Boring Even God

More about Boring Even God

Does he see it yet? I am everywhere in time and space. I was at the Last Supper, for instance, though history has preserved a silence concerning my attendance so complete that I have always regarded it as deliberate.

At first I had Jesus interested.

This was my first mistake.

I was explaining my theory concerning Amanita muscaria, Mandragora officinarum, and Peganum harmala, and how the combination would turn the whole business into a magnificent blood-red mess. I proposed that we call the mandrake “bread” or “body,” by way of a code word, and call the red mess “wine” or “blood.” I further observed that such a collection of herbs and fungi might be useful if a man ever found himself obliged to fake his own death—or, if you wanted a zombie, you could add Lagocephalus sceleratus.

Jesus regarded me with genuine interest for perhaps thirty seconds.

Then he asked if I had a PhD.

“No,” I said. “I only made it through a master’s program in physics.”

Years afterward it occurred to me that I ought to have asked whether he had a degree in religious studies, but Providence generally supplies a man with his best replies several decades after the argument.

Still, Jesus had given me thirty seconds, and thirty seconds of encouragement is dangerous when bestowed upon a philosopher.

At the time his entire movement had perhaps 153 devotees. This was a considerable number in those days, particularly if you happened to be one of the 153.

I proceeded directly into salvation.

I explained that salvation and liberation were not necessarily the same merchandise, although mankind would spend the next two thousand years selling them from the same counter and becoming offended whenever anybody examined the labels.

Then I brought up the Torah and Adam’s Fall.

I observed that once you put a Fall near the beginning of a religion, somebody is bound to manufacture a ladder, appoint himself its custodian, and charge admission.

Jesus began looking tired.

I continued.

“Why,” I asked, “put all this effort into influencing mankind across enormous stretches of history, thereby guaranteeing councils, schisms, inquisitions, commentaries, counter-commentaries, conferences, and gentlemen in expensive hats arguing over what you meant? Why not simply teach something founded upon knowledge instead of belief?”

The apostles had stopped eating.

Jesus had stopped listening.

But I had reached that dangerous point in an argument where a man mistakes the disappearance of his audience for evidence that he is winning.

I launched into epistemology.

Jesus put his cheek in his hand.

I advanced to liberation.

His eyes closed.

I introduced nondualism.

His head descended another inch.

Somebody at the far end of the table whispered, “For God’s sake, let the man sleep.”

“I’m nearly finished,” I said, which is one of philosophy’s oldest and most successful lies.

I explained the distinction between knowing the road and believing there was a road, and had just arrived at what I considered the essential matter—the identity of the traveler, the road, and the destination—when Jesus began to snore.

It was not a theological snore.

There was no ambiguity in it, no doctrine requiring interpretation, no opportunity for a council.

It was final.

It was the kind of snore which announced that the Son of God had withdrawn entirely from the controversy and entered the deep, dreamless state where neither salvation nor liberation requires further explanation.

I considered waking him.

The apostles considered killing me.

And that, I suspect, is why I am absent from the Gospels.