A man walks into a bar (this bar happens to be "manned" by none other than Jesus H. the Christ himself), orders a tequlia shot, a cerveza, two shots of whiskey, and a pint of malt liquor. "That last one is for mis hermanos who reside on your side of the plane, Jesus, or maybe down below where one of your uppity angels runs the show."
Jesus is unfazed by this show of bravado, and responds.
"Is that gonna do it for you, my brother, mi hermano Del Dios?"
The dirty, slightly over-fragrant man with his attitude and a strange dose of theological knowledge has just stopped sipping his beer to down a tequila shot. "Si, si, that'll do it you Son of Man, you!" He laughs just a little too loudly as if pleased that he has made a joke for his non-audience, that is, unless you include the Lord of Lords, key to all the souls of humanity.
"Add'er all up, Jesus," he throws out with a pained look still on his face from the piss-poor tequila shot he just downed. No Patron here. Strangely enough, he says Jesus this time with a Mexican pronunciation; Hay-Soos, instead of his earlier Anglicized inflection.
"Do you enjoy doing this to yourself; hell, to me! For all eternity to watch and pick apart. A panoply of gods and monsters; misers and gamblers; saints and sinners... " At this point Jesus stops his tirade and quietly laughs to himself before finishing. "Buddha and Buddha's killers."
Our seeming alcoholic-for-the-night slaps his hands down on the table and picks up a whiskey shot, sloshing it about. "Exactly, my friend! Salud to you." And at this he downs the shot, his hand then hovering above the malt liquor. "On second thought, my friends have enough going for them. I think that this mierda ought to go to your crowd. Lord knows ( eh, not you, mi amigo ) they've had enough pain and suffering without any sort of proper knowledge to use and so avoid it. This is to them, then."
He pours out the cheap malt liquor onto the ground, but instead of the expected splash, all we are greeted by is an instantaneous soaking up of liquid, that leaves the floor spotless.
"This is one hell of an intrepid game we play," the Christ begins, "everyone having to make a choice... discounting of course the nihilists, but let's just see how devoted they are to their precious philosophy when in the grip of a life-crusher of a heart attack. My bet is that we'd be getting some calls then. But whatever, back to my original point, all nihilists aside or, well, into nothingness..." At this point Jesus does something that might be described as jazz-hands, if he weren't The Messiah, to illustrate the dissolution of said nihilists. He is quite pleased with himself. "I'd mention the atheists, just as a joke mind you," he quickly interjects in response to his patron's derisive glare. "But, but... we both know that there's very little in this bar more bitingly ironic than a group that wholeheartedly believes that there is no religion to believe in. But forget all that, you know, we could've played things a lot simpler -"
"But boring, nah... fucking boring; and don't forget the fact that none of these unappreciative bastards would've played that game. All the free-will they could ever possibly desire and a big-ass billboard pointing them in the right direction... Nah, they'd never go for it; these kids adore their 32 flavors, fucking need it, and yet if you give them too many choices you hamstring them. They'd be liable to wander about in circles, eyes glazed, mouth agape, with drool and indecision dripping from their mewling maw. No, that's where the whole 'devout and devoted' aspect fits in (oh, and yeah, that's your solution I might add)," at which point Jesus nods in an appropriately humble fashion. "And this is exactly why most of these kids will end up choosing what their mothers and fathers chose."
"Goddamn, man!" He goes off tangentially. "Y'all do not serve a particularly bad lager here. Very fine indeed." He raises his mug, as if in a toast to the Superstar, and downs the meager, sudsy amount of beer he has left before setting it down on the bar, none too quietly.
Jesus begins to clean up the bar with a slightly stained shroud, adorned with what appears to be a face. Clearing away his patron's now empty attempts toward inebriation, he cradles the last whiskey shot in his hand, majestically, as though he could do it any other way.
"Please, my dearest of friends, dispatch this, thine last jewel of oblivion." His smile, genuine at the very least, streams out from his eyes. Were he serving any other patron than this one, we would assuredly be confronted by an imminent destruction, a shredding of our loquacious friend's being at the atomic level until all evidence of his previous existence would be a barely detectable quantum miasma.
The patron bows, takes his precious ounce, indeed dispatching it in one gulp, and shakes himself from head to toe for dramatic effect before arising from where he sat atop a stool by the bar. "As we do have a helluva lot of time to continue this, I will leave you to your loneliness and the unfathomable guilt you carry around yourself like a, well, cross," The patron can barely stifle a laugh at this last bit, but continues, "and lest we forget the most important benefit of being the son of a Jewish tribal deity: your bar.
"Goodnight, my friend, my brother, and as always, a fellow soldier; may they never know we fight for them."
Jesus chuckles to himself graciously. "Ahh, goodnight Buddha. If you happen to meet someone on your way home, just turn and walk the other way this time, please."
An extremely amused, almost fierce and eager, smile is all the response that he receives.
- "The significance of His two natures would take pages to explain. Suffice it to say that in Jesus, God is revealed in human form as God manifest in the flesh" (The Virgin Birth of Jesus: Its Significance by Jay Smith 1997)
- http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com/truth.htm