Dear diary,
The reason I should be king is that I would disseminate my power. The problem is that everyone always kings the guy who wants to keep everything for himself. Stop doing that. King the guy who hates crowns, thrones, and scepters. King the guy who really believes that the last shall be first.
I’m against having servants. I don’t even like being served by waiters in restaurants. I always wanna stand up from the table and say to the server: “Relax, let me handle all this for you. You sit down and eat; I’ll take it from here. Would you like a side dish with YOUR order? How about a pitcher of vodka? I’ll convert the entire establishment into one great smoking room, for your pleasure.”
But here’s the thing about Jesus. I think he was against the Roman government. I think that’s what all the fuss was about. The Roman government was one of the first (perhaps the first ever?) to be controlled by a small number of creditors rather than one single Caesar or king. I probably have this history wrong, cuz I hate learning and reading and thinking, but just trust me anyway. So Jesus sees that this creditor class is shoveling right into their own purses all the wealth of the Roman people. There’s no escaping the creditors’ debt-trap: it’s a doom-funnel, like a black hole sucking up everything, even Dorothy and her little dog Toto.
Wow! the floodlight outside my window just got auto-triggered by something haunting the night (I’m writing this entry at three o’clock in the morning while it’s pitch black and dead quiet); so I stood up and looked outside, and, there on the lawn, no more than a couple meters away, appeared a baby deer — a fawn — posing nonchalantly like God. She stood stock still for a few seconds, probably startled by the light, and then she trotted away, into my neighbor’s lawn and across the driveway. Then another fawn showed up and followed the first. And then another and another. I bet they’re all heading down the hill to drink the water in the nearby lake.
But, as I was saying, I think the reason that the Roman government assassinated Jesus is that he was rousing the populace, waking them up and making them aware of how unfairly this ruling creditor-class was treating them. As I explained somewhere in an earlier entry, if Rome had been ruled by just one king, especially a generous one like myself, that king could have simply forgiven all debts, and the economy would have sprung back to life; and when I say SPRUNG, I mean just like the season: Sommer then Ootum then Wanter then Sprung. But the creditors, being many, were like: “No way are we forgiving the people their debts, because we cannot agree which one of us jerks should take the bigger hit on the interest that we would otherwise have expected to collect; so we’ll just drive the country into a decline and fall, for the sake of our private fortunes.”
And then they were like, “Hey this Jesus fellow is hip to our scheme: he keeps telling the multitude that they should renege on their debts and just leave them unpaid, and face the consequence of crucifixion, which is the punishment that we evil creditors inflict upon bad debtors, reasoning that we Powers that Be can’t realistically crucify EVERYONE — it’ll clog up the death-tubes; not to mention, who’ll serve us our meals? — therefore we’ll be forced into submission, and the result will be the same as if there were a single king who declared a general amnesty: a jubilee: a grand sweeping proclamation of debt-forgiveness. Therefore let us crucify this troublemaker Jesus, this inconvenient truth-teller, before he has a chance to actuate his plan.”
And the other thing that I suggest this creditor class did is muddle the message of Jesus for the future, so that those who had not yet heard his anti-debt proclamation would never get a chance to understand his point: thus the subsequent generations could be kept in debt-bondage to these very same creditors’ offspring.
Now how would one set about scrambling the clear message of a prophet? That’s right: Get a theologian involved, an academic, a standard priest (again, I stress that I’m just making this stuff up wholesale, off the top of my head, & not even bothering to force my thots to match the facts); so Saul of Tarsus, soon to be known as Saint Paul the Apostle, gets a call on his land-line telephone — actually, back in those days, they used an instant text messaging service, which was transmitted via their portable electronic devices, kinda like the modern telegram — and the message reads:
“Dear Saul, warmest greetings from the creditor class. We banksters are really in a bind, and we need you to help us out. You see, Jesus of Nazareth is going around town telling the entire populace to participate in a debt strike (!) so as to break up our big banks. Obviously this is unthinkable, and we cannot let this happen: we banks are too big to fail; moreover we’re absolutely essential to the functioning of society, for although we do nothing vital but stand in the middle of all deals — we’re the quintessential middlemen, a sort of super-nuisance — as it is written: All progress is impeded by the banks; and without the banks is not any progress impeded that could, with the needless insertion of a bank, be impeded (John 1:3) — nevertheless we have written our demands for fealty into the Law Code fair and square; therefore we’ve decided to crucify this Jesus fellow, hang him on a cross with the rest of all the debtors. But, dear Saulus, here’s where YOU come in: We need someone to interfere with this message of debt-forgiveness, to over-complicate the simple ideas of Jesus, so that his ‘good news’ (as they call it) can be rendered fake. Maybe add some mystery and religious hoodoo into the mix, to sway the focus away from political action and towards the comfy realm of ‘personal salvation’ — people like to dream of the afterlife, and to think of God as a savior of single souls: like an invisible friend, rather than as an instigator of mass movements. So, what do you think: Are you up to the task?”
And Paul says: “Yeah, I’m in. In fact, I’m already brainstorming a couple angles of attack. First I can go around killing as many of the original believers as possible. That’ll help to diminish potential criticism from purists or anyone who witnessed the actual message. After that, I’ll pretend that I myself have converted to their cause, and I’ll deliver sermons in Jesus’ name, while shifting the emphasis FROM ‘take up your own cross and follow me so that we can overwhelm and overturn this system of debt bondage’ TO ‘the man Jesus was God: he’s the only one who counts, among the multitudes who died on crosses; so there’s no need to perform any further debt strikes or resist the system; just keep paying your debts as usual; whether you’re a slave or a master, just remain a slave or a master: don’t change anything; don’t fix the rot or the corruption that you see: for none of this political stuff concerns us anymore, since Jesus is soon to return in glory and sweep us all into heaven — all political leaders and the creditors who purchased them are approved by God, unconditionally.”
And the banksters typed “Sounds good”; and they sent this message via mobile phone, adding a smiley-face emoji for punctuation. That’s why all the gospels have Hollywood endings.
*
I don’t know how much sense the above makes to you; but I hope that it changed your life. The truth is that I just started writing when I awoke, and I kept writing whatever was on my mind until this very point, which I commemorated with an asterisk. I didn’t bother about making my history true or fun, I just let it sorta tell itself, and I allowed my biases to have free reign and veto-power; that’s why the banksters and Paul come off so Scrooge-like: in reality, they probably didn’t say the exact same words that I gave them here. And who could ever be sure that Paul was a thug-for-hire? I myself am half-convinced that he might’ve even been half-convinced himself. Maybe he just misunderstood Jesus’ true message, and that’s why he advertised it all wrong. But we can agree, at least, that Paul claims that Jesus died on the cross for humankind’s sins: his death was the ultimate sacrifice, thus God will forgive anyone who believes in St. Paul’s claptrap. My problem with this notion, and the reason I feel so justified ridiculing it, is that even the official church-approved biographies record Jesus as recommending that everyone climb up onto the cross and die:
Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. [Mark 8:34]
Now, if belief in the death of Jesus is what saves your soul, then why would anyone else need to die on the cross? If Jesus was the perfect lamb, led to the slaughter on account of the sins of the world, then why did that lamb, on the way, turn and bleat to its brethren: “Dear fellow lambs, follow me to the slaughter; let’s all go shed our blood now, tra la la.” [Matthew 16:24] And what would be the point of adding, as the same gospels say that Jesus does, after the above, the remark:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: & whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. [Matthew 16:25]
But I’m sure the church apologists will now start hairsplitting about “earthly life vs. spiritual life”; and that type of equivocation makes me sick. There’s ONE LIFE for all of us, and either Jesus saves this life of ours by dying on the cross, or Jesus was beckoning us all toward the act of mass suicide. — I believe the latter. And I am right about almost everything; so I don’t see how, in just this one single instance, I could be wrong. How convenient for the liars and thieves of this world, if that were so! How convenient for Bryan to be correct about the price of a carton of orange juice, and correct about the secret meaning of birdsong, and correct about Russia (it’s got the best people: look at Tolstoy), but then when it comes to the most important subject ever broached — the eternal salvation of one’s mind — Bryan’s suddenly wrong. Yeah, sure. (You can see how these attacks against me are complete and utter nonsense.)
P.S.
My only regret is that I stuck so closely to the subject. I would have preferred to opine about a great many things in this entry; but some mornings you just wake up with a one-track vision, and all you can do is follow its train off the cliff. When God speaks, you don’t hold up your hand and say, “Lord GOD, your words can wait. I have other matters that I planned to discuss this morning. I’d like to talk about a friendly moose; and also about bears, and about certain types of colorful aquatic creatures whose names I don’t even know yet. I’m not going to limit my speech to just a few deer.” You don’t roll your eyes when God is talking. You don’t interrupt and say, “Alright, I get it, but let’s move on.” NO! you pay close attention to God; and you pretend that what he’s saying is extremely important. — As soon as God finishes his speech, you applaud sincerely. Give thanks. Ask a question about some aspect of his teaching, and allow him ample time to clarify. Only then can you request permission to be excused from his presence. OK, now go run and tell your friends about what God said. Tell them that you wish you would have taken notes at his lecture, it was so interesting. If any of your friends does not react with sufficient enthusiasm to what you’re attempting to relay, have their families surveilled. There’s no problem that a house-call from armed government agents cannot finesse.
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