If you (alas) weren't there I've posted a special, slightly-edited version of "Friday Night At The Calvary Hotel" that I performed on my
site. The full version is available in both
BUT, as a special 'treat,' here's the piece I wrote but didn't perform - though if you happen not to be a
you might not want to skip the following ... but otherwise enjoy!
BIGGER THAN JESUS
"We're more popular than Jesus now ... Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary." – John Lennon
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Your dad has one. Your brother has one. Your uncle has one. Your grandfather has one. Your great, great grandfather has … or more than likely had one.
Albert Einstein had one. Babe Ruth had one. Michelangelo had one. Leonardo had one. Shakespeare had one. Lincoln had one. Ghandi had one. Hitler had one. Stalin had one.
Paul McCartney has one. Ringo Starr has one. George Harrison had one. Mitt Romney has a small one. Barack Obama has a huge one.
Anne Coulter has one.
The Dalai Lama has one. Pat Robertson has one. The Pope has one. Jerry Falwell had one.
I have one.
And there it is: the lead in to the question. But, as I said, the answer is not quite as important, as revealing, as the reaction to it.
So ... just how big was Jesus?
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Aside from a few unfortunate accident victims it’s a universal constant: men, human males to be specific, have a penis.
Keeping the argument Christian because, let’s face it, Jews shouldn’t really have a problem with the idea: why shouldn’t he have had one?
So just how big was Jesus? Bigger than average? He was supposed to be the Son of God, wasn’t he? So he was pretty damned big, but he probably wouldn’t want to be too big – after all, he did say something about humility, right? It wouldn’t be right if he, say, couldn’t be big enough to fit through the eye of a needle, but so big that he might have been a diversion from the Sermon on the Mount.
Circumcision is a given as he was the King of the Jews and all. But what happened to that part of him? Considering how precious various parts of Saints have been it seems odd that there haven’t been there many great Raiders of the Lost Ark adventures trying to locate that missing part of the Son of God.
We know that Jesus rose after three days -- but like most men did a certain part of his anatomy rise before the rest of him? Granting him superhuman control we can skate over certain embarrassing ponderings, but others just beg to be asked. For instance, there’s a hunk of his early days missing from the Bible: were those simply too embarrassing to report. He was, after all, an adolescent – and like most adolescent's probably spent a large part of his time locked in the bathroom with the Aramaic version of
Penthouse.
“Was Jesus bigger than John Holmes?” was the question I asked people on the street on a sunny San Francisco Sunday. Most of them didn’t know who John Holmes but said that Jesus was bigger.
Those that did know about John Holmes came close to inflicting physical bodily harm, so I’ve chosen to take their answers as affirmative-via-threatened ... though I wonder about their purity as they knew who John Holmes was.
Universally everyone interviewed said that he was bigger than the Beatles, but I have to wonder how they came to that conclusion: average length, intimate knowledge, or commutative measurement: Paul, John, George and then Ringo – one dick after another? Personally I lean towards the first as putting the Fab part of the Fab Four together would more than likely would make them bigger than John Holmes.
See, isn’t science fun?
But if he didn’t have a penis then what did he have? Was God so offended by one of his own creations, i.e. the penis, that he didn’t even give his son one?
Logic being apples to the oranges of faith, these few people couldn’t see beyond the playfulness of the question -- instead ramming headlong into a wall so inflexible they could only accept The Son Of God ... with the underparts of a Ken doll.
That's the question – that's what I'm asking here and what I asked those unfortunate pedestrians on a Sunday – but there's more to it, a more than I find even more disturbing than fundamentalist threats of violence.
Why is the idea of Jesus having a penis so upsetting? Before writing this I asked some people – religious or not – and got answers ranging from “turn the other cheek” hypocritical outrage to simple “squirming in seat” discomfort. Bad enough thinking of your father’s, let alone the son of a supposed all-father, was the flavor of the conversations.
Folks – mostly folks like us -- have talked about how Christianity has perverted and criminalized our flesh and blood natures, created a totally unrealistic and honestly disturbing fantasy world that real no human being could ever inhabit. A group-think nightmare worked out from very human self-interests of power and control from a few scraps of parchment and horribly distorted myths and fables.
The atheists, the agnostics, the insincere party-pagans -- we’ve given the Fundamentalists their little spot of land to burn each other at the stake on, stone gays on, refute evolution on, believe the divinity of the president and the USA on – at least in this little piece, but you folks are fair game: Christianity as an ignorantly adopted default religion, the divinity of Davy and Goliath, the ‘based on a true story’ mythology of Satan and his kick-boxing Son Of God nemesis, and the ‘proofs’ of divinity in tortillas and cheese sandwiches.
They're a lost cause. We can – rightfully – kick them aside. The future is not for them ... hell, even the present is not for them: they dream of – and deserve – a Disneyland Yesterday of smallpox, stonings, keeping the darkies in their place, and sex in the dark ... and only to make babies.
The Bible Thumpers have long since gone, slamming the door behind them -- so it’s just you and me now.
When I asked about Jesus's penis you smirked, you laughed through gritted teeth: oh, sure, Jesus had a penis. You can laugh at that one, self-righteously giggle at my lame jokes about how big The Son Of God was ... but, honestly, truthfully, how many of you hedged your bets by flicking your eyes at sky ... hoping that the Hairy Thunderer won’t be too pissed at you for even thinking about it.
That's the frightening thing: give the Fundimentalists their hysteria -- they’ve certainly earned it for running away from reality and into a land where the drugs that save their lives, the computers that let them scream and shout about the evils of a secular society, the engineering that puts roofs over their heads, all came from what they fear more than Satan and his cloven tap-shoes: science and thought. The dick of Jesus is theirs to scream and howl about.
But why should people who haven’t drunk the sacramental wine of Christianity found the idea of Jesus’s penis uncomfortable?
It’s understandable that the Fundamentalist rockers and mumblers would foam and froth, but why is the idea so disturbing for folks who have never read the Bible, any Bible, or even set foot in a church, any church, or who are – to put it politely – vocal about being not just unbelievers but that anyone who does believe is a complete, total, and utter moron.
We -- the atheists, the agnostics, the insincere party-pagans – far too easily forget what we are not believing about: where the real danger lies.
The Fundamentalists make themselves easy targets, dancing clowns in front of neon-green bulls eyes, but when people who have never been in any church, read any religious tract, or even openly sneer any anything to do with the idea of faith squirm in their seats, flick their eyes skyward, it pulls aside the curtain and shows that irrational belief is not loud and cartoonish but hidden in plain sight.
Sure, the Fundamentalists have left the party. But far too many people on this planet have all the ignorance but none of the dedication: they are the ones who shake their heads at evolution, gay rights, sexual expression, freedom of expression, and the Separation of Church and State while not understanding exactly why.
Will talking about Jesus’s penis change anything?
Of course it won’t – not immediately at any ate -- but I hope that maybe a few of you will think about it when you look out at the world and see only the burning crosses ... forgetting that the true darkness of believing the unbelievable, of irrational terrors of punishment by Dad in the Sky, is not just in the face of a screaming preacher but in the same discomfort that comes from walking under a ladder ... or thinking about Jesus's dick.
But one more thing: just to show that Jesus and his followers aren’t the only ones being picked on here – and, perhaps, reveal how deep this seam of fear runs through even we who consider ourselves above and beyond all these foolish fears, these ridiculous beliefs, these silly irrationalities:
Just how big was Mohammad?
