, as they say; for no sooner did I recognize the urgency of my need, than I met Ruth.

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Thou mayest know Ruth from the book named after her, where she is held up as a model for kindness and loyalty.

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For it tells of how, when her Jewish husband died, she stayed with his mother Naomi, adopting her faith and her God as her own.

¹⁰
She was the very first convert to Judaism; she chose me without being Chosen, and that made me feel special.

¹¹
(True, she was a Moabite; but she was one of the good ones.)

¹²
The first time I worked up the courage to reveal myself to her in a vision, I sensed a connection between us like unto nothing I had ever felt before.

¹³
Hast thou ever met someone and felt as if thou hadst known—and been the heavenly father of—that person forever?

¹⁴
That is how I felt.

¹⁵
For once,
I
was the one who had been smitten.

¹⁶
Yet upon beholding me, Ruth paid me no more heed than necessary; she minded my words and obeyed my commands, but would gaze not upon the blinding light radiating from my Presence; as if to say, “Thou mayest be all-powerful, but thou art not all
that.
”

¹⁷
My courtship of Ruth was slow and deliberate; it took time to gain her confidence:

¹⁸
To show her that omniscience was not the same thing as being a know-it-all;

¹⁹
That omnipresence was not the same thing as stalking;

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And that I had reached a point in my existence, where I was ready to live in a monogamotheistic relationship.

²¹
But in time (and space), I am pleased to say I captured Ruth’s heart; and she consented to make me the luckiest God in the Universe by being my wife.

²²
We were married on September 12, 545 B.C.; Abraham performed the service; Moses was my best man; the music was provided by the Jericho Septet.

²³
We were going to have a registry, but Ruth said they always cause tension; for the catalog is itemized, and the items’ costs are visible, and so the guests worry themselves over how much they should spend, and how much everyone else is spending, and it all becomes more of a source of anxiety than a celebration;

²⁴
So we just said, “Please, no gifts”; which was verily the right decision; for truly, what dost thou get the couple that has everything?

²⁵
Now, let me make one thing very clear: I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe, and thou shalt
not
be hearing any intimate details of my relationship with Ruth; this is my testament, not hers, and I am fiercely protective of her privacy.

²⁶
But I have given thee all this information so as to prepare the way for the good news; the glorious news that over two billion of thee already know in thy hearts:

²⁷
Jesus Christ is my son.

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He is the second of my three kids: Zach, Jesus, and Kathy.

CHAPTER 3

¹
T
he grand adventure known as parenting is, I need hardly tell the moms and dads reading this, every bit as nerve-wracking, hair-raising, terrifying, and rewarding as administering a Macrocosm.

²
But when Ruth and I began planning a family, she was adamant on one point: that our children be raised never to consider themselves special, just because their father was God.

³
She wanted them to have as normal a childhood as nonhumanly possible, and I agreed; she wanted them to go to public school, so I created one; she wanted them to have normal playmates, so I fashioned some from dust; she wanted them to frolic on playgrounds, so I hired a contractor to build one; a nice one, with monkey bars and everything.

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Zach was our oldest; extremely intelligent, but feisty and puckish; always getting into playful scrapes with the angels.

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He liked to sneak up behind them and shout “
Boo
!”; he did this so often that Gabriel gave him the nickname, “the Holy Ghost”; H. G., for short; it stuck.

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Kathy, our youngest, was as adorable a little girl as thou canst imagine, with a cherubic smile; literally so, for it had been removed from a cherub and grafted on.

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I confess to being overindulgent when it came to her; she owned my heart; I would get her anything she asked for; yea, even if it meant striking down a human child’s pony.

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But Jesus... Jesus was a classic middle child.

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Perhaps I overlooked him; perhaps I made him fight too hard for my attention; perhaps in doting too much upon H. G. and Kathy I made him feel like the God-Man out.

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From his infancy he was exceptionally sensitive, and could never bear to see anyone suffering.

¹¹
This proved no great difficulty in heaven, where there is no suffering; except privately, amongst the righteous sadomasochists, and even for them it is not really suffering.

¹²
But whenever he would look down and behold humanity in its manifold distress and agony and weakness and sin, he would weep.

¹³
There is a verse in the New Testament, John 11:35, “Jesus wept”; it is the shortest verse in the Bible, so short it feels out of place.

¹⁴
I confess that many years later it was I who inspired John to insert it, as what thou mightest call an “inside joke” between Ruth and me.

¹⁵
For many were the evenings when I would return to her, and ask how her day was— I was careful never to burden her with my professional problems; whatever unfinished business I had, I left it on my throne—

¹⁶
And she would speak of her activities, and of the children; how Zach did this, and Kathy said that;

¹⁷
And then I would ask, “What about Jesus?” and she would sigh and say, “Jesus?

¹⁸
Jesus wept.”

¹⁹
In time I came to say it along with her; and we would laugh; or at least we did, until we heard the sound of sobbing, and we would turn to see that Jesus had heard us saying this; and that lo,

²⁰
Jesus wept.

²¹
The kid was a pussy.

CHAPTER 4

¹
A
nd Kathy grew into a warm and loving semigoddess, like unto her mother: she had a great sense of mirth, and this at a time when human women were discouraged from being mirthful, often by being sealed alive in pits.

²
But both my sons proved troublesome to me.

³
H. G. was wild and reckless; he was too smart for his own good, much less the world’s; he would brook no responsibility, but instead gallivant around my Creation enjoying the natural wonders I had created, taking advantage of his family position by borrowing the moon, or disappearing for 30 years at a stretch without even bothering to let me know that I already knew where he was.