Forward

Our story concludes with a few sightings of zombie Jesus, the recruitment of a murderer as a saint, and an apocalyptic tale that includes a dragon.

Zombies in the Mist

So Jesus gets tortured and nailed to a tree and then dies, which is apt to happen when someone is viciously beaten and nailed to a tree. But Jesus is actually The Wiz and after three days he's had enough of the being dead thing so he turns himself into a zombie. He walks out of his tomb like he's hot shit, which technically he would be, seeing as he can turn himself into a zombie and all, and proceeds to jump out of the bushes and scare the shit out of some folks who knew him before he got nailed to a tree. He also pops in to haunt this guy named Paul, who was persecuting the crap out of all the people who believed Jesus was really The Wiz in human form. Paul didn't know Jesus before the whole murder thing so Jesus plays peekaboo with him and when Paul can see through his hands he knows it's zombie Jesus and that he's actually The Wiz.

So Paul runs around telling everyone about this. Of course some of the dudes that had actually palled around with Jesus were also running around trying to recruit Jesusites too. This caused for some confusion and so Paul started writing letters to all the churches and told them to listen to him, because he had inside information straight from zombie Jesus' rotting lips, so most started just doing what Paul said because zombies are scary as shit and a guy who talks to zombies is double scary. The Wiz gets tired of haunting people as zombie Jesus and goes back to chill out in his extra-dimensional mansion outside of space and time and is never heard from again.

The End?

You would think this was the end, but as with most good movies we've got a sting after the credits.

As it turns out The Wiz had one more trick to do before ghosting out stage left. For his finale, The Wiz decides to make this guy named John, who lives on an island named Patmos, have a piss your pants night terror in which he describes the end of the world. In this nightmare The Wiz shows John these seven scrolls and tells him, "I'm gonna open these like it's a game show and each time I do horrible stuff is gonna happen." To which John replies, "What the hell is a game show?" (or at least he should have). So The Wiz describes all the horrible shit he's gonna do, including plagues and famine and then a dragon shows up (meanwhile we still wait for George R.R. Martin's dragons to show up).

Now the dragon is supposedly old Lucifer and apparently he's after some pregnant lady and her baby. He tries to eat the baby but fails and so he starts a war with The Wiz. Of course The Wiz is an ultra wizard and so he kicks the dragon Lucifer's ass and sends him packing. Dragon Lucifer finds that chick with the baby again and is like, "Get in my belly!", but the chick grows giant eagle wings and flies off to go live in the woods. The dragon chases her some more and then spits a river at her, but the earth opens up and swallows the water and saves her. The dragon is super pissed, so he chases down all the woman's descendants. (Are you confused? You should be.)

The Wiz tells John that he's going to give his evil twin control of the earth for like a thousand years to do whatever he wants too. John is thinking this all sounds pretty grim, but then The Wiz tells him the up side. He tells John that all the people who worship The Wiz get to come live at his house in some other dimension after they die, but anyone who doesn't worship him is going to be sent to a dimension made of fire and be tortured for eternity.

No Seriously... The End

So that's the bible in a nutshell, and even in three parts it's still much shorter and easier to understand than the full thing. There will be critics who say that this is simply too reductionist in nature to convey the supposed nuances of the bible and I won't argue in opposition to that. The honest truth is that if we seek to see a deeper meaning in any text we'll likely find it. So it may be true that within the bible one can find deep philosophical ideas, but the same can be said for a Dr. Suess book.

Reductionism of this nature serves a very valuable purpose however and that is to make a point. The point I've tried to make here is that if you reduce something down to it's simplest form and it seems ridiculous, then you should dig deeper into it's veracity.

To really highlight this, I want to offer you another reductionist story:

Once there was a boy who went to the theater with his parents and afterwards they were mugged. During the mugging the boy's parents were shot and killed. His parents were rich and he inherited a fortune. When he grew up he used that money to build a suit of armor and vehicles that he used as a vigilante to stop criminals.

Maybe you know the backstory of Batman and so you know that story isn't a factual tale. However in it's simplest form the story of Batman's inception is actually far more believable than the bible in it's simplest form. The only reason people buy the bible story is because piled onto a simple story about a space wizard is all this other fluff to try and make it look like it has more substance than it really has. But if you strip away the fluff and say it straight you can see it for what it is.

A Note From the Author

I hope you've enjoyed this blog series, however I want to make something clear. This is not a comprehensive and in depth dissection of the bible. It is for all intents and purposes a cliff notes version written with a touch of humor. If you are honestly looking for a comprehensive dissection of the bible, I highly recommend reading any one of the many books by author and theologian Bart Ehrman.

Some may say this was merely blasphemy, and to them I say, "It's been a blast for me too."