What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (2 page)

That statistic chilled me like the final scene of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. It meant that legions of voters were being lured into a mindset that says society should be organized in accordance with God’s will. And that always raised two key questions: a) who gets to define “God’s will” and, b) why is it never me?

If war was too important to leave to the generals, religion was too important to leave to the preachers. Someone who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid needed to weigh in. After all, you’re not going to learn everything you should about communism if you only listen to Marxist scholars. I needed to explore the side of the religion story we didn’t get in Sunday school.

Hence this book.

This is not a comprehensive history of Christianity. It’s a look at the fantastic folktales, the scriptural inconsistencies, and the pious hypocrisies that have been sold to us as eternal truth for the past 2,000 years, and how little of it is actually the foundation of our values today. It’s religious history deep fat fried in irreverence for popular consumption, even if it risks a little indigestion.

Everyone has a right to their beliefs and, having been through the experience, I can appreciate why people sometimes believe incredible things. It’s fine with me that Orthodox Jews think starting their car on Friday night might incur holy wrath, or that Mormons feel the need to wear sacred underwear, or that Pentecostal snake handlers drink strychnine to prove they’re protected by the Almighty.

I also understand that not all Christians are conservatives, that not all conservative Christians are fundamentalists, and that not all fundamentalists see eye to eye. There’s plenty of diversity and disagreement among the ranks—which is one reason why they keep building more churches. All this variety and imagination is a great thing.

The problems don’t start when people have faith in bizarre beliefs. The problems start when people want
you
to have faith in their bizarre beliefs and, if you decline the offer, they stop making good arguments and start making bad laws. Next stop—the Dark Ages.

It’s true that the motive for legislating faith is often an honest concern that, if God isn’t happy with what’s going on, he’ll take it out on everyone. (He’s been known to do that. Ask Noah.) But just because you stay up all night fearing vampires doesn’t mean you get to bust everyone who won’t stock up on garlic.

Faith is personal opinion, which is why it’s not called “fact.” It’s what you ask of someone when you don’t have the goods to prove your point. When we forget that, it’s always trouble. If someone is hawking a religious belief as Eternal Truth, it’s fair to ask for some kind of proof. If the answer is, “have faith,” well, anybody can say that no matter how sane or ditzy their claims—which is precisely why laws based on faith are a bad idea.
Whose
faith are we talking about and, what if they’re completely deluded? It’s happened.

What’s more, those in power who are certain they’re doing God’s work tend not to be shy about passing judgment on different views held by others (whom they identify as heretics, heathens, blasphemers, idolaters, atheists, backsliders, minions of the devil, sons of Satan, or the mainstream media). If you oppose the believers, you oppose God, and that means it’s open season on you.

Nor is this just attitude on their part. The Bible itself is uncompromising about other modes of belief. Just what part of “
Thou shall hold no other gods before me
” don’t you understand?

It’s nice to have certainty, but we live in a democracy, and democracy depends upon compromise because it assumes nobody has all the answers. When you introduce religious absolutes into a system that requires compromise to work, it breaks. We need to knock that off and, by showing the Bible as a work of human creativity, it helps us keep a little humility about our claims to knowledge of Eternal Truth.

Those claims begin with the Hebrew Bible, a.k.a. the Old Testament, which tells the story of God and his people. It begins at the dawn of time and meanders up through 3,000 years of history to the glory days of the Roman Republic. But the ending is more promise than fulfillment. Long after the last draft of it was completed, Jews were still under the rule of Rome waiting for a messiah and wondering why it was taking so damned long.

Well, wait no longer. With the advent of Christianity, God makes his return engagement. From the Gospels of Jesus, to the rise of the Church, to the founding of America, we’ll have a ringside seat to the Greatest Show on Earth. They’ll be jaw-dropping magic, lots of animals, feats of daring-do, and plenty of clowns to scare the children. So step right up.

Jesus famously said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” He was talking about the freedom of the soul from sin, but I like the general sentiment. So, here’s my little joust for freedom. Make of it what you will. And whatever you think of my yammerings, please remember—I can be forgiven.

Whew…

CHAPTER ONE

You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down

I’ve never understood how God could expect his creatures
to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as
a sloppy way to run a universe.

—Robert A. Heinlein

A Brief History of Creation

It all started with a god named Yahweh—the king of the cosmos, the master of existence, the Big Cheese of Cheeses. He was bored to death. As the all-knowing, all-powerful lord of creation, he could have pretty much anything he wanted. The problem was there wasn’t anything to want because there was nothing
in
the universe. It was dark and without form. And, apparently, hanging around being perfect wasn’t fabulous enough. There had to be a way to liven things up.

So, Yahweh said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. Not a bad start, but the novelty quickly wore off because there was nothing for the light to shine on. So he formed the sun, the moon, and the stars. All very lovely. But once they were up and running, a big
“Now what?”
set in. The whole thing operated by the laws of nature, which Yahweh had also created, so he knew everything that was going to happen. Not much suspense there. Something was missing.

Life! He picked one of his favorite planets—Earth—and he created living things that moved by themselves and multiplied and did lots of amusing stuff. But algae, dinosaurs, and alpacas got tiresome after a few millennia. No intellectual stimulation. What Yahweh needed was something interesting and unpredictable.

Thus he created man and woman. They were curious creatures that were smart enough to love and worship Yahweh, but not bright enough to realize they could pass the time having sex—something you’d think they’d figure out since they were naked all the time. Whatever. They seemed like a nice couple and everything appeared to run smoothly. Maybe a little too smoothly. They didn’t
do
anything. Well, there was nothing for them to do except loiter around the Garden of Eden not having sex.

Then Yahweh created the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, planted it in the middle of paradise, and told Adam and Eve to leave it alone. Which they did.

Well, Jesus, this was no fun. Something had to kick-start a little drama. So, Yahweh tossed a serpent into the garden. Not only could it talk, it also knew more about the local plant life than the two dimwit humans. The serpent lured the people into eating the tree’s forbidden fruit and, suddenly, they realized they were naked. Not much of an insight when you think about it, but it was a start.

Adam and Eve thus disobeyed Yahweh, which meant he got to throw his first fit—as if he didn’t know this was coming. The people were tossed out of paradise and they were no longer immortal. But at least they could have all that sex they were missing. The result, of course, was many children. Pretty soon one brother was killing another, while the rest were fruitful and multiplied, until the whole world was filled with humans killing each other. Now
that’s
entertainment!

Unfortunately, it was also an endless series of headaches. People acted very badly and, since swimming hadn’t been invented yet, Yahweh flooded the entire world and started over. The next crop of humans tried to build a tower to heaven in Babel. So Yahweh, not a big fan of competition, broke up that little project. Then the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah started doing things a little
too
entertaining, even for Yahweh’s boredom-killing agenda, and both cities got nuked.

As the centuries wore on, Yahweh became partial to the family of a Semitic tribesman named Abraham. He promised Abraham wagonloads of descendants to populate the land of Canaan. But Yahweh, never one to make things simple, didn’t give him a son until after Abe knocked up his maid and then turned 100. Yahweh had a flare for soap opera.

The son was a nice boy named Isaac, Abraham’s long-promised offspring. Naturally, Yahweh demanded that Abraham kill him. Abe was about to make a sacrifice out of him when—
psych!
That wacky Yahweh was just messing with Abraham’s head. Abe didn’t have to sacrifice his son; it was just a test. Instead, he was given an alternative: trim the end of his penis. Kind of bizarre, but it beat torching the kid, who probably slept with one eye open that night.

Thus began the begetting. Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob—who was renamed Israel—and Israel had twelve sons from two wives, who were sisters, and their two maids. Yahweh’s scheme got ever more interesting, even if it wasn’t exactly family entertainment.

A drought then drove the people of Abraham to Egypt, where they spent 400 years being slaves and leaving no evidence they were ever there. Eventually, Yahweh heard their cries and found a fixer—Moses. He was the son of Hebrew slaves, but he passed as a prince of Egypt. Well, he didn’t
look
Jewish.
Ba-da-boom.

One day, while Moses was herding sheep, Yahweh appeared as a burning bush and spoke to him. Who knew Moses talked to his plants? Or that the plants talked back? God then slammed the pharaoh with ten plagues and led the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and back toward Canaan. But first they had to endure forty years of desert campouts. Along the way, Yahweh issued the Ten Commandments and a few hundred other mitzvah to live by.

Once they reached Canaan, the Israelites found that it was full of Canaanites. Go figure. The Hebrews called it the Land of Abraham because Abe had lived there years before. (Gee, I used to live in New Jersey. Does that make the Garden State the Land of
Me?
) With God’s help, they launched a war and conquered sixty-one cities—the commandments about not killing and not coveting apparently on hold for the moment.

Eventually, they settled in and organized themselves into two kingdoms—Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Each was dominated by a different version of the Hebrew faith. Around 1000 B.C., the valiant King David—of Goliath fame—came to power. He united the two kingdoms and reigned for forty years, followed by his son, Solomon, who built a great Temple in Jerusalem and ruled for forty years more. Along the way, Solomon collected 700 wives and 300 concubines. He was also very wise. Hey, any guy who could land
that
much action was no dummy. Plus, he had to remember all those anniversaries.

Around 722 B.C., the huge empire of Assyria invaded Israel in the north. Then, in 586 B.C., the even bigger empire of Babylon conquered Judah in the south and kidnapped the leaders. Then, in 536 B.C., the even
bigger
empire of Persia overtook Babylon and everyone else in sight. With bigger fish to fry elsewhere, the Persians allowed Israelite leaders to return to Jerusalem and run their own affairs, sort of. The Persians remained in charge.

While it was nice that the Jews were back home and could rebuild their Temple, it wasn’t like the good old days of David and Solomon. The Israelites wanted to rule themselves, and Yahweh wasn’t being as helpful as he used to be. No ten plagues or anything cool like that. So, the people waited and prayed for a bold new leader—some courageous warrior prince who would kick their conquerors out and set up an independent Jewish kingdom.

Unfortunately, around 332 B.C., a Greek commander named Alexander, who by all accounts was pretty great, stormed in and took over. He left behind a series of oppressive generals who tried to force modern culture down the throats of the locals. In the process, the generals abused their subjects and violated the Temple. This got everyone really cheesed off.

For a brief time, a Jewish clan called the Maccabees expelled these conquerors, and established a tiny independent state around Jerusalem. But in 63 B.C., the Romans expanded their growing republic into Judea and vicinity, and they were so well organized that it was going to take a miracle to get rid of them. More than ever, Yahweh’s people wanted a deliverer. A heaven-sent redeemer. A messiah.

By the end of the first century B.C., half the families in Judea were hoping that one of their sons would grow up to become this messiah—a lofty goal even for Jewish mothers. A dentist with a nice practice wouldn’t do. They needed something special. A game changer. And boy-howdy, did they get one.

Resurrection Hall of Fame

This grand saga leads us, of course, to the subject at hand: the story of Jesus Christ as enshrined by the New Testament, and the vast religion it spawned. It’s shaped our history, reframed the way we think, and morphed our pop image of God from a sage old man in the sky to an invisible father whose son was a tall, fair-haired, white guy. I’m sure there were a lot of those knocking around first century Palestine.