mailbag: jesus checks in

"No one wants to read all your tiresome Jesus-bashing," says a dully representative piece of reader mail from fundy types. He then proceeds to tell me what everyone does want to read.

Is there a more fascinating psychological phenomenon than the capacity of the religious weird to take enormous (and self-serving) leaps of causality? It's their superpower. If you don't want their religion taught in your kid's science class, you're intolerant. If you're uneasy about the war, you hate freedom or the troops. If you have nothing in particular against gay marriage, you want to destroy the family. And if you mock the attention-whoring excesses of fringe religious types, you're bashing Jesus.

Stop confusing yourselves with Jesus, please. He'll doubtless thank you for it. If you read carefully, or if you have a friend with two ganglia rubbing together who can read carefully to you, you'll see that I've never, in fact, bashed Jesus. Just you. And despite how loudly and misspelled you assert the contrary, there's a gaping chasm of difference between these two parties.

For that matter, you're hardly "everyone," either. On Jesus' and everyone's behalf, I ask you to kindly stop the impersonations. Don't make us get a restraining order.

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Syrupy Stank troll Karen send in this comedic take on the Bible and religion. It's an odd combination of mocking and affectionate, and God looks and sounds disturbingly like George Lucas. The part where "Dad" hands Jesus a drawing of a crucifixion, and Jesus' stunned expression, was priceless.