What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (13 page)

Ironically, this faith-based subculture found an ally in the ultimate materialist cause—capitalism. While it sounds strange today, big business has traditionally been a friend of big government as far back as the Dutch East India Company. Uncle Sam has always been corporate America’s biggest customer—ask any canal builder, investment banker, railroad baron, or military contractor. But as modern government turned its concern to workers and consumers with laws governing monopolies, fair wages, safe products, and clean air, big business became annoyed with Washington as well. Industrial aristocrats and conservative country pastors found common ground.

Of course, the damned communists only made things worse. Disdainful of both private property and faith (except in their own cult), the Reds helped move evangelicals and multinationals onto the same political platform. By the end of the Cold War, these two minorities had merged into a movement bent on characterizing any activist government as a harbinger of totalitarian rule. Big business got religion and religion became big business. Economic elites teamed up with right-wing preachers to rev up the flocks with cries of “Freedom from big government!”, as if regulating Exxon were the same thing as telling Joe Six-pack which brand of beer he had to drink.

The perverse result of this corporate con job was an update of the feudal system that kept starving peasants loyal while the papacy filled its coffers. Working stiffs now side with zillionaires, over whom they have no control, against their own democracy, over which they do. Instead of a healthy skepticism of government, they buy into conspiracy theories concocted to turn them anti-regulation, anti-union, anti-social welfare, anti-
anything
that crimps the corporate bottom line, their own economic interests be damned. And if guns underline this loathing for popular government with a display of bravado, then stock up. The people have to defend the Constitution against, uh…all those guys they keep voting for.

Anyway, this development of both a humble Jesus and a crusading Christ is a major reason for Christianity’s long success. It’s not because the faith represents a clear set of edicts, like the Sermon on the Mount. Quite the contrary. It’s become the Swiss Army knife of religions, with something useful for almost everyone…imperial churches, utopian cults, industrial empire-builders, or gun-slinging holy rollers.

All this started on a hilltop with a clear, peaceful message. Sadly, this would be the last time following Jesus would be so simple—as he and his disciples were about to find out.

CHAPTER FOUR

Road Show

God loves you, and I’m really trying.

—Bumper Sticker

Tricks of the Trade

Offering crowds sound advice in the Sermon on the Mount is one thing, but it was going to take more than wise words from a hilltop to build up a real following for the new faith. Jesus had to dazzle ’em. One way to stoke the masses, especially in the rural outback of Galilee, was to offer free food, or free medicine, or free entertainment. Being both generous and resourceful (not to mention omnipotent), Jesus managed to provide all three.

The First Miracle

The Gospel of John skips over the Sermon on the Mount and goes directly to Jesus performing his first miracle at a wedding in the town of Cana. Here, he turns twenty or thirty gallons of water into wine, which makes him the go-to dude for the beer run. But certain fundamentalist teetotalers claim that Jesus would never sanction alcohol use and insist that the word usually translated as “wine” actually means “grape juice.” This is what linguists refer to as bullshit. In the story, when the miracle drink is tasted (a nice ’29 Chardonnay, perhaps?), the steward remarks:

“Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” [John 2:10]

 

It’s the old trick of serving the vintage stuff while everyone is sober and then breaking out the cut-rate swill once they’re all hammered. Nobody does this with grape juice.

My Son, the Doctor

According to the three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus never changes water to wine at all. Instead, after the Sermon on the Mount, he goes immediately into the doctor business. His healings go far beyond what physicians could offer then or now. He instantly cures Simon’s mother of a fever, causes a paralytic man to walk, heals a leper, restores a man’s withered hand, and purges demons from the possessed. In the Gospel of Luke, the demons he casts out exclaim, “You are the Son of God!” As if he didn’t know.

Born Again

A story found only in the Gospel of John [John 3:3] is a conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus, a Pharisee—one of the mainstream Jewish leaders. One night, he tells the wise old man that the faithful must be “born again.” For Nick, this brings up a bizarre picture: reentering his mother’s womb. Ew. Jesus explains that people must be first born of the flesh and then born
again
of the spirit.

It’s a powerful idea. In fact it’s so powerful that a good portion of today’s evangelicals make it the central experience of their faith, and they can be really obnoxious about it. For them it’s the spiritual dividing line between the saved and the damned.

Catholics generally take a more sober approach to this “born again” line. For them, it’s a gradual process of growing in one’s faith. But for others, it’s like a bong hit of Acapulco God. A transcendent buzz. A holy high. A shattering Bogart of bliss that has them writhing in the aisles or keeling over backwards with a slap to the forehead at the altar. And they emerge from it with the glassy-eyed look of
The Stepford Wives
.

In a way, this is a Christian version of the quick-fix therapies of Dr. Phil and his ilk. Who needs years of self-reflection when Jesus is your life coach? Born again, rebirthing, nirvana, transcendence, cosmic consciousness, “getting” it, becoming “clear.” It all hovers around the same hope—
fix me now!
I want a microwaved mental breakthrough that’ll rearrange me before lunch. Instant salvation; Cup-o-Soup for the soul.

Sometimes the Gospels have Jesus sounding like he buys into the claptrap of
The Secret
, that best-selling book which claimed that, by putting out the right vibrations and asking the universe for anything in a positive, heartfelt way, it will come true:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. [Matt. 7:7, Luke 11:9]

 

Note: This seems to apply only to requests for salvation. It doesn’t usually work if what you seek is to get laid by the Homecoming Queen before you get your driver’s license.

Exorcisms to Go

Jesus continues his healing tour through towns and villages, and his twelve disciples are now called his apostles—a shift from students to ambassadors. He sends them out as “sheep in the midst of wolves.” [Matt. 10:16] He instructs them to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” He also empowers them to perform the same miraculous healings and exorcisms he does, which is kind of cool. One wonders why we never hear about most of them again. You’d think guys like that would’ve made headlines across the ancient world.

Jesus and company then cross the Sea of Galilee, where they confront a man possessed by demons. [Mark 5] He’s so frothing-at-the-mouth insane that he can’t even be chained up. Jesus calls to the demons and they respond, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” (A legion was roughly 5,000 Roman soldiers.) Jesus casts them out, yet he’s rather accommodating about it. When they ask to be sent into a herd of 2,000 swine nearby, he complies. The pigs then stampede into the sea and drown. That’s a lot of lost breakfast sausage. Oddly, the reaction of the locals is to ask Jesus to leave town. Maybe the whole episode was just too creepy. Or maybe they were friends of the rancher who just lost all his pigs.

One thing this story does suggest—the author of Mark doesn’t seem to know the geography of Judea. He states that the pigs were feeding on a mountainside near a town that most historians believe was miles from the sea. The pigs would have died of exhaustion before reaching the water. This is only one of several places where the writer of Mark shows he’s unfamiliar with the lay of the Holy Land, and why some credible researchers think he didn’t live there.

Peculiar as this story is, a suspiciously similar tale is told about a pagan religious rite in Eleusis, Greece. There, 2,000 new initiates to a mystery religion were purified by bathing in the sea with pigs—which absorbed their evils and were then driven over a cliff.

Exorcisms like these are practiced in many religions, and they always feel half creepy and half stupid. But they do pull in the faithful. I once produced a TV documentary about evangelist Bob Larson, who performs mass exorcisms in convention halls. After several hundred paying customers listened to a brief sermon, he asked if there were any demons in the audience. In short order, people groaned and growled and did everything but throw up pea soup. I thought it was considerate of the demons to wait until Larsen’s sermon was over before making pests of themselves.

Bob would lay a Bible on a victim’s forehead and call on the authority of Jesus to cast out the evil spirits. If he focused on one victim, and another started making too much noise, the second subject would be gently escorted from the room. I later found several of them behind the convention hall, on their knees, clawing at the shrubbery and roaring like kids playing dinosaur. Back inside, all the victims were cured of their horror movie syndrome just in time for the hall to close. Demons are not only considerate, they’re punctual. Afterwards, Bob told me there was a “demon gene” that made some people more susceptible to possession than others. Harvard Medical is on the case.

The Plot Thickens

Still making the rounds in Galilee, Jesus pulls out the heavy artillery and raises the daughter of a local leader from the dead. [Luke 8:49] He then asks her parents not to tell anyone about it. I’m not sure what the strategy is here because his other miracles have been public spectacles and his traveling medicine show has already popped up on the radar of the authorities.

His miracles, parables, and twists on traditional law annoy the Pharisees, who come off as sticklers for the rules. He forgives sins, which tradition says only God can do. He says it’s okay to pick grain or to save your sheep on the Sabbath, all of which are scandalous to some. Plus there are the exorcisms, which educated people found hard to swallow even back then.

Meanwhile, his front man, John the Baptist, is arrested by King Herod (a different Herod than the one in the Christmas story). John’s been railing against the king for marrying his brother’s wife. This irks the new queen, so, at a birthday party for her daughter, she has the girl ask the king for a birthday present—John’s head on a platter. Literally. Apparently she had enough Barbies.

Trouble is now brewing in official circles over this upstart preacher and his radical friends.

Feeding the 5000

If there’s anything more popular than free first aid it’s free food. Small wonder, then, that Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000 with only five loaves and two fishes is the only miracle that’s mentioned in all four Gospels. But then Mark and Matthew report an almost identical story a few pages later. This time, Jesus feeds a crowd of 4,000 with seven loaves and “a few fish.” Strangely, his followers are every bit as surprised by
this
food miracle as they were by the first one. It’s as if they’d never seen the stunt before. Isn’t fish supposed to be good for short-term memory?

This problem, by the way, pops up throughout the New Testament—the denseness of the Twelve Apostles. Despite the miracles they routinely witness, they’re kind of slow on the uptake when it comes to figuring out who Jesus is, and they often forget events that would never slip anyone else’s mind.

Walking on Water

Water plays a big part in Christian lore. Jesus is baptized with it. His followers are fishermen. His first miracle is to change water to wine. In
Matthew 8:23
, he and his disciples get caught on turbulent waters in a small boat and Jesus calms the seas. All very impressive. But none of these tricks compare with his signature feat—walking on water.

Jesus prays alone on a mountain while Peter and the other disciples sail across the Sea of Galilee in their boat. When high swells prevent them from nearing the shore, Jesus just strolls out across the water to meet them. He even has Peter step out of the boat and stand next to him. But when the wind kicks up, Peter freaks out and—rather like Wile E. Coyote, who only starts to fall once he realizes he’s standing in mid-air—Peter begins to sink. “Oh man of little faith, why did you doubt?” Jesus asks. Evidently he never saw a Roadrunner cartoon.

Walking on water is actually part of an age-old motif in which water represents absolute chaos, or evil, and the control of it represents order, which is good. It’s found in many creation myths, including the Bible’s, wherein the universe begins as a turbulent sea or primordial sludge—chaos—from which either gods or dry land—order—emerge. Good wins over evil.