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At the urging of influential religious leaders, a spokesman for the Lord today announced that He would be taking backing numerous things he said in the gospels. Tommy Boy Paine was at the scene.

At the urging of the nation’s conservative religious leaders, The Archangel Gabriel today gave a press conference today outside of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, the home church of Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps.  Speaking on behalf of Jesus, he announced to local media that Jesus has had some time to reflect, and now wishes he hadn’t said some of the things that appear in the gospels.  This reporter, for one, was not surprised.

Flanked by holy men Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and John Hagee, the angel cut right to the chase. “First of all, I’m glad to be in Kansas, where the real Christians are,” said Gabriel, resplendent in heavenly glory.  “Those New York ‘Christians’ can suck it.” 

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“And yes, the Lord has done a lot of thinking, and realizes that he was a little wild in his youth and would at times say obviously insane things like ‘Judge Not, lest ye be judged yourselves’.  Clearly queers need judging, and while there are lots of good Christians doing so already, it’s time the rest of them carried their weight.  It’s not easy judging that many people.  The sheer number of college softball players alone that need to be publicly condemned is staggering.”

Hugh Jasse of Channel 9 news at 10 (stealing my thunder) asked for another example.

“Well, it should be obvious that the Son of God is not so irresponsible as to tell people things like ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you’ and actually mean it.  That’s just plain stupid.  The savior now realizes that you really do need to torture a motherf**cker if he’s your enemy.  Sometimes even if you’re not sure the motherf**ker in question is an enemy at all.”

At this point, conservative pastor Gary Bauer applauded loudly, and began pointing at members of the liberal media, saying “I TOLD you so.  Didn’t I tell you so???”

At this, the angel began to look at his heavenly watch.  “I’d love to take your questions, but I have a previous engagement to meet with some cherubim at a club in LA.  I have left a complete list of statements the Lord wishes to take back.  Members of the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, and others actually drafted the list.  But I assure you that Jesus did see it and signed off on it.  His signature is on the original – this is just a copy.”

Eager for a scoop, I went through the list myself.  The list was so long that it couldn’t fit in a single article, but some highlights of retracted items:

  • Matthew chapter 5: blessed are the merciful, the peacemakers, love your enemies.  The Savior realizes this is no way to keep his beloved America safe.  Peacemakers are weak on Defense. Retracted.
  • Matthew chapter 6:  Don’t do your charity publicly or pray out in front of people, etc.  The Lord is no fool and knows that if you don’t brag about your works or pray aloud at football games, nobody will know how holy you are.  He thinks he may have had too much wine when he said that.  Retracted.
  • Matthew chapter 7: Judge not, take the log out of your eye before trying to take the speck out of another’s.  Really?  You really think that Jesus is dumb enough to say that people should focus on their own faults AND that a log could fit in an eye?  Retracted.
  • Matthew chapter 19:  When the rich young ruler asks Jesus how to gain eternal life, and Jesus just says to follow the commandments not to kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, honor mom and dad, and love your neighbor as yourself he was not being serious.  The tip-off is when he said that the guy could only be perfect if he gave his fortune to the poor.  Jesus is no socialist.  Clearly, he hated this guy and wanted him to go to hell.  Otherwise, he could have just said “believe in me and you will have eternal life”.  But he didn’t now, did he?  Retracted.

In fact, after all the retractions, the gospel of Matthew now contains about 72 words, which is in my opinion much easier to digest. 

Each of the three other gospels that made it into the canon, and even some of the gnostic gospels, got similar edits.  The book of Luke, for example, lost a bunch of nonsense like chapter 3:14 that in one verse says “do violence to no man” and “be content with your wages”.  This reporter personally believes that the authors must have taken this out of context.  As the holy Republican Party assures us, amassing personal wealth to feed a never-ending hunger for more material goods is about the most Christian thing you can do.

The Lord’s list stopped short of calling the gnostic Gospels of Thomas and Mary fabrications, but did note that both of them spent a lot of time “hitting the bong” and thus couldn’t be expected to remember exactly what he said anyway.

Thankfully, the gospels are now in perfect conformity with the will of the religious right.  As it should be.

Amen, good night, and good luck.