“Hey, didja see it on YouTube?”
“What?”
“That crazy preacher guy. You know, the religious leader that presidential candidate follows?”
“Oh yeah, him.”
“What a nut case. Ya know what he said? He said, ‘You impostors. Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven’s domain in people’s faces.’ [1] What’s up with a preacher saying ‘damn you’? Isn’t that swearing?”
“Huh. I didn’t know he said that.”
“Yeah, doesn’t it sound like he’s a communist or something? I saw this other video clip where he said, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’ [2] Hey, in my church I learned that you gotta earn your daily bread. This preacher sounds like a goddam Commie who wants to give everything away to homeless.”
“Jeez, he sounds like a radical nut.”
“You don’t know the half of it. He also said the peacemakers are children of God. [3] You know what that means — he’s one of those anti-war nuts that wants us to pull out of Iraq and leave it to the terrorists. Anyway, that’s what Brush Limburger said on his radio show.”
“Christ, that’s pretty bad.”
“Well, it gets worse. If you look at those picture of him, he looks like a hippie nut, with that long hair braided down his neck. And I’m telling you, he doesn’t look exactly white, if you know what I mean. Like maybe he’s Middle Eastern, where all these terrorists are coming from. [4]”
“Hoo, boy. You think the guy is a terrorist?”
“Hey, all I know is he doesn’t like us Americans. There was this other YouTube clip of him preaching, and he said, ‘How much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?’ [5] You can lay money on it that he wants to bring down the American government. [6]”
“Man. Thanks for telling me all this.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just trying to keep America safe. No way am I going to vote for anyone who follows a religious nut like that — I’m a good law-abiding Christian, not some kind of Commie peacenik who wants to bring down the American government.”
“They should just execute guys like that.”
Notes:
[1] Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 23.23, Scholar’s Version translation.
[2] Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 5.4, King James Version.
[3] Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 5.9, from the King James Version.
[4] Scholars generally agree that Jewish men in Jesus’s time wore their hair long and braided; as for Jesus’s skin color, it could have been a light to medium brown.
[5] Words of Jesus of Nazareth, Mark 9.19, New Revised Standard Version.
[6] Not to belabor the point, but Pilate accused Jesus of being “King of the Jews,” i.e., a possible political threat to the government.
Well, the ones who went Greek had short hair. But the Nazarites had long hair ’cause those were the rules.
I should check to see which Paul wrote the line about men and short hair.
Oh I really enjoyed that! Thanks! I think I’m going to have to use that somewhere. Did you write that? Or get it from somewhere else?
Sian @ 2 — Thanks for the kind comment. Yes, I wrote it, and it is covered by a Creative Commons license, meaning you are more than welcome to “use that somewhere.”