The Little Old Ladies
V.
JESUS
Many
years ago, the little old church-ladies wanted to sell charity tickets in the
Narthex while the members walked in for Christmas Eve Service. It seemed
like a
sweet idea.
But the Church Fathers held a meeting about the issue, then objected, citing Jesus' legendary attacks on the evil Money Changers in the temples of old. Surely Jesus would object when he showed up, beat up the Old Ladies, then throw them out of the Narthex and onto the curb. That wouldn't do well at all, Jesus would be really pissed off. Who knew what catastrophes might occur?
The
Church Lawyers suggested that the Ladies sell their tickets in the Cloak Room
instead, which was specifically NOT mentioned in any of the Biblical stories.
It was a totally safe, neutral space, off to one side, inoffensive, cosmically legal.
What could be
better?
Everyone
agreed, and the Little Old Ladies set up shop in the Cloak Room. Tables,
chairs, money box, candles, signs, etc. Then the big night, Christmas Eve,
finally arrived. Nearly every church member turned out for services, went
to hang their coats, and bought one or more tickets to the Ladies Charity Dinner
Event. Thousands of dollars changed hands, and the Little Old Ladies were
ecstatic, counting their booty over and over
again.
Then,
with a rumble of thunder and a flash of light, Jesus showed up to run a surprise
inspection. People scattered, then peered around the pillars and doorways
to see what was going on. He tugged a white glove onto his right hand,
then walked up the steps and onto the portico. There were no money
changers or merchants to be seen. He walked into the Narthex where he
checked for dust on the chairs and tops of the doors. All in good
order. Then he sniffed the air mysteriously. It was the stench of
money, Evil Money in his Temple!!! He spun around and looked right into
the Cloak room, where cowered the Little Old Ladies, now fearing for their
lives.
There were more thunderclaps and more flashes of light. He punched his right fist into the palm of his left hand, ready to kick some Little Old Lady Butt. Step by step, he moved slowly closer to his prey, savoring their terror bit by bit.
However, out of the shadows (where they were skulking) walked the Church Attorneys, carrying briefcases and sheaves of paper. They stood squarely in His way. Their leader spoke up confidently.
"I
wouldn't come any closer if I were you, Jesus of Nazareth. We have a court order
here, which charges you to stay at least 100 feet away from the Money Changers
in the Cloak Room. Here's your copy." He handed Jesus a xeroxed
document. "If you read Article 2, Section 1, you'll see that there is
no Cloak Room mentioned in the Bible, so you have No Controlling Biblical
Authority over the Ladies in this Cloak Room, and indeed by extension any
other cloak room, anywhere else. You
may not proceed further against these fine Ladies. Sit down, read it, take all
the time you need."
Jesus
sat in one of the comfy Narthex chairs, reading over the order and the suggested
particulars. One of the Church Lawyers' aides whispered in his ear,
"You realize that by this order, any church anywhere can raise money in any
room it chooses, simply by naming it "The Cloak Room" at will.
In the most extreme scenario we could simply rename the Sanctuary to "the
Cloak Room" and sell sacrificial animals from the very Altar itself.
This loophole may very well collapse your authority everywhere. We can put a similar
semantic veneer on every single important Biblical lesson, unwinding and
deconstructing every single Commandment. .......But
that's not what we want to do. We just want you to leave these Little Old
Ladies alone. Do we have a
deal?"
Jesus stood bolt upright, slapped his hand to his cheek, and cried, "You've got me!!! By God, you've got me!!! I never thought about the Coat Room! .....God Dammit!!!"
He wandered around in a frustrated daze for a moment, then found his way back outside where he disappeared into the night, never to return.
The Lawyers went back to their office, and the Little Old Ladies still sell tickets in the Cloak Room to this very day.
And so, everybody wins. Well, not exactly everybody.
This
is a clear case wherein the "Letter" of the Law was used to
neutralize, subvert, and actually reverse the "Spirit" of the
Law. Everyone knew that Jesus did not want any money changing hands
anywhere in the church at all. But the Biblical stories were
metaphors, allegories, general principles, never meant to cover every single
situation that might ever arise. And that's their weakness: the gaps in
and between their specific applications create "loopholes" through
which any unspecified infraction may be freely pursued as if it were
intended in the first place (the Bible does not mention cloakrooms because God wants
mankind to change its money there). Trying to stop it is a crime.
And
thus the good guy is made to seem the bad guy, the enemy. How dare
Jesus try and shut down this one place that his own Father had reserved for
fundraising? Does Jesus hate Charity? What's his hidden
agenda? Who is this jerk Jesus,
anyway?
Those people who have obeyed the law thus far are the real victims of this scam. What a bunch of chumps! Ha Ha Ha! They could have been doing whatever they wanted all along instead of living like slaves, shackled by a corpus of unchallenged policies. What laughable cowards!
They
never learned the one single lesson that wove its way through Slick Willie
Clinton's Impeachment and the Florida's Presidential Election Litigation
Fiasco: Any "thing" can be changed into its opposite
"thing" simply by re-naming it, or re-defining it, because from
those very definitions proceed the legal mandates of Political
Authority. If the word "perjury" can be changed to
"mislead" then Clinton's crimes of fixing his sexual harassment suit
by lying under oath, suborning the perjury of others, and the abuse of
Presidential Power to avoid the consequences of his illegal acts are all
rendered harmless because "misleading the court" isn't a crime.
That's why no Democrat will ever use the word "lie" in the context of
the impeachment, preferring instead to argue what the meaning of the word
"is" is, or to insist that Clinton was busted "for having
sex" instead of "lying under oath." Misleading the court
about sex is a noble act to a lot of people (mostly
Democrats). As the words change back and forth so do the issues and so
does the underlying
reality.
In
Florida, Al Gore's attorneys jerked around with the language until no one knew
what a "vote" was any more. "Uncounted votes" meant
"votes that were counted by machine but not by
hand." They dowsed for "the intent of the voter"
while they claimed that people who had voted were
"disenfranchised," denied their "right" to have their
"voice be heard." Who finally understands what "dimples and
chads" contributed to the issue? Yet legal decisions of the highest
import flowed from the Supreme Court over these fractured and painfully
distorted grammatical contortions. And all the while, the Democratic
lawyers kept asking for new laws to correct the new problems they themselves
created with their very own aggressive semantic
warfare.
The
"Democratic Lawyers" have moved American Politics into a whole new age.
Protests, hand-counts, contests, re-counts, endless cries of racial injustices,
lawsuits, protest marches, civil disobedience, all will become the order of the
day. Thank you Slick Willie for your vain, 50 million dollar denials of
obvious, disgusting guilt that inevitably gave us Slick Al, Slick Jesse, Slick
Boise, and the hundreds of Slick Jack-Offs that will pour out of the
Democratic-Stalinist Party in the years to come. Fuck you Slick Willie,
Fuck you Al Gore, and Fuck you David
Boise.