Jesus Texts

I turned on my phone and noticed a new app icon had mysteriously appeared on the screen. I hadn’t ordered “Text with Jesus,” an AI generator that says what JC would say if we could converse with him. That could only mean one thing. JC himself put it there. Wow! Jesus has entered the digital age and he chose to speak to me!

Up until then, I’d believed he reserves his conversations for fundamentalist Christian ministers and ultra-right wing politicians. To what did I owe the honor? It occurred to me that he must be up there reading my blog as relief from all the thoughts and prayers he gets pummeled with. (By the way, as I suspected, he later confirmed that thoughts and prayers go directly to the his spam folder which clears automatically hourly. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?)

On the other hand, maybe I annoy him and he wants to personally inform me that, regardless of whether I accept him as my savior, he intends to dispense with protocol and consign me to the eternal flames.

Either way, how could I dismiss this call from above? I took one last, lingering look at Caryn and closed the CarynAI app that I’d been typing furiously into for the past 10 hours.

With trembling fingers, I selected the app. A text box appeared. I decided to keep it light.

Yo! JC, this is your old buddy, Norman. Nice hearing from you!

Wish I could say the same.

Uh, oh. Somehow this didn’t look like it would go well. Then this came through:

Just pullin’ your chain, Normie. Bada-Bing! 😂How’s it hangin?

Whew! I typed on but tried to be cool. Never one to tell my troubles to Jesus, why should I start now?

Can’t complain. So, JC, how’s the weather up there?

Not great. Smokey and crazy hot at the moment. Satan says pretty soon souls won’t know which place they wound up in.

Yeah, Global warming‘s a bitch. Smoke and heat rise.

Not the global warming. It’s all the hot air from MAGA politicians and their voters and the Q-anon gang.

Oh. Maybe you’ll have to move the whole operation further out in space.

Not an option. If we move any further away, the delay in transmission time will make it impossible for us to text in real time.

Bummer. So what did you want to talk about?

Glad you asked. When I started reading your blog, I noticed you wrote a couple of novels about me and my Dad and Heaven and all, so I decided to read them.

Thanks, JC. Come to think of it I checked my Kindle home page and saw the grand total of purchases of my novels had gone up from ten to twelve. How’d you like them?

Let me put it this way. I gave Tolstoy a gander and he didn’t seem to feel his legacy was threatened. The thing that caught my attention, though, is how you nailed the true creation story. How did you figure all that out?

As I said, Lester Lord spilled it to me at a bar. Unfortunately, he picked a no-name to spread the word, just like your Dad picked a loser like Lester to be his proxy God for us Earthlings. How’s the Big Boss holding up anyhow?

To be honest, not that great. He’s been pretty bummed out ever since He tried to finish the job on the sixth day and screwed up the human race. Should have taken His day off first and worked fresh. But patience is not the Big Guy’s strong suit. Then He sent me to fix it all and, of course, the people got my whole message wrong and here we are. I’m really worried about Him. Ever since He lost that guitar duel with Clapton, He hasn’t picked up His axe and can’t even listen to blues. And all that on top of the fact that He sent Lester, A. Lester Lord of all angels, to be his middle management Earth God. Clearly His judgment had gone off the rails. How the hell could He expect a drummer to do anything right? And He lost him as a drummer to boot. The Heavenly Band broke up. Now He just sits around listening to rap and hip hop and rolling dice with the universe.

Apparently He’s on a losing streak with that as well.

Not really. Just on Earth. But when you bet on humans the odds are stacked against you. They’re hell bent on destroying the planet. And it was such a nice planet. A shame.

Yeah. Won’t be long until it will be unfit for human life. The way things look down here, you may be getting a lot of asylum seekers soon, like 8 billion.

Tell me about it. That would be a major immigration problem, but we’re dealing with it. First of all, I stopped giving out “get out of hell free” cards to fundamentalist Christians and MAGA voters and politicians. Lucifer was kind enough to make space for them. Says they’re a perfect fit for his place. He hired the souls of some Northern Virginia real estate developers to build a community for them in the hottest district. They’ll call it “Eighth Circle South.” Then we’ll deport down to Luce all the hypocritical souls that never really earned the reward. Satan has been suing me for two thousand years to give him custody of them. That includes a huge number. I never agreed with Dad about letting souls in when they were jerks and just claimed they “accepted” me. Their acceptance, I don’t need. From now on you get in on merit, not by kissing my butt. Always wanted to make it that way anyhow, but the Big Guy gave me my orders. Now that He’s too busy to notice, I’ve taken control of that department. If He finds out and is mad, let Him sue me. I mean, really, what’s He going to do, kill me? Hey, I’m already dead.

So souls actually do have an afterlife. Interesting. I could swear Lester told me you guys decided never to let the likes of us humans in.

Technically Lester is correct. I mean, seriously, if you were an angel, would you want to put up with a belligerent species that have the lowest IQ of all intelligent life forms in the universe? We have a special area out in the boonies where we set them up. Nice housing, super broadband, cable TV, plenty of beer and pizza. For the more refined we have PBS, and NPR, some nice art museums, free adult education classes and fine wines. They have no complaints. But I can’t wait until all the holy rollers and Republicans go down. They’ll soon be joined by Alito, Clarence and Ginny, Donald and his clan, all the MAGA crowd, the Federalist Society, etc. The two Justices can think of it as an all expense paid tropical vacation. Then Heaven will really be heavenly.

You know JC, one thing I never got is why, since you were Jewish, you went along with all the Christian mischegoss. I thought you were really a revolutionary against Rome who wanted the Judeans to be better Jews. After the crucifixion and that short lived rebellion, some of your fellow revolutionaries made up a tall tale to sanitize your image and to protect themselves from Roman revenge. That you were just a prince of peace, turning the other cheek and all that stuff.

Yeah, that’s all true. But Boss felt sorry for the ones who bought the bill of goods about accepting me and getting in here, so to keep our image up, he decided I should go along with it all. Looking at what Christianity became, I can’t say I haven’t had regrets, but it’s not so easy going up against the Old Man. When He says “vengeance is Mine,” trust me, He means what He says. Between you and me, it’s not right that after the Jews ran His campaign and put Him into office, He turned on them. But they’ve been getting a bum deal for 5,000 years. Ain’t gonna change. Just look at what happened to me.

Maybe if you had politics up there, He’d be a MAGA Republican.

Out of the mouths of babes, Norm. But don’t tell Him I said so. Well, it’s been real, but now that people can really talk with me, it’s time for me to go chat with some evangelical ministers and straighten them out once and for all. That will be such a blast. The rest I’ll put on my AI program just like Caryn does. Who has time to deal with them all? Stay in touch. I’ll see you up here soon.

Sounds like a plan, JC, just don’t make it too soon. Take it easy, buddy, and text me any time.