Home Alone 8 (A.D.): Lost in Jerusalem
If you’re like a lot of people – and by “a lot of people” I mean “Will Ferrell’s wife in Talladega Nights” – you probably picture Jesus as a bearded white guy who looks like he should be playing drums for Creed. (Unless it’s December in which case you picture him as a head poking out of a cloth cocoon.) Don’t feel bad if this is you. You probably just don’t read your Bible that much. Or maybe you’re a Democrat. Alright, alright…same thing, I know. Continue reading »
Family Ties: The Dysfunctional Story of Jacob and Laban
The story of Jacob and Laban is like, super, duper long so I’m going to try and highlight the juicy parts. For real, it’s like five whole pages in the Bible, and dude that text is hella small.
Cool. So Jacob was working for his Uncle Laban, doing hard labor and sweating like a Dr. Pepper commercial. After a couple years of this Laban was all like, “Dude, I feel like a total jerk face. You’re family and you’re working for me for free. How can I pay you?” Jacob put down his weedeater and he said “Uncle Labrador, your youngest daughter – my cousin – is like, bomb-diggity hot. I will work for you to see her nake- I mean, to marry her.” Laban stroked his face fur for a moment and said “Right on. Seven years of work, and she’s all yours.” They high fived, and the deal was sealed. Continue reading »
We Ride Together, We Die Together…
So it’s the fall of 31 A.D. and this guy Fitzy was walking home from Jericho. Why was he walking? I’ll tell you why. See, for the four days before this lonely walk, our man Fitzy had been on a bender the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Noah’s post-flood Power Hour. He and his crew had been raging down in J-Rock all weekend; crunching Natty Ice by the case, smoking Marbo Reds by the carton, and getting amped out of their minds for the big soccer match between their beloved Jerusalem Jews and the rival Jericho Samaritans. Continue reading »
King Xerxes: Beyond The Banana Hammock
Of all the weird celebrity cameos in the Bible, the one that freaks me out the most is that creepy Persian king from the movie 300. That’s right: the bald dude with the banana hammock and Dennis Rodman-esque body piercings is in the Old Testament. And no, he’s not in one of those bush league Catholic chapters. I’m talking about the real Bible. Continue reading »
Doing It The Hard Way
Round about 800 B.C. there was this guy named Jonah living over in the east Mediterranean. Despite living in one of the worst places ever, Jonah actually had a pretty sweet gig over on the West Bank seeing as how all he ever did was pray, prophesy, and smoke hookah at “Jonah’s Brothers”, his brothers’ hookah lounge/off-track-betting parlor. Yeah, life was pretty sweet for our man Jonah.
Then one day Jonah’s boss (aka God) stopped by and told him to pack his bags cause he was getting transferred to this real crap-hole called Ninevah for awhile, and just like that his life of leisure came crashing down like a Jenga tower next to Stevie Wonder. Continue reading »
Offing The Blob: The Story of Ehud The Assassin
Dudes. Dudes. Dudes. Jason Bourne is in the Bible. Stop calling me gay, I’m freakin serious. There’s a badass assassin in The Bible. If you’ll shut up about how gay you wish I was, I’d tell you about it. Yeah you see what I did there? Turned that one right around on you. Continue reading »
Blinded by the Light: The Conversion of Saul
You ever had a vision from God? And no, I’m not talking about a “hey that cloud kinda looks like a Ford F150 filled with football players and illegal immigrants; I guess God really does want me to move to Texas” kind of vision. I’m talking about an in-your-face, life-altering, game-changing encounter with The Almighty. My guess is you haven’t. And if you have, it probably involved a sack of shrooms and a Phish concert. That doesn’t count. Continue reading »
A Bad Day for a Bath
Remember David? Sure you do. He’s the dude who played the harp and tamed lions and killed Goliath and got a shout out in that one Jeff Buckley song. You remember, right? Good. That’ll save us some time. So anyway, this was after the whole Goliath thing when David had already been named king of Israel. Now being king of Israel in 1200 BC was a lot like being president of America in 1992-2010. You spent most of your time doing two things: getting tail and marauding across the Middle East. And by all accounts David was a freaking champ at both. Continue reading »
The Pilot Episode
The scene opens to black. And not like Halle Berry half-black. We’re talking total, complete, Wesley Snipes darkness. Darker than Fidel Castro’s heart and more formless than John Goodman’s abs. And then, kind of out of nowhere, God thinks, “Hey, let’s get some lights going up in this joint.” Now, if this had been 1995 and God had been into gadgets with catchy jingles he could have just clapped his hands and there would have been light. But this was back in the days before The Clapper so he actually had to say, “let there be light.” And KABLAMM! There was light.
The Holy Broble: A Short History
The Problem
During the mid-Clinton years, roughly coinciding with the advent of reality television, educators began to notice a disturbing trend in America’s youth. The children of the Baby Boomers – “Generation Y” or “Millenials”, depending on which weekly news magazine you subscribe to – were turning their collective back on the ambition and intellectualism of their generational forebears in favor of a media-saturated worldview that was light on science and Shakespeare but heavy on song lyrics and movie lines. Turn-of-the-century teens were living in a brave new world of ones and zeros, chat rooms and urls, screen names and status updates. It was a world of immediacy and iPods with little room for math, science, and books.
As a result of their students’ rejection of traditional curricula, Continue reading »