Lucifer's True History of Everything
Oct 6, 06 06:59 AM
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True Life of Jesus, cont.
One complaint: Jesus never let me watch him perform his miracles, which disappointed me. He said it was because I did not obey the rules, the first of which was the usual one, "No miracles until after everyone has sat through the sermon" – no healing, no breaking of loaves and fishes, no turning of water into wine, no walking on water, no cursing of fig trees, no nothing, not so much as a bent spoon, until after his message was done. Jesus was quite strict about it. A whole hillside might be covered with people who had come to see him perform; and if even one person got up and left before the closing benediction, he would do no miracles that day.
This rule, of course, put tremendous social pressure on everyone to stay put until the end of the sermon, which for Jesus was the main event. But I didn't always have the sit-flesh for it. He always seemed to know when I was in the audience, and on those days, no matter how long I sat there, he just kept on preaching and preaching and preaching until I finally got a sore bottom, or got bored and left – and then he would perform no miracles that day. So I guess you could say it was my fault that Jesus did not perform more miracles – which is what Jesus himself always said. But seriously, I think he was just toying with me: he knew that I really, really wanted to see him perform a miracle, and no way was he going to let that happen.
As a child, Jesus performed miracles all the time. Once, when he was fetching water for his mother, certain bad Jews of Nazareth broke his water jug. Jesus killed them, by withering their flesh – he sucked the H2O right out of them – and then carried home their fresh water in his cloak, without losing a drop. And once, when Joseph had sawed a wooden beam too short for the arm-span of the large Galilean malefactor who was to be crucified on it, Jesus corrected the error by stretching the crossbeam with his own hands. And once, he healed his younger half-brother, James, of a poisonous snakebite (Thomas, chs. 6-15). But after age 27, when he began his public ministry, Jesus refused to perform any miracles if I was in the neighbourhood.
Jesus was never big on publicity. His customary practice was to perform an amazing feat, such as raise the dead, or pull a gold coin from a fish's mouth (Matt. 17:27), and then command the lucky recipient to keep the story a secret. "No miracle for you," he would say to the sick and handicapped, "unless you promise not to tell" (e.g., Mark 1:44, 3:12, 5:43, 7:36). His other way was to say that the desired miracle would happen when the supplicant returned home (Mark 7:29-30). Jesus said he did it this way because "Seeing is believing, but the gospel is all about believing without seeing."
Jesus hated publicity almost as much as he hated sin. Here's why: whenever the news leaked out that he had worked a miracle over in town A, the only reward he ever got for it was more work down the road. The suffering and sinful multitudes from towns B, C, and D, would then come round and pester him to cure everything from birth defects to Alzheimer's – followed hard after by a crowd from town A, saying, "Us, too!" (Mark 1:41).
Jesus had just three words for most of those people: "Woe unto you."
Judas Iscariot opposed Christ on this all-important publicity issue. Judas used to go from town to town as a self-appointed front man for the Lord, bragging that "In the last town back, there were performed a thousand miracles, at least. Entire multitudes were healed, the blind, the deaf, the leprous, or the insane, or you name it!" Judas really knew how to drum up a crowd for the Lord's next sermon. But Judas's behavior put an unfair burden on Jesus who, whenever he came into a new village, felt pressured to heal everyone indiscriminately; and that is just not how the Lord operates.
Judas was in it only for the money. That scoundrel would go from one handicapped beggar to the next, saying, "I know someone who can heal you! His name is Jesus. He's the Son of God. He's coming this way. And I'm one of his twelve best friends." "For a small sum" – which was always more than the beggar had in his cup – Judas would promise a miracle. Judas would then say, "Oh, I'm so sorry! You don't seem to have enough in your cup. Well, that's okay, you seem like a nice person. I'll settle for whatever you've got, because I just want to help people, I'm not in this for the money."
Later that day, after the sermon, at the "altar call," the beggars would come forward, many of whom had to be led or carried – all of whom were thinking that the Lord had already been lobbied to heal their bodies, when all Jesus really wanted to do was to preach at them. I once saw one of Judas's handicapped gulls – a desperate, portly, man who had no lower legs and only one arm – roll himself all the way down the hillside, like a beer-barrel, to see Jesus. His aim was good, but by the time he reached the bottom, that fellow was rolling pretty fast. And this will sound crazy, but it's true, the man got rolling so fast, he could not stop, and he hollered for help, but Jesus, who was there on the lake's edge, sidestepped, and the man went over the edge, right into Lake Gennesaret, with a splash—where he might easily have drowned, but Jesus grabbed his hand and pulled him out.
(Jesus did not heal the man, but he did find him a ride back to town center, aboard a fishmonger's cart.)
Sometimes, if I was not around, Jesus really did heal people, I'm convinced of that. More often, though, he would say, "Woe unto you."
Jesus was not totally against performing magical cures. The four Gospels report that Jesus healed at least thirty people of their infirmities, including six blind men, two sick children, and twelve lepers (his specialty). He also cured five naked zanies ("demoniacs"), all of whom put clothes on afterward (Mary Magdalene, more than once). So it's not like he didn't care.
The one miracle that Jesus performed most often was to strike bad people blind, which was what he called, "The miracle of Sodom" (Gen. 19:11). "For judgment I have come into this world," said Jesus, "for two reasons: so that those who can see not might see; and so that those who can see might be made blind" (John 9:39, KJV).
A Jewish man in the crowd, who had perfect eyesight but who mistook the Lord's syntax, said, "But that is just one reason, and it is not a very good one!"
Jesus struck that Jew blind on the spot, for having said such a thing.
Some additional miracles by Jesus may have gone unrecorded. My own guess is that he may actually have healed many people whom Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Judas, and the Pharisees never heard about – which would explain why the Lord's adversaries, as represented in the Gospels, always seem like such idiots for opposing him. Maybe the Pharisees were not so much "stupid" as "ill-informed." If they had known about the miracles of Jesus, then maybe the Pharisees would have been less quick to pound lumps on him.
– But I'm sorry, that makes no sense. I'm contradicting myself. Everywhere Jesus went, the Pharisees mistook him for Beelzebub! (Matt. 10:25, 12:24, Mark 3:32, et al.). That's like mistaking Billy Bob Thornton for Billy Graham, or Madonna for Mother Teresa, or George Bush for George Washington. If the Pharisees could not tell the difference Beelzebub and Jesus, then they must have been pretty stupid.
I did agree with Judas Iscariot about this one idea he had, which is that Jesus should heal everyone who was sick, handicapped, or injured. The Earth was already 4,028 years old, and I just didn't see the point in so much pointless suffering, ad infinitum. I still don't. Imagine a world without pain. Without illness. Without physical deformities or serious handicaps. Hey, Jesus could have done it!
I offered to help. I told Jesus, and I meant it, that I was willing to do the actual hands-on work of healing people if he would just show me how. I said that he could take full credit. I said I would even let Yahveh take the credit, which was a generous offer because I like Jesus and I don't like Yahveh, not as a person.
Jesus said: "Lucifer?"
I said, "Yes, Lord?"
And he said: "Woe unto you."
– L.
Posted by Lucifer at 06:59 AM
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