The Prophet and son of God, James "Jesus" Christ cited both "your average Easter/Christmas-Christian as well as the fruitcake-evangelical type" as stumbling blocks for the spiritual movement founded in his name nearly 2000 years ago.
Enter Zachery Tims, recovering drug addict and founding pastor of the New Destiny Christian Center, a leading megachurch in Orlando, Florida, reaching millions of television screens and households. Pastor Tims was found dead in his Manhattan hotel room near Times Square, where police found a white powdery substance assumed to be narcotics.
"Pastor Tims, he's a perfect example of professional holy men pissing on my name," Mr. Christ said. "Had a wife of fifteen years, mother of his four kids. She divorced him for sleeping with a stripper. But, yeah, he tells people that he's one of my inside guys. Sure you are, Zach-ie."
New Destiny's homepage advertises, while demonstrating a lack of understanding for contractions, the Center's unwavering belief in, "The absolute authority of the Bible, the word of the Living God, inerrant in it's content, unchanging in it's precepts, infallible in it's truth and complete in it's content."
Christ also pointed to Norway's mass-murdering Anders Behring Breivik, recently imprisoned Mormon fundamentalist Warren Jeffs , and the entire Tea Party Caucus as further embarrassments to his family name.
"I'm still waiting for any Bible-thumping governor from Texas to either shut up about me or at least acknowledge Luke 18:22 ," Christ said with a shrug. "And that's all I have to say about that."
Countering conventional wisdom, the Christian Lord and Savior pointed to the bloc of "typically and relatively indifferent Christians as, actually, the root of most evil," in the United States. In a culture where spirituality and piety are widely considered unquestioned virtues, having strong faith is almost universally admired.
"It might be the slipperiest of slopes," Mr. Christ said. "It's great and all. To love Me, to give to charity and the like. But you can always do those things anyway; you don't need My endorsement."
In fact, the Savior explained, by instituting anything amounting to some kind of universal divine mandate, that is precisely what leaves the back door open for the crazies to come through.
"Do you know how many people have been killed because other people thought I demanded it?" Mr. Christ asked. "You mainstream religious folk legitimize piety, leaving the nuts a relatively small leap to make, to get to all that crazy [stuff]."
In a surprising move, Mr. Christ said he would actually like to see mankind forsake His, and all other religions, completely.
"Let me sign off with a quote," He concluded. "I forget who said it first, maybe it was [George] Carlin: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.'"
