Tag Archives: One Crazy Bible

You Always Play the Get Out of Jail Free Card

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RockyWhat You’ve Missed…
* A lot of talk about circumcision.  I mean, A LOT.  More than you’d think you’d find in a really holy book.
* An angry mob attacks and stones Paul.  Everyone thinks he’s pretty much dead, but then he just gets up and walks away.  It’s kind of like the final scene in Rocky, except he’s getting hit in the face with rocks, instead of padded boxing gloves.  And there’s less Burgess Meredith.
* Paul casts a demon out of girl who was following him around, because the demon just got really annoying after awhile.  This is basically the New Testament version of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour.
* Paul gets beaten a second time.  It’s not as much like Rocky II as you’d expect, and there’s still no Burgess Meredith.

Day 319
Daily Reading: Acts 15-17

Paul’s life at this point consists basically of two things: Preaching about Jesus and getting beat up, and preaching about Jesus and safely running away from an angry mob.  Pretty simple really.  Acts 15 has Paul preaching about Jesus and getting beat up.  Then he gets thrown into jail, which spices things up a bit.

So how does Paul handle a serious ass kicking and then being wrongfully imprisoned?  Like a champ.  The guy spends his time singing hymns while the other prisoners listen.  Basically he doesn’t let the man get him down.  I mean, he has a better attitude than that guy in The Shawshank Redemption, which is pretty hard to beat.  Instead of complaining and whining, the guy just starts up a karaoke club, belting out the hits late into the night.  Turns out God’s a pretty big karaoke fan, because here how He responds.

Karaoke“Suddenly there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off!  The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open. He assumed the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself. But Paul shouted to him, ‘Stop! Don’t kill yourself! We are all here!’”  Acts 16:26-28

Are you kidding me?  Paul doesn’t get the heck outta Dodge immediately?  He doesn’t see the earthquake as God’s escape plan for him?  Paul just got handed the world’s first Get Out of Jail Free card, and he just hangs around?  Paul, you don’t even need to understand Monopoly to grasp the concept of the Get Out of Jail Free card.  Come on buddy!

BoltIt seems to me that any normal person would take advantage of the situation immediately and get their butt outta there pronto.  I mean, I hate to run, and have yet to find even adequate motivation to start jogging, but I promise you if I were Paul, I would channel the whitest Usain Bolt I could find inside of me and leave that place in the dust, setting some serious Caucasian speed records along the way.  I would do that because I’m normal and my brain works.  But Paul isn’t normal (though I admit his brain does work).  Paul apparently doesn’t feel the need to free himself, he just kind of goes with the flow.  And in this case, the flow has the jailer take Paul and other prisoners home, take care of their wounds, feed them and then become a Christian along with his entire family.

What!?  What jail guard takes prisoners home!?  None.  Because that’s totally crazy.  (Though I think this happens in The Green Mile?  I’m not sure.  I’ve never seen it.  Regardless, if it did happen in The Green Mile, it’s still an extraordinary event, Walkerwhich is probably why it was such a powerful and memorable scene.  That or there was some cool special effects or something.)

Anyway…not only could the jail guard get fired, but this is a Roman jail…and from my education of Romans through movies and bad Sunday school videos, they would feed the jailer to lions or something if he got caught.  I mean, the guy would have some kind of violent Gladiator death for sure. Yet this jailer saw something so completely different in Paul than he’d ever seen in anyone that he risked his own life to learn more about it.  That’s nuts.  That is seriously nuts.

Christians Are The New Vampires

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What You’ve Missed…
* Jesus walks on water, which is pretty impressive.  Though not as impressive as walkin’ on sunshine.
* Jesus creates the world’s first free and instant buffet when He feeds thousands of hungry people, using only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, and everyone eats as much as they want.  Twice.  I think it’s official.  Jesus loves buffets.

Day 283
Daily Reading: John 6, Mark 7, Matthew 15

I’m going to just jump right in and talk about zombies and vampires.  They’re everywhere these days.  Zombies have taken over the world of fiction, and even local news stories in Florida, and vampires have taken over the romantic dreams of teenage girls everywhere.  (Vampires that are ridiculously handsome AND they sparkle?  It’s like Brad Pitt and My Little Pony had a baby, and now we all have to suffer the unending squeals of teen girls everywhere.)

But this is nothing new.  The idea of zombies and vampires can be traced all the way back to the Bible.  In fact, Jesus himself talks about both.

Check out what He says.

“I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man (Jesus) and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you.  But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”  John 6:53-55

Whaaaaaat?  Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I get from this is Jesus tells people they have to eat His flesh and drink His blood to gain eternal life.  Did I miss something because that sounds all kinds of jacked up.  Eating flesh?  Drinking blood?  That sounds…really weird, really creepy and…cultish.

Jesus, dude, couldn’t you have just stuck with, “Love your neighbor,” or “Peace in the Middle East,” or even a little bit of Bill and Ted wisdom like, “Be excellent to each other?”  Why do you have to freak people out, talking about how your followers have to eat your body, and drink your blood?  No one wants to hear that.

In fact, after He said this, a lot of His followers turned away.  Probably because they weren’t interested in eating other people.  This isn’t the Jesus I heard about in Sunday school.  I heard about “nice Jesus”, not “B Horror movie Jesus.”

Speaking of which, many of you reading may be Christians and might not find this weird, because you believe in the act of communion, which is how Christians take part in eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood today.  It may seem like no big deal.  I think that’s because we’ve heard it so much, it no longer has any impact on us.

But think about it.  The central figure in your spiritual beliefs, the one you base your lifestyle on, told people they would have to eat His body and drink His blood in order to gain eternal life.  Do you actually believe that?  If there was a cult that drank the blood of their leader, would you think that was normal?  Or would you think they were totally whacked out?

Well I have news for you.  That’s exactly what we’re doing as Christians.  We’re drinking the blood of our leader, to gain eternal life.  That’s the whole myth behind vampires!  (It’s just a shame we don’t get super-speed and super-strength as by-products.  We also don’t become overly dramatic horrible actors either, so that’s pretty good.)

And don’t forget, we also have stuff in common with flesh-eating zombies.  Though, we may not be mindless, I know of a few Christians who drool as much as any good zombie would.

So what’s my point?  I think we, as Christians, need to have some perspective of why non-Christians think we might be a little weird.  I think we need to be mindful that when we use expressions like, “The blood of the Lamb,” or “Our sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus,” people may be totally weirded out.  (Wow, we really do talk about blood a lot don’t we?  Yeah…that’s NOT totally creepy at all.)

Okay, okay…so it’s not really that intense.   Christians don’t actually drink blood.  We drink wine (or grape juice) as a symbol of Jesus’ blood.  And we don’t actually eat flesh, but rather bread (or fancy Catholic wafers) as a symbol for flesh.  But still…when you really think about it, it’s pretty crazy that we do it at all.

Geez, after all this eating, drinking and horror movie talk, I’m ready for some Jimmy Johns and a Walking Dead Marathon.

Christianity is awesome.

Was Jesus a Klingon?

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What You’ve Missed…
* Jesus gets baptized, gets disciples, and gets the whole Christian party under way (though, no booze of course.)
* Jesus changes up that whole “no booze” idea when he kicks a local party into overdrive, turning water into wine, providing free drinks, and a good time (probably too good of a time) for everyone!
* Jesus shows He doesn’t just party, and gets down to business healing tons of sick people, casting out tons of demons and raising people from the dead.  No big deal.
* Local Jewish scholars start to get pissed at how awesome people think Jesus is, and decide the most rational course of action is to plan how to kill Him.

Day 281
Daily Reading: Matthew 9-10, Mark 6

Making my way through the New Testament, which I am more familiar with than the Old Testament, I continue to find myself surprised at how crazy a lot of it is. For instance…I always thought of Jesus as a “nice guy”.  I thought of Him as calm, rational, and someone who taught about good morals and helped people.  He probably spent time playing with abandoned puppies and gave candy to children, always making sure to remind them to brush their teeth.  Sounds like a nice guy right?

Well, I’m not so sure.  At one point while He’s preparing the disciples to go out and preach, He says some pretty funky stuff for a nice guy.

“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.”  Matthew 10:37

And right before that, He makes it pretty clear that He’s not here to be a nice guy.

“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth!  I came not to bring peace, but a sword.  ‘I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  Your enemies will be right in your own household.”  Matthew 10:35-36

Dang.  Jesus don’t play!  He’s making it pretty clear that He considers a relationship with Him far more important than any other relationship a person can have.  When combined with the fact that He said He came to bring a sword, that sweet little nice guy image doesn’t hold up.  He’s more like Conan the Barbarian who’s shown up to get shit done.

Jesus isn’t simply trying to sound like a tough guy here.  The man lives by His own philosophy.  Later in Matthew, Jesus puts some of this crazy thinking into practice.

“As Jesus was speaking to the crowd, His mother and brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.  Someone told Jesus, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside, and they want to speak to you.’  Jesus asked, ‘Who is my mother?  Who are my brothers?’  Then he pointed to His disciples and said, ‘These are my mother and brothers.  Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!’”  Matthew 12:46-50

Dude…Jesus is rude!  Can you imagine if George W. Bush was speaking to a crowd, and someone came up, telling him that Sweet Barbara and Ol’ George Sr., want to talk to him, and he responded by saying, “I don’t know them.  I’m the Decider and I’ve decided the people listening to me are my only family.”  The media would flip out.  His parents would flip out.  That’d be a really horrible way to treat his family.  And that’s exactly what Jesus does here!  His mission is more important to Him than His own mother.

That is not how a nice guy acts.  Nice guys love their moms.  (Some of them even live with their moms.)  Nice guys give their families backstage passes and VIP treatment.  Not Jesus.  Dude gives his family the cold shoulder without a second thought.

I’m starting to think Jesus might have more in common with Klingons than Mother Theresa.