And then Jesus Said to the Rabbis...

About seven years ago my youngest niece and I were in a shopping mall when she dropped her box of M&Ms. In one fluid motion she snatched the chocolates off the floor, made the sign of the cross and stuffed them into her mouth. Seeing my quizzical expression she explained, “If you make the sign of the cross Jesus will take all the germs off.”

Now that’s the kind of pragmatic approach to religion I approve of. If Jesus is going to be hanging around claiming to be the Messiah he might as well make himself useful by cleaning a few candies.

But these things can be insidious and He and His relatives should stay off my turf.

Having been initiated into the mysteries of First Communion gift-giving, my daughter came home from school last week highly excited after her first Religion class. They had watched movies about the Bible she said. So much for the “context which reflects the multicultural nature of our society.”

The movies were obviously aimed at the pre-indoctrinated and were in Spanish, so what she gleaned from them was interesting, if presumably unintended. They had clearly made a big impression and before she had even changed out of her school uniform I had received what seemed like the Twitter version of the life of Christ.

“Mum, Jesus and his mum and dad were riding around on a donkey and then they all had to go to this place like a big market with a temple and you had to take an all-white sheep to the temple like this (arms crossed offering an imaginary sheep up for celestial approval) and if the sheep had even one stain and wasn’t all-white they wouldn’t accept it. But you only had to give sheep if you were rich. If you were poor you had to give money. And if you didn’t have any money or sheep and you had bad thoughts if you even put one foot in the temple like this (a tentative toe thrust forth) you would just drop dead. The people didn’t kill you, God did, because he KNEW! And then they all went back home but then they couldn’t find Jesus and they looked everywhere. “Jesus, Jesus, have you seen Jesus?” And finally they found him in the temple talking with all these old guys, I forget their names. (“Rabbis?” “Yes. Mum, have you seen this movie??”) Jesus was asking them lots of questions because he was very curious. And then later on when he grew up he got married and they all went to this cemetery and...(“He got married?” “Yes Mum, he got married. There was this girl see...” “Did he have children?” “No Mum, don’t be ridiculous, if he had children, then his children would have had children and there would still be little Jesuses today.”)...and they all went to this cemetery and they saw Jesus’ father on a tombstone with his arms crossed like this...(“Jesus’ father? You mean God?” “Yeah, God. He had died of old age. Or maybe it was on the cross, I don’t remember.” “I think it was Jesus on the cross.” “Oh yeah, so God must have died of old age.”) Anyway, then later on Jesus went to the desert and the Devil appeared and started to ask him questions and offer him things. (“How did the Devil look? Was he all red and have horns?” “No Mum, I know a lot of people think that but Jackie (her last nanny) said that the Devil is always very good-looking.” I smiled reminiscently and agreed. “So the Devil was very good-looking?” “Oh yes.” “And what did you think of Jesus?” “Well he was a bit hairy.”) And every time the Devil tried to get Jesus to prove things he said I only have to prove things to God my Father and the Devil was getting very grumpy. And then Mum, you know it was very bad in those days because on Saturdays you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t cook, you couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t watch TV! But Jesus was telling everybody to go and do things. (“Ah, a bit of a rebel then?” “No Mum, he was just helping out”) And one day the guards caught Jesus telling people to do things and they took him to the temple and kept asking him why he wouldn’t follow the rules and he kept saying “No, it’s all about the Love” and he didn’t have a sheep to give them and they said “where is your sheep?” and he said “No, it’s all about the Love” and then because he didn’t have a sheep he dropped down dead right there in the temple and they hung him on a cross. And the teacher says that these days you don’t have to give a sheep, you just have to pray. And Mum, did you know that Catholics have a big table with bread and wine and guess what?!!”

“The bread and wine get turned into something else?”

“Yeah, into Jesus’ body and the wine gets turned into blood!!”

“Doesn’t that strike you as pretty creepy?”

“But Mum, the wine at your wedding tasted great!”

“That was ginger ale you were drinking.”

Out of this blizzard of information she seems to have extracted two key lessons:

1) Precocious questioning of adults is a Good and Blessed Thing; and
2) God is the Answer – no matter what the question.

Being an Olympic-class manipulator she lost no time in putting these precepts into practice.

She had a spelling test coming up and I was trying to get her to focus on practicing the words.

“Spell technology.”

“T-E-C-N-“

“No, start again.”

“But why?”

“You missed out the H.”

“No, I said it, you just didn’t hear it.”

“Yes you did”

“No I didn’t”

And so on. And on. And on. Every word had to be debated, every error converted into an aural failure on my part rather than a lack of concentration on hers. Losing patience, I told her to shut up and just spell the freaking WORDS!!!!!

After a prolonged power struggle and repeated attempts to re-litigate the issue she completed the spelling list and was dismissed. Pausing at the door before stopping just short of slamming it she sniffed, “I don’t care what you say! God knows what is in my heart.”

“Then maybe HE can take the bloody exam for you!” I yelled after her in a fury, “and while you’re at it, have a word with Him about transubstantiation because you’re getting tuna sandwiches for lunch for a week!”