Nurse the Hate: The Jesus Conversation

On Tuesdays they always went to Subway for lunch.  Mike would get a Groupon emailed to him that provided “Two Meal Deals For $9.99”.  Mike would always get the cold cut combo, and in what he believed to be a nod to healthy eating, a bag of Baked Lay’s Potato Chips.  Pete was a bit more adventurous in his order and today decided on the tuna on asiago bread.  They sat in their regular booth by the door where the fluorescent lights of the restaurant blended in with the gray doom cloud cover from outside to make it at least debatable that something was natural in the environment.

Mike picked out one of the perfectly formed imperfect shaped potato crisps with a look of concentration.  The brittle crunch of the chip was not as satisfying as the real thing.  He stared out the window watching the other office workers trying to maximize their brief lunch breaks before their inevitable March of Defeat back to their officially designated work spaces. 

“You ever notice how in all these Jesus pictures that he’s always ripped?”

What?

“I’ve been seeing a lot of Jesus pictures lately.  Maybe because it’s almost Easter and shit, I dunno.  Anyway, in all the pictures, Jesus is always ripped with six pack abs.  He’s never working on a little belly or is a little too hairy or even just too skinny.  He’s always totally jacked up.  Have you ever seen a picture of Jesus doing any kind of workout?  Are there paintings in museums of Jesus doing crunches I don’t know about?  And there’s no way he was a runner.  You can’t run in Jesus sandals.  It would totally fuck up your arches.  Plus, I never heard about Jesus running anywhere.  He was always gliding around in those robes looking like Chris Cornell in 1993.  I’m calling bullshit on him being ripped man. Maybe skinny, but not ripped.”

Pete considered Mike’s point only for a moment and answered with certainty.  “He’s divine.  He’s not mortal.  He’s the son of God, so of course he looks good.  You think God is going to have a son that looks like Danny DeVito?”

“Yeah but isn’t Jesus supposed to be half God and half mortal? So, shouldn’t the mortal side have at least given him a receeding hairline or fucked up teeth or something?  It’s not like they had fluoridated water or invisiline braces in Biblical Times.  You never see a buck tooth Jesus.”

“Well, I don’t know about Jesus’s teeth, because he’s usually got that closed mouth contented smile in everything I’ve seen, but I’m assuming they were perfect.  And he was only 33 when he died, so it’s not like he should have been going bald.  You still looked almost normal at 33, right?  He’s not you.  He’s divine.  The ideal.”

Mike worked on his cold cut combo and thought it through.  “All I’m saying is that if you are going to be ripped, you have to do at least some kind of workout.  I know they were always eating fish in the Bible, but it was “loaves and fishes”, so it’s not like they weren’t eating any carbs.  Plus, they were always drinking wine.  That shit adds up.  There should have been some mention of Jesus doing crossfit right before the sermon on the mount or something.  I heard about him walking on water, but you don’t hear about him swimming.  So, when did he get any cardio in?”

Pete quickly countered.  “Yes, but he fasted and walked the desert.  You know how much weight you’d drop not eating and walking around a desert?  You ever see a fat Bedouin on a camel?”

Mike considered it as he sipped his Diet Dr. Pepper.  “OK, you have a point there but I think the artists doing those paintings took liberties and made Jesus look too good.  The church paid for all those paintings, so there’s no way the artist can turn in some fat Jesus painting.  You can’t be like, “Here Bishop.  Here’s the Jesus painting you ordered.  I saw him in my mind with a little muffin top and a wart on his face.  Hope you like it!”  No way!  So, as time moves on ALL Jesus paintings looked like Chris Cornell from Soundgarden in 1993 and that’s the only thing subsequent artists had to go on.  Case in point…  If you had to paint a unicorn, you wouldn’t make it look like a basset hound with a fucking horn coming out of its head.  You’d make it look like every other unicorn picture you ever saw, which means you are just regurgitating the same idea.  All you can do is finesse it.  So, then you decide that if you’re going to do a unicorn painting, you’re going to paint a ripped unicorn with his mane blowing in the breeze, not some normal horse with a horn.”

Pete pointed at Mike with his tuna sub for extra emphasis.  “So, you are saying that Jesus is the same thing as a unicorn?”

“No.  Jesus or the idea of Jesus is a concept about human goodness and compassion.  I am only talking about physical appearance here.  If we agree that Jesus is the physical embodiment of the church’s ideas, then I think we can agree that Jesus is the logo for Christianity.  Over the years that logo keeps getting improved, sort of like the girl on the Wendy’s sign across the street there.  There’s no way that the real Wendy looked like that.  Wendy’s changed it to look like they wanted it to look.  That’s what the church did.  So… I think Jesus is sort of like Wendy.”

Pete crinkled up his sandwich wrapper.  “Well, you can’t around the fact that the Son of God is most likely to look good.  Jesus obviously had charisma, like a Biblical movie star.  I contend that he probably was pretty ripped, or at the very least quite svelte.”

Mike popped the last of his sandwich in his mouth and smashed his wrapper together.  “OK.  You probably have a point there.  Let’s go.  We gotta get back.”  They through their trash into the can and placed their plastic trays on the top.  The wind hit their faces as they opened the glass door and walked back to the office.