The Second Coming by Tom Riordan ...twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed... "The Second Coming," W. B. Yeats 1. Omnipotent Even on the Cross Omnipotent even on the cross, Christ voluntarily embraced his pain. He could have called it off at any time, cut it in half with just a thought— or doubled it. After he died, his body was arise-able at any moment too. “He held his body in abeyance,” we should say. He suffered and died differently than ordinary people do. Omnipotence cannot allow for Jesus ever ceasing to be God. He never spoke of this specifically but it's been studied scientifically. As C-fiber excitation signals pain, the bloodstream surges with adrenalin and sugars; pulse and respiration spike; blood masses in the heart, lungs, limbs and brain. Voluntary pain's metabolism is an invitation to sublimity. Burke said, “Pain that's simply terrible when it's too close may be ecstatic at a certain distance”; Fayyaz, “Voluntarily accepting pain, we overcome our nature and we feel sublime.” * When Crusade set its essay contest up—“I Volunteer to Sacrifice Myself Like Christ for Other People's Sins”—over a thousand people paid the $40 entry fee and sent empassioned essays in. Nearly two hundred broached the question of the possibiility they'd rise again. “What if the sacrifice itself,” one wrote, “is what made Jesus God? Why shouldn't I retrace his steps? There's still a lot of saving to be done.” The thief who suffered next to Christ believed his pain would carry him to paradise as well—became a firewalker passing barefoot over coals. When suffering is purposeful—is sacrifice—it ceases to be sacrifice per se, but a transcendent path. Christ's suffering, and death, had asterisks. One early Doctor said the Gospels, Acts, Epistles sketch a silhouette of faith whose contemplation's up to us. “Omnipotence,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “is by definition limited. For one thing, God's not capable of nonsense.” ** Christ's pain, as certainly, could not contain the element of helplessness. * Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful Fayyaz, “Sublime Pain: A Study of Voluntary Pain Acceptance” ** Lewis, The Problem of Pain [all paraphrases] 2. Jesus Replies to “Omnipotent Even on the Cross” Don't cast aspersions. You don't understand, and never will, one single thing about the nature of my suffering. I know you inside out— though you cannot know me at all. Don't think I clenched the aspirin of divinity between my teeth while hanging on the cross: don't think it took the edge off that I'd volunteered or knew how much salvation it was bound to bring. Don't think it was some loss of pride that galled me so, while shit-mouthed Roman soldiers listened to the cocks crow; or enduring as the thieves on either side hissed Fucking this! and Fucking that! I'm God. A far cry from an egotist. You probably won't get too far, but think along these lines: What had I given up to spend that long, long afternoon in cruel hands, tortured, bled? Can you even wrap your head around the sacrifice involved? And the amount of pain I suffered? Add up everything you've ever lost and multiply by—what? six billion in the world? I felt that all. It pierced right through my heart. I wasn't so much there redeeming you as mining the hard truth of why I ought to cut you far more slack: So this is what it's like. My lord! These poor benighted creatures must be given the green light to buy whatever pleasure, comfort or relief they can afford. 3. Then I in My Anger and Pride Reply You'll give me the green light? You're going to cut me slack? You and Queen Elizabeth II both need to lie calmly on your back and ask an analyst to help you shove your grandiose delusions back inside Pandora's bag of cats. Neither one of you rules shit! Slap your own cheek and get over it! I'm sorry. Do I sound testicular? I confess I fell hook, line and sinker when the devil tempted me to view myself as my own lord and master. I hate fathers, school, jail, taxes, military service, armed assailants, time clocks, lice, mosquitoes, gnats and all Do thisses and Do thats. So no, it's not you, in particular. When I was younger, glummer, gullible, still glazed with fear, I clasped my hands and put my faith in what your birth, self-sacrifice and resurrection heralded. When that grew old—the only fruits I tasted sour do's, hard don'ts, and guilt— I struck out on my own to try my hand at doing what F. Scott Fitzgerald did. That price is high for the untalented— same pining, twice as much frustration— but maldito blueballs, viva masturbation! Let's co-exist, long lost fraternal friends. You keep your Thou shalt stones inside your pants, I'll keep my No I shan'ts somewhere your sun don't shine. I know it violates your Prime Directive to give up on offering your love to me, but since your motive's so benign, why not just give me a free pass and stick that Oh boo hoo, he shut his heart to me right up your ass? Oh, there I go again. M'scusi, padre, I have sinned again and it's a doozy, I got pissy at the Prince of Peace. Yet, you? You aren't angry in the least, but only thinking, Saving such a hardened case is going to be sweet. But nothing is pre-destined, is it? Free will—white of you to give it— adds a bit of drama, whets the stakes. No, you go right ahead and smile down on me and overlook my flaws and do whatever floats your cloud. I shouldn't blame you for a couple overzealous nuns and 30,000,000 fundamentalists who say you lead them in a war against progressiveness and threaten hellfire on the rest of us. For all I know you washed your hands in 36 A.D. of that entire business. 4. And He in His Loving Voice Air all the pique you want, Bean Sprout. I'm pretty much immune to it. Now let me answer you about the hellfire and permissiveness. The great debate in recent years about the if and if so, what? of hell is understandable—it does involve a mystery. What happens if you don't accept my invitation to come spend eternity in bliss with me? Short answer? If there is a place of fiery punishment, it isn't mine. I have my eyes on you while you're alive and at the moment of your death I reach my arm in your direction and I pray, Please take my hand, but if you don't, the screen goes blank. Your blip just disappears. If something else exists for you, it lies beyond my eyes and ears. I never lose sight of the littlest cog or nuance of the universe that I created, but to tell you pointblank, guaranteed, That's all there is, would be nonsensically presumptuous. No one can say with certainty there's absolutely nothing past the pale of their awareness— zero possibility of someone else's Genesis. So could some alter-afterlife exist that is unpleasant, torturous? I can't promise you it doesn't. You also wondered if I'm still involved in Christians' war against unrighteousness. Forgive my being Irish there again: the answer's no—and yes. Without a lengthy parsing of my views on right and wrong, it's not brain surgery to sense that they and evangelicals' diverge. And where they clearly coincide— providing for the least of these, let's say—I offer grace to any warrior who shields a child. No, I did not say fetus. Did you notice how your pulse leapt there? Yikes. Put that pro-choice dick back in your over-liberal jeans. 5. In Ire You Invented Sex? My pro-choice dick? in over-liberal jeans? Did you create men's penises without entirely appreciating both their functionalities? Presumably your body, when you came to earth, was perfect as could be— without genetic or environmental defect. If I'm not mistaken, your dick only peed. And back in Genesis, the Garden was designed for only two of every kind, immortal, naked, unashamed— the reproduction tacked on only later, part and parcel of the exiles' sentence after Eve, against advisement, touched and ate the tree that pleased her eyes, the tree that she desired, and in anger you told Adam, Twixt her seed and thine, in sorrow shalt thou propagate. Ever since, you seem to look askance whenever lovers drop their pants. Did you screw up when, improvising on the fly, in ire you invented sex? 6. I'm Glad You've Come to Me for Help You're obsessed. You see that, don't you, Tom? It's sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Your own. That's why your love life's such a mess. I'm glad you've come to me for help. Oh, calm your vag! It takes me—what?—3 sentences to get your goat? It's out of character for me to gloat, but as a fact that you should know for your own good, that's one of the 10 Reasons I am God and you are...not.