If you were shocked to read of my sins in the Old Testament, you should just read about my sins in the New – all five of them. (Caveat: Today's blog, which is confessional, will take a while. When I write about sin, which is my favourite subject, I do tend to carry on – so grab yourself a mug of coffee, or a beer, and get ready to sit down for a long one.)

1. Major Crime Number One. Jesus while on Earth warned his disciples, almost daily, that I make humans think too much. "Don't listen to Lucifer," he told them, "lest he should make you think." Believing in the Bible, and in everything that your Pastor teaches you, is good for the soul. Thinking is not.

Jesus' favourite anecdote was the Parable of the Sower: A farmer, sowing seed by hand, scatters his good seed (the gospel) in a field. Sinners like you are the dirt upon which the good gospel-seed falls. A few of those seeds, falling on good dirt, grow up to produce good Christian fruit trees. Some seeds fall on stony ground and spring right up, but wither when they meet with persecution, such as getting ribbed by Jewish schoolmates or getting fed to Roman lions. Other Christian seeds get choked by the weeds of their own greed (e.g., Enron or WorldCom execs), or by the thorns of their own sexual lust (e.g., your average evangelist). Still others (and these are the ones I get blamed for) fall on the wayside, where a raven (Lucifer) gobbles up the seed before it can take root. The dirt on the wayside, Jesus explained, denotes any person who hears the gospel message, and thinks about it for a moment, and sayeth in his heart: Huh? You mean, some people actually believe that? (Mark 4:2-20).

Once, over in the town of Chorazin, when Jesus told the Parable of the Sower for the umpteenth time, a Jewish fellow heckled him from the back of the room, saying, "Hey, Jesus, why blame the raven? Why blame the wayside? Maybe your farmer is just a lousy throw! Ha, ha, ha! Sounds like your seed-chucking farmer couldn't hit the broad side of a Nazareth barn, ha, ha!" Jesus calmly held out his arm in that way he has, but the fellow wouldn't shut up – not until the disciples bounced him outside, still laughing, still cracking jokes. Jesus then uttered a curse on the entire village (Matt. 11:21). Later, Jesus gathered the Twelve around him and said not to worry, that the Jew of Chorazin who heckled him was just dirt on the wayside, a dumb clod whose seed was gobbled up by Lucifer (Matt. 11:25).

2. It is reported in the Gospels that I tempted Jesus to perform magic tricks. Okay, that one's true. I like magic. Who doesn't? Harry Houdini was awesome. David Copperfield! Siegfried and Roy! Moses! Elijah! I love those guys! But when it comes to tempting Jesus, I never suggested that he perform any tricks that were mean or slimy. I suggested no feats that could have got someone hurt, like sawing a woman in half (King David performed that trick on thousands of Ammonites, without one survivor). What's more, Jesus declined to perform even the few harmless stunts that I did suggest, such as changing rocks into cupcakes. Well, he should have listened to me. I believe to this day that a few splashy miracles, especially of a culinary sort, would have done his reputation a world of good with the Jews and the Romans. He may even have kept himself from getting crucified. Jesus was good. Really, really good. He could have been huge.

3. Jesus once remarked to Simon Peter that I wanted to "sift [him] like wheat," thereby to winnow his virtues (grain) from his faults (chaff). Peter's mother also tried. And we failed (Luke 22:31 ff.). Well, not entirely: Peter had a few compassionate moments. As Good Friday approached, it was Peter who advised Jesus not to visit Jerusalem and get himself crucified. But Jesus just blew his top: at first, I didn't know whether Jesus was yelling at Simon Peter, or at me. "Satan, get thee behind me!" he shouted (which, in Jesus' original Aramaic idiom, is an ambiguous phrase that can mean, quite literally, "Kiss my behind, you opponent!" [Mark 8:33]). Peter, crestfallen, didn't even know what he had said wrong to make Christ so angry. He was just trying to be nice.

Sometimes, when Jesus popped his cork like that, he said things he probably didn't really mean, as when he twice cursed (and killed) fig trees for bearing no ripe figs to eat when he was hungry, even though it was not fig season. Another time he put a Gentile pig farmer into bankruptcy by using his magical powers to kill the man's livestock. He was mean to animals. He used racial epithets (Matt. 7:6, 15:26, et al.). This frequent irritability was a side of Jesus I had not previously seen in him, back in our Heaven days, before the Creation. His curses amazed even the Twelve disciples. But Jesus said he could curse his own property, such as a fig tree, or the whole planet, for that matter, whenever he pleased. "If the Son of Man has a craving for figs," he said, speaking of himself, "then the Son of Man should be able find a few frigging figs on a [gosh-darned] fig tree whenever he [darn] pleases!" (Matt. 21:18-20; Mark 5:11-17, 11:10-23).

Simon Peter tried to reason with Jesus: "Lord," he said, "if a mountain stands your way, would it be right to curse, and to cast that mountain into the sea, using your magical powers?"

To which Jesus replied, "Sure, why not?" (Matt. 21:21).

But Simon Peter, in the end, sifted according to Jesus' plan and not according to mine. After Jesus cursed him and called him "Satan," Peter went on to become a typical Christian, and the first Pope. So I didn't win that one, either.

4. The gospels of Luke and John report further that I "entered" Judas Iscariot one evening after dinner (Luke 22:3; John 13:27). I utterly deny the insinuation. I would not have trusted Judas alone in the same room with a child, or with a chaste French poodle for that matter, but I assure you: Judas never so much as kissed me, much less do the thing you wot of. I've got nothing against sodomy between two adult fellows who truly love each other, whether on Brokeback Mountain or on Capitol Hill; but if I ever entered Judas it was only to make him choke on a pretzel. Judas was absolutely an item on Yahveh's agenda, not mine (Acts 1:16-17). Martyrdoms never turn out well for my side. I actually wanted to prevent, not cause, Jesus' Crucifixion. And I would sooner have boxed Judas on the ear than to help him betray a friend for thirty pieces of silver. Judas Iscariot has no more sense of common decency than the archangel Gabriel, or the apostle Paul.

5. Speaking of whom: in the divinely inspired epistles of Saint Paul, it is said, repeatedly, that I ruin Christians by making them think too much (2 Thes. 2:9, 1 Tim. 1:20, 5:15, et al.). Same old, same old. Jesus in the Gospels already had that complaint pretty well covered. Christian ministers today are saying the same thing about my True History ("Don't read it!" they say, "It will make you think too much!").

Paul elaborates in 1 Corinthians, where he gets quite explicit, warning young married couples, for example, not to let Lucifer make them think of making love to one another. Paul says that Christian husbands and wives ought to fast and pray, and not to think about sexual intercourse, since Jesus will be coming again, very soon, at any minute now – and would young Christian marrieds want the Rapture to take place while they were doing that? (1 Cor. 7:5).

(Well, I hate to cram this late-breaking news into your celibate ears, Saint Knucklehead – but after two thousand years of waiting, I think those married Christians would be getting a little randy by now, had they followed your advice.

P.S. Which they didn't.

P.P.S. Although I wish they had – because if those early Christians had not reproduced like locusts, perhaps then classical civilization would have stood a fighting chance.

In all fairness, I should add here that Saint Paul does not absolutely forbid Christians to have sexual intercourse. He counsels all unmarried Christians to remain virgins, just as he has done himself, until the Second Coming of Christ; after which, it's a moot point because it will then be too late for them to have a go. Paul further directs those Christians who are already married, and have already done it at least once, to quit. The good apostle does, however, offer an escape clause even to young, single Christians who have that special sparkle in their eye: "But if they cannot contain themselves," he says, "let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn" (1 Cor. 7:9).

Today, when the institution of holy matrimony is under attack from all sides – from liberals, Mormons, atheists, homosexuals, rock stars, divorce attorneys – it is good to remember Saint Paul's defense of heterosexual Christian marriage: Brothers and sisters in Christ, holy matrimony may yet be viewed as a lawful last resort unto thee, after exercise and cold showers, in your lifelong struggle against masturbation.

6. Yes, one sin more! Saint Paul also claims that I once interrupted his travel itinerary (1 Thes. 2:18), an incident that I don't even remember. (I won't go so far as to deny it – he may be thinking of that time I sank his boat.)

And that, my friends, is the sum total of the crimes against God and humanity ascribed to me in both the Old and New Testaments. On the whole, not a bad record. Yet Paul can "marvel" that "Satan himself has been transformed into an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14).

Paul forgets his Scripture: what the Old Testament actually says is that I am "an angel of light" who got transformed into a "Satan," not the other way around. Well, no one ever transformed the apostle Paul into a knucklehead. He was born to it.)

– L.