How I lost my hand and gained my soul

A satire

Author's request.

This essay is a doozy — a calculated attack on (and eventually a defense of) some of the central tenets of Christian ethics. As such, I ask you to read it all the way through; and if you aren't ready to go that far, I ask you to simply not read it at all.

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Dear T,

I am typing this to you with my last remaining hand. And since it feels like only yesterday I had two, I’d like to tell you how this happened, and why — and why I’d gladly do it all again.

It was a Sunday in June, and the year was 2021. The day was cool and gray, as June in the Pacific Northwest tends to be, and the streets were relatively clear due to the big freakout over the pandemic. The government canceled church that year to keep people from spreading COVID; but despite all this, Seattle wasn't entirely a ghost town. The gay parades and race riots were still on, for instance; and as I passed by a vagina float, I saw drag queens wearing thongs, and they were twerking in front of little kids.

The kids and I were both grossed out; but I remembered the commandment to not judge, and said my usual prayer — “there but for the grace of God go I” as one little boy yelled “nasty,” turned green, and threw up. I wanted to pray like David to break the teeth of these perverts, but I blessed them instead of cursing, as I was commanded to do, and I continued on my way.

Along Pine Street a few junkies accosted me, asking for money for beer. I was told to “give to everyone who asks of you,” so I gave the first of the derelicts five bucks. But after those came another twelve bums, each one more pushy and shameless than the last; and after a while I found my wallet was empty. So I began handing them my credit cards, and it was then I realized I ran out of money for my family. “No worries, though,” I told myself. “We’re like the Lilies of the Field. I’m sure something will come up for my kids eventually.”

The money ran out, but the bums kept on coming. I told them, one after the next, that I was flat broke; but none of them believed me, and they started cursing at me, and kicking, and throwing poo. So I blessed them in return, and gave them my other cheek, and one of them poked me with a needle, and that was when I got AIDS. Fortunately the state of California reduced that crime to a misdemeanor, out of compassion for the homicidally deranged; and the city of Seattle followed suit, always eager for a righteous cause.

The downside was, no police would be coming out to help me. They were defunded in April to protect black criminals, and the few officers left were all busy dealing with murders. Still I refused to complain, since the authorities had been put there by God Himself, as Paul tells us in the book of Romans. So I prayed for our leadership and decided there was no point in voting.

That was why I jabbed all my kids with the vaccine. The people in charge told me to. And unfortunately, that's why little Timmy had a stroke and ended up in a wheelchair. I thought about little Timmy as I walked back down Pine Street, no food in hand, when I saw my ex-girlfriend, Jessica — who told me she missed me, and I realized I missed her too. But I was married now, and when I looked at her walking away, backside as thick as ever, I realized I’d committed the sin of lust, so I immediately plucked out my own eye with the only hand I'd had remaining. I’d already chopped off the other hand because I’d been all alone and thinking about Jessica. Making this a tough year, to say the least.

Back down Pine Street I trudged, thankfully with both feet, as I saw two men dressed up in dog costumes, paraded on a leash by a fat woman dressed up in bondage gear. But Paul commanded me to honor all men without exception, so I complimented them on their extreme dignity as image bearers of God, and asked for directions to the nearest hospital. They laughed at me and pointed and I took off.

When I arrived there my eye was still bleeding pretty badly, and I didn’t have any ID. The junkies had snatched it out of my hand along with my credit cards — which I reframed “going the extra mile,” and so forth. So I politely explained my situation, and the lady told me to take a seat next to 300 illegal immigrants and junkies, which put me 301st in line.

Fortunately none of us had ID, so I was in good company. And I remembered the story of the Good Samaritan — how we’d kept the border open for anyone in the whole world who needed help, and that our medical system never turned anyone away either. They'd just send you a bill for $200,000. And if you didn't have an address? Well, you'd just get treatment for free.

Unfortunately, I had a physical address and a real identity, so I had to tell them the truth, as Paul commanded, and I was stuck with the $200,000. Which was to cover, of course, the cost of treating all the illegal immigrants and junkies, who lied about their identities and addresses.

When the day was over my family asked me where I'd been. And they wanted to know where the food was. And also where was my eye. I explained it to them all politely — how, although today had been rough, and there wasn't any food, I’d fulfilled my Christian duty, and could enter into the Kingdom of Heaven for my Well done, my good and faithful servant.

Little Timmy began to cry, and my wife stormed off into her room as I reminded them that all things happen for the good of those who love God, and are called according to His purpose. I tried to make love to her that night, but she found my missing eye disgusting; and as I tried to speak to her in bed “as an oracle of God,” as Paul commanded, she became totally turned off, rolled the other way, and refused to speak to me the rest of the night.

It was then I took comfort in the words of Christ Himself: blessed are those who suffer for righteousness’ sake. For I was certainly righteous. And because I was righteous, we were all certainly suffering.

Yours,

-J

P.S. If this essay offended you, please leave a comment below, and explain to me — in great theological detail — why nobody is taking the commandments literally. And in light of the essay above, I dare you to argue why they should.

It was argued, of course, by Emmanuel Kant, in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, that the more it hurts, the more it shows you really care. (Or maybe that was Dexter Holland). But here comes the big question. In the case of almost all of the commandments listed above, if not then, then when?* Does sticking by your principles when it hurts you and others too much show that you’re a good person? Or does it prove that you’re a psycho?

The answer to this question (in the Christian tradition), so far as I can tell, was best illustrated in the deaths of both Jesus and Stephen — a “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” A total disavowal of even anger in the face of murder.

But this only leads to more questions. For instance, can you ever be gracious if nobody is unworthy? And can you ever be merciful if not to the wrongdoer? Is it only possible to “not judge” when you're personally disgusted? And do these only apply when someone sins against you personally? Or is it also just as applicable when somebody rapes your kid? And if not, then why?

What we find is that the extremes of apathy and compassion eventually meet — like traveling too far east and finding out you landed in the west. All compassion towards the criminal at some point becomes cruelty to the victim. An act we’ve seen many times before — in everyone we call traitors, enablers, cowards, morons, anarchists, and accomplices.

Thus the big question in Christianity is, how much of the world can you hold on to without losing your soul? And how much of your soul do you lose by throwing the world away? And how much of a cross can you bear without putting someone else — and, invariably, the someone you love most — on one too? And if you put someone on a cross against their will, does that make you a saint — or a criminal?

There’s a promise in the Old Testament, multiple times, that when a man sins against God, God will hold it against his family to the third and fourth generation. This seems to go against the law that “children shall not be punished for the sins of their fathers, and fathers shall not be punished for the sins of their children.” But the fact is that, even if God never wants us to hold anyone else to account for anyone else’s sins, the laws of physics mandate exactly the opposite. A sin is only wrong because it hurts others — and most usually those closest to you. What Christ mentioned cryptically is that the same can be true of righteousness. He came to turn son against father and father against son. And the reason he said you have to hate your mother and father to follow him is because throwing yourself away is, in a sense, throwing them away too.

Thus I would argue that losing the world and losing your soul can be one and the same thing. If you have no love for anyone you know, do you have a soul? Or is the essence of loving God to love your neighbor — by improving his life in some way? And if you love a neighbor unconditionally, can you love the person he hurts too? And if you fight to make some part of the world a good place, is that the same thing as throwing your soul away?

Somewhere in these truths lies a riddle — and one I’m not qualified to answer.

*The Buddhists had a similar problem because the whole gist of Buddhism, if taken seriously, was giving up and becoming a vegetable. So they came up with a solution and called it The Middle Path. They said, hey, if our ideals are too high, why not just keep them halfway? A doctrine which nullified the other doctrines but kept Buddhists from wondering if Buddhism is a joke**.

A Christian wasn’t given the Middle Path, though. He was given the green light — that because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Thus every Christian is left with the central question not whether to be good or bad, but, do I commit suicide? And how?

The big question, then, is, if we don’t commit suicide, whether Christ committing suicide counts for us.

**Christ said, if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Aren’t even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Don’t even pagans do that?

This sums up perfectly the difference between Christian morality and worldly morality. The worldly man does good for the sake of good right here — a cost/benefit analysis known as wisdom which lands him in hell. The Christian man does good for the hell of it.

***Gandhi once said he would have been a Christian, but he’d met too many Christians. And there lies the dilemma. When a Christian is a half-ass nobody believes him. When somebody acts like Christ, half the people want to kill him.

FINAL (PLEASE READ THIS) NOTE:

I’ve been sitting on this essay for two weeks and haven’t had the balls — or maybe the audacity — to publish it. I would love to leave you with something good and wholesome every time; but the fact is, I wrestle with my faith, sometimes to the point of apostasy. And the reason I’m a writer is because I can’t keep it to myself. Simply put, I don’t want to be alone.

So allow me to recover my footing a bit.

Because this essay is a skewering of Christian ethics, I want to be completely clear. Despite my parable and the questions above, I have no intention of throwing Christian ethics away. At least not for the majority of everyday instances. I can’t fully keep them, but I won’t fully kick them. Many days I pray to God, Lord, be gracious and merciful to me by giving me a spirit of grace and mercy, because in my experience there are maybe only two instances of being gracious or merciful that I regret. Christ’s commandments not only keep me from squabbling like an ass, but from having a worried and angry heart. There’s a wisdom deeper than cause-and-effect at play here — a keeping your soul light and easy in the face of idiocy and wrongdoing and almost criminal ignorance. I only wonder when I’ll come across a boundary; and furthermore, whether crossing the line will be an act of faith, or stupidity.

I’ll also add here that human wisdom can only see cause and effect go so far; and that maybe if we’d take Him seriously, we’d run into a serious problem here or there and not know the answer. But the cumulative effect of being gracious and merciful might outweigh the effects of looking insane. I suspect that when we meet God, He’ll show us how the world might have been if we’d have been willing to throw it away. And I wonder if we’ll kick ourselves for not taking Him literally.