Brokeback Bible?

Lent is almost over, and by Sunday Catholics everywhere can stop giving money to charity, start drinking again, eat whatever they want and take the leaves they turned over about 40 days ago and pack them away until next year. Which I guess makes sense-- permanent change within the church (at least the Catholic one) is generally frowned upon. After all, Christ only stayed dead for 3 days before He gave up. Of course, that begs the question-- is it really fair then, if Christ could only manage for 3 days, that we have to give up stuff for 40? I guess we can only blame ourselves for not negotiating a better contract.

With the unveiling last week of the recently discovered "Gospel of Judas", this weekend's festivities could take on a whole new meaning. According to the ancient text, Judas and Jesus may have been closer than once thought, and, contrary to the story of deception and betrayal portrayed in the four traditionally accepted gospels, Judas may actually have been acting at Jesus' request. The argument has been made, then, that this better explains the famous "kiss" between Judas and Jesus just before He is handed over to the authorities.

But according to a revelation I had last Sunday in church while the priest was reading that very portion of the Passion narrative, it only explains part of the story. I had never really thought much about Judas and Jesus kissing before, but while sitting there listening to the reading and thinking about this newly discovered text and all the recent talk about the Bible supposedly condemning homosexuality, it suddently dawned on my like a lightning bolt from the heavans: Jesus was/is gay, or at least bi-curious. I know, I was stunned too. But once that hit me, everything else about the Bible started to make sense-- that Jesus was 33 or so at the time of His death, yet never married, that He only would round up men for disciples, that He was a carpenter (you know, woodworking). . .

It also offered me a better explanation of why He was put to death so suddenly and seemingly without cause. Executing someone just for claiming they are God incarnate? Hardly. It is now obvious to me that the crucifixion was in actuality the most notorious hate-crime of all time.

Of course, just because I was inspired by the Holy Spirit through divine revelation to come to that conclusion doesn't mean you have to believe me. But if you don't believe me, you probably also don't believe the Bible is the true reveleation of God's Word handed down to man (through divine inspiration of course), so there's that to think about.

Even though I know it's true ('cause God told me), I know you Scripture Nazis out there want some Bible quotes or something to back it up. Well, you're in luck. A cursory review of the New Testament (by me) revealed just over 150 references to Jesus' homosexual/bisexual preferences. Then, to check my work, I let a couple gay guys I know look it over (amazingly the Bible did not burst into flames and burn to ashes in their hands like I thought it would), and, wouldn't you know it, they found over 700 references! I guess I just couldn't pick 'em out the way they could.

What's that? You want some of the quotes? Well, since I assume some of you may not have a couple of gay friends handy to help you out, I'll give you just a couple of the highlights. Remember when Jesus went gathering up disciples, and told a couple of them to put their fishing nets away and follow Him? Remember what He said when they were concerned that they weren't going to be catching fish anymore? That's right, Jesus said not to worry because they were going to become "fishers of men". And with Jesus' striking good looks and long flowing hair, you can bet their nets were going to be full.

Skipping ahead to the end of His life, remember when He tells Peter that he will deny him three times before the cock crows? Regardless of the obvious clues the species of the bird provides, remember the words Peter uses to deny Him? That's right, Peter claims that he didn't "know" Jesus. And you all know what to "know" someone in the Biblical sense means. . .

Speaking of "knowing", everyone knows that throughout the gospels John is referred to as the disciple whom Jesus "loved". But it is also repeatedly stated that Jesus loved everyone. So why would the authors feel the need to go out of their way to say that Jesus loved John specifically? Obviously they were trying to clue us in as to what a lot of their "secret meetings" were all about, but didn't want to be too explicit for fear that their gospels would be banned, and themselves executed (editors were a little harsher back then).

Finally, there's that kiss. If I remember right, Mel Gibson conveniently portrayed the kiss from Judas as being one on the cheek. But since every word of the Bible is meant to be taken literally, if the Bible meant it to be a kiss on the cheek, it would have said so.

Also, with homophobia at all time highs at the time these texts were written, one would think the author would have been absolutely clear on that as to avoid any confusion. But at the same time, gospel authors can't, by their very nature of being gospel authors, deviate from the true inspired Word of God, so "kiss on the cheek" was obviously not how it went down.

Two of the four gospels (Matthew and Mark) use nearly the exact same words: "Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, "Greetings, Rabbi!" and kissed him." The other two contain significant variations, but there is absolutely no mention of any cheek-kissing. And apparently the kissing wasn't really a big deal to anyone, or there would have had to be some kind of follow-up like ". . . as those gathered around turned away in disgust" or ". . . as the men who had come to arrest Jesus threw rocks at Him and called Him names".

So what does this all mean? Is Dan Brown all washed up? I don't think so. Remember, God told me that Jesus was not gay, but bi-sexual. So obviously Jesus still could have fathered a child with Mary Magdalene and the whole Holy Grail saga remains plausible. But what this does mean is that all the people who claim the Bible condemns homosexuality better get a grip, because this Easter, Christ's here, he's queer, so get used to Him!