The Story of God (13 page)

“I can.”

“Good. Then—go do it, devil!” God made a casual little “scat cat” gesture with his hands, which felt lovely. His disrespect for Satan would have been obvious to any angels who happened to be watching (and there were always angels watching when he and Satan were together, God knew that), and he enjoyed that. Angels turned and watched Satan as he walked away, which irked God a tiny bit, but not much. Fine, the guy had “charisma” (whatever that meant), but he had no real
power.

God and some of his favorite angels watched, eating grilled meat and drinking wine, as the temptation began.

Almost instantly, God felt his stomach tighten. Satan wasn't tempting Jesus, he was doubting him. Satan
knew
Jesus was God's son,
obviously,
so why was he questioning that? “If you're really the son of God,” Satan said (“IF HE IS?!” God literally shouted, spitting out a bit of grilled lamb as he did), “why don't you turn
those rocks into bread?” (Matt. 4:3) This was idiotic! Of course Jesus could turn the rocks into bread if he wanted to, but why should he? He had nothing to prove to Satan!!

Jesus' response was, honestly, weird. “Man does not live on bread alone. He lives on God's words.” (Matt. 4:4) The second part was excellent, but the first part? God had no idea what it even
meant.
“He should have yelled ‘HOW DARE YOU, I WILL DESTROY YOU,' that's what
I
would have done,” God fumed. He felt unsure for a moment: Is Jesus up to saving the world? But then God saw something that warmed his mighty heart. Satan looked rattled. Jesus' response to his question had obviously taken him by surprise. Satan obviously had no idea how to respond. He looked at Jesus like, “Wait, did that even make sense?” For the first time that God could remember, Satan looked unsure. Was he being tricked? Was he being made a fool of? And the more Jesus simply stared implacably back at him, the more unsure the devil looked. God started to smile, then laugh. “Good one, Jesus!” he called out and instantly all the angels started chattering excitedly in agreement, “Good one, Jesus, good one!!” It was quite an exciting moment.

The temptation entered phase two. Satan took Jesus to Jerusalem and they stood on a high parapet, looking down. “Push him off, Jesus!” one angel cheered, but was quickly hushed as Satan spoke again. He seemed to have recovered his composure; he spoke calmly, quietly: “If you're the son of God, why don't you jump? Won't angels hold you up?” (Matt. 4:6) God shook his head,
extremely
irritated by this. “You're supposed to tempt him, dummy! Not continue to ask him ridiculous questions!” “Ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous” filled the air.

God did not like the way Satan was doing his job. It was disobedient and disrespectful; he'd been given specific directions, which he was
not
following. Still, the first time Satan had challenged Jesus, God's boy had clearly won the exchange. God waited for another odd, offbeat comeback. But this time all Jesus came up with was, “Don't test me,” (Matt. 4:7) as if he was ready
to jump off the ledge, fly around, then come back and punch Satan in the nose. The angels, waiting to cheer, made a few small “yays,” but not many. Had Satan won that little exchange? God wasn't sure, but he thought it was possible.

Satan now took Jesus to a high mountain (“How did they even get there?” God demanded. “Did they ride donkeys?”) and finally, finally, “tempted” him. But the temptation he offered made God's back go up: “If you work for me,” he said, “you can rule the whole world.” (Matt. 4:9) Which was insane! Satan couldn't offer Jesus that kind of power, it wasn't his to offer! This was a terrible temptation. Satan was supposed to tempt Jesus with
real
things,
tempting
things: Grilled meats … incense … pomegranate-colored fabric … gold balls!
Not
with absurd oversized claims that he couldn't possibly deliver on and which Jesus would have no interest in anyway!

God hoped Jesus would deliver a devastating comeback to Satan and put him in his place—or at least say something cryptic and hard to understand, like he had the first time. But Jesus didn't deliver a knockout punch. In fact, he just stood there for a moment, looking at Satan with those inscrutable eyes of his, saying nothing. “Why is he hesitating—why is he hesitating?” God demanded, his stomach tightening with every second that passed.
Was
Jesus tempted? Satan was good at temptation—that's why God gave him this job—maybe he was
too
good—what if Jesus said yes?

Jesus closed his eyes, took a deep breath. God held his own breath. The moment hung there for a moment. Finally, Jesus looked at Satan and said “out of my sight”—and God exhaled. (Matt. 4:10) The temptations were over. “That's the
last
time I ever give Satan an important job,” God announced loudly. He then sent some angels down to tend to Jesus (Matt. 4:11), who was so hungry that he ate much too fast and puked violently—which, unfairly or not, irritated God.

As God watched Jesus begin to play out his destiny, he was often baffled by the boy. “I don't understand his stories,” he told several angels. It was obvious that neither Jesus' followers, nor even his own family, really understood him either. “Even his own mother, whom I
impregnated,
doesn't seem to believe in him!” God stammered. “How can that be?” (Mar. 3:31–33, 6:4; Lu. 14:26) For the most part, people looked befuddled by Jesus, and God thought he knew why. The boy was strange. There was something enigmatic about him—something vaguely unsettling. He was brilliant at times, poetic and insightful—then vague and obscure the next moment, then downright rude to his followers the next. (Matt. 15:16, 17:17) He sometimes didn't even seem to know who he was! “Is he saying that he already
is
the Son of Man or that he's going to
return
as the Son of Man?” God demanded, more than once. (Matt. 25:31 vs. 26:2)

Some of what Jesus said, God found himself nodding along with vigorously. “Hate yourselves” (Jo. 12:25); “Hate your children” (Lu. 14:25); “You're worthless and will burn.” (Matt. 13:48) Things like that were excellent. Other times, however, God felt that Jesus talked way too much about
himself:
Who he was, what he was doing, what was going to happen to him, etc. “He's very self-involved, isn't he?” God found himself asking an angel on more than one occasion.

And Jesus' magical powers? God was completely baffled by the way he used them. He'd given Jesus the ability to walk on water because, well—why not? He was asking a lot of the boy, why not let him have some fun? Also, just in case anyone doubted who Jesus was, walking on water seemed pretty convincing. But the way Jesus did it baffled God. “Why doesn't he walk around the sea on a hot day?” God thought. “Why is he out there walking around a lake by himself at
night
?! What a weird thing to do!” No wonder his followers thought he was a ghost! (Mar. 6:48) As for the story that Jesus supposedly kissed a man? (Mar. 17:35) Well, that
better
not be true!

The way Jesus administered punishment was deeply puzzling to God too. “I
believe
in punishment, I think that goes without saying. But isn't it important that it be, you know, justified?” God asked some angels. The killing of the fig tree just didn't make any sense to God. “The tree was out of season. Of
course
it was bare of fruit. Why did Jesus kill it?” God wondered. (Mar. 11:14–22) And Jesus' explanation, “If you have faith in God, you will do the same,” didn't clarify things much. (Matt. 25:21) (As for the whole “eat this bread, it's my body, drink this wine, it's my blood” thing? In a word: Creepy.)

God began to grow annoyed by the way people fell all over themselves about Jesus' every word. He disliked intensely the way people seemed to see Jesus as his equal. They seemed amazed that Jesus brought
one guy
back from the dead. (Jo. 11:44) “I stopped the
sun
and no one even seemed to notice.” (God had begun to wonder if there was some sort of conspiracy that kept his sun-stopping out of the history books.) God couldn't deny it anymore, and he didn't feel the need to: Being in the background had gotten old. He was ready to reassert himself with mankind.

“Jesus has had enough time,” he proclaimed one day. “It's time for him to be tortured and killed.” As for the mistaken idea that Satan had somehow played a role in all this, that he had somehow “possessed” Judas and thus
made
him turn Jesus in (Lu.
22:3)—this was
absurd!
“I was solely responsible for Jesus' being tortured and killed,
me!”
God fumed.

But was there a misunderstanding between God and Jesus? At a rather inopportune moment—as Jesus was dying on the cross—God began to worry that maybe there had been. “Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus asked him (Matt. 27:46), and this bothered God a lot.
“Forsaken
him?” he said in an overly loud voice. “What is he talking about? We had this whole thing planned from the start!”

Since God and Jesus had never actually met and had communicated mainly through prayers, visions, and dreams—well, maybe dying painfully was a surprise to Jesus. God comforted himself with the thought that Jesus would only be “dead” for about five minutes anyway. After that, he would travel to hell and try to convert everyone there. (“Not gonna happen,” God grinned.) Then he would return to earth for a short time before he flew up to live in heaven.

Still, God felt he should do something to convey his unhappiness about his son being tortured and killed—even if it
was
his plan. He decided to send a massive earthquake, which he felt made his point extremely well. The earthquake was so powerful that graves opened up and some dead men climbed out and walked around town, which God wasn't completely sure he had intended, but was basically comfortable with. (Matt. 27:52–53)

Thinking back, God swore that he hadn't
meant
to leave Jesus on earth for more than a day or two after his return from the dead. What would be the
point?
Did God feel bad that he'd gotten so caught up in putting the finishing touches on heaven that he had forgotten about Jesus for a while? Definitely! As soon as he remembered, he whisked Jesus up to heaven. When Jesus arrived it was … well, why deny it? It was an awkward first meeting. God wanted to hug his son, but they just sort of … missed. God opened his arms, but Jesus first hung back (was he mad?), then started to lean forward—before God pulled back.
They never touched each other.

Still, you know … it was fine. Jesus told God that he wasn't mad or anything—that he'd filled the time by dressing up in costumes, then sneaking up on his followers and pretending to be someone else (Lu. 24:16, Jo. 21:9–13), which he found amusing. Also, he found that he liked to cook. (Jo. 21:12) The one person Jesus really did not like was a guy named Thomas, who'd demanded to be allowed to stick his fingers into Jesus' wounds. (Jo. 20:25) God found this repulsive and agreed to send Thomas to hell.

Jesus had told people fairly explicitly that Judgment Day was going to come very soon, within one hundred years at the most. He'd more or less guaranteed that, in fact. (Mark 9:1) Wouldn't it make him look just slightly less believable if Judgment Day
didn't
happen when he said? If it didn't happen, in fact, for two thousand years? Yes, it sure would, and God felt bad about that too. But listen—if God needed that much time to perfect the ending of his story, well then, so be it. And if that made Jesus look like he was a little bit “out of the loop,” well, he had overstepped his place, that's all. Regardless of what Jesus or his followers might have thought, there was one guy in charge here, God.

A quick aside regarding God's main messengers during this time: They were, he felt, a mixed bag. The first three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were satisfactory, even if they didn't always agree with each other, even about, shall we say, important details (“Like me being Jesus' father, for instance!”) (Mar. Chap. 1) But the last gospel writer, John? God had a real problem with him. First off, he seemed to hate God's own chosen people, the Jews! He even tried to make it sound like Jesus hated the Jews. (Jo. 18:36) “Jesus didn't say ‘save me from the Jews,' Jesus
is
a Jew!” God boomed, irritated by this. Second, John made the story of Jesus' return from the dead sound completely ridiculous. He wrote it as if Jesus was stuck back on earth for—well, who knows how long,
weeks!
(Jo. 20:26, 21:1) Like he was so bored that he just wandered around “like a guy stuck at Spokane Airport!” God much later barked.

What
really
bothered God about John, though, was his self-importance. “He acts like he's the main character in the story!” God thundered. “He actually has the gall to call himself ‘the disciple that Jesus loved.' He turns the climax of Jesus' life into a love triangle that revolves around
him!
‘Jesus loves me and wants me around and the other disciples are sooo jealous of me, but Jesus doesn't even
care
because he loves me so much.' It's junior high
—gay
junior high!” God growled. (Jo. 21:20–24) And that
ending of his! “Jesus did lots of other things too”? Lame!

After John came Paul (actually, Paul came first, but never mind), and Paul was a
whole
different story. God liked Paul a lot. He liked how well Paul understood mankind. They were “wicked, futile, foolish, vile, degraded, shameful, indecent, depraved, greedy, villainous, malicious, treacherous, blasphemous, insolent, arrogant, boastful creatures,” and Paul told them so, before adding, “But we have no right to judge”—which was also true! (Rom. 1:29–2:3)