What would Jesus do?

The question has, fittingly, become something of an inane T-shirt slogan along the lines of “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” or “No Fat Chicks.” If he was real — he still falls into the same category as Robin Hood or King Arthur for me — then why the hell would he want anything to do with the lovely cross section of humanity that’s turned him into a QVC tchotchke, much more sit by idly as his followers arrogantly put words in his mouth?

If you’re looking for the perfect embodiment of the dissonance between what a bearded, down-at-heel hippy and the star-spangled superpatriots among us would do, then thankfully there’s Tea Party Jesus, a site devoted to literally using Big J as the puppet through which the very worst Tea Bagger illogic is funneled to wince-inducing effect. Yes, somehow our savior was able to anticipate such events as financial reform, gays in the military, and the turbulent 1960s. Simply click on a captioned picture to reveal which God Wad said what jaw-droppingly heinous pontification about which apocalyptic social development/hated class of people.

As a child, I had a teenage babysitter tell me I was bound for Hell because I didn’t go to church, and later, a grade school teacher hounded me irksomely because I liked ghosts. Later in my school tenure, a girl who was the daughter of one of those pillars-of-the-community fathers (read: a girl-touching pervert and misogynist monster) badmouthed me about town because she didn’t like my taste in reading. And so I’ve come to a conclusion: I have no fear of Hell, even if there is a God who has an oubliette he tosses dissenters into.

It’s obvious that I belong there — to descend into perpetual darkness with all the artists, free thinkers, rebels, and nonconformists. Dante‘s vision of Hell is so sprawling and saturnine that I don’t think a gated community Heaven replete with all manner of yokels, witch hunters, and jowly televangelists could possibly thrill me like a Doré Underworld of giants and the River Styx would. Maybe I’ll fall in love with a high-ranking demon and wed him in the cold winds of Lucifer’s beating wings, the two of us dwelling together in a palace of ice. Then I could finally use my favorite line from Hellboy that I’ve been saving up for either my defiant stake-burning or my murder trial:

“Hell will hold no surprises for us…”

So thank you Baggers, Social Conservatives, Free Market Capitalists, Snake Handlers, Tongue-Speakers, and Hockey Moms for showing me what I always suspected: that the true way to freedom and liberty lies downward. When humanity is but a fossilized relic and something new and hopefully better has taken our place — maybe some kind of amphibious mer-race — I hope that if some text does survive our passing, that it’s not a sacred scroll or divine tome. I’m pulling for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or The Secret World of Og, both books in which clever children peer beyond the curtains of superstition, consolidated power, and cultural boundaries to see truth. Then maybe they won’t think that all of mankind was like the cast of Hee Haw or Straw Dogs.

You see, it was these two books that I read as a child that started me wondering if God was just a scam perpetrated by weak and mortal adults to keep me in line. Even then, I could connect the allegory. And now I know that God is a giant motherfucking head, or a pillar of flame, or a winged Amazon, or a looming behemoth — whatever the needs of the moment require, meaning he can be kind and forgiving when you want to be condescendingly patronizing to sinners (or to gloss over your own iniquities) or he can be vengeful and terrifying towards those you deem anathema to your personal mythology.

He’s versatile that way.

And it struck me the other day, Baggers: you are the people of Og — maybe not green and diminutive like the subterranean race of elves discovered by a band of intrepid human siblings, but just as disengaged from the rest of the world and addled by superstition. Like the Ogs, yours is a scavenger culture based upon found objects/texts (for the Ogs, it’s purloined toys and comic books from the Overworld, and for you, the collected myths and artifacts of an ancient desert tribe) that you can’t really understand but take literally as you walk through the motions of a written narrative that you bend reality to fit.

Lacking insight or even language — their one all-purpose word is “Og!,” while yours is “God!,” aka the O.G. — Ogs can be backward, hostile even, when it comes to the unknown. Mistaking a comic that tells the story of the fearsome Snake People for gospel, the Ogs live in shuddery dread of the serpent race who dwell at the end of a taboo river and might even declare war. It takes the collective courage of the human brood to brave the caverns, follow the water, and ultimately discover that the Ogs have dreamed up their own oppressors, a long-overdue cry of “Bullshit!” from objective young people convincing their ranks that they’ve lived in fear of their own echoes, justified their own clannish isolation through fantasies of persecution.

So glury be, God’s Warriors. You’ve lost sleep over illegal immigrants and the poor possibly getting something for nothing while you’ve been happy to act as the attack dogs for corporations who ruin people and damage the environment while never having to pay out. You’ve co-opted everything from the Holocaust to the youth uprisings in Iran to cast yourselves as freedom fighters. You’ve even exploited the fallen and resurrected the dead to act as your unwilling spokespeople.

Clearly, Jesus was for privatization, Atlas has shrugged, and Og is burning.

© 2010, Shawn Baker. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com