Read The Last Testament: A Memoir Online
Authors: God,David Javerbaum
Tags: #General, #Humor, #Literary Criticism, #Religion, #American, #Topic
2
And it came to pass, that as he sowed, he stepped on a rake, which struck him in the nether regions.
3
And a passerby caught it all on his smartphone; and rushed home, to scatter the images thereof amongst his many acquaintances.
4
And some of the copies were sent to outdated addresses, and yielded nothing but error messages;
5
And some were devoured by spam blockers, and withered in junk mail folders;
6
And some fell into the hands of those with lives; and they perished in the trash.
7
But a few were received by the kind of people who find video of other people being struck by rakes in the nether regions most amusing;
8
And they distributed the images thirty-, sixty-, a hundredfold; until they became viral, and spread their meme around the world.
9
(This is not a parable. Knowest thou that viral video “Sower Gets Hit in the Nether Regions”? That’s how it happened.)
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
10
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
11
And by chance there came down the road a certain priest: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
12
And likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
13
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was: and when he saw him, he broke down and wept;
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For he saw that the man was his colleague in law enforcement, who had been but three weeks short of retirement.
15
And from that moment this Samaritan swore a sacred oath: to track down the robbers who had done this to his partner . . . and the two heartless bastards who’d left him for dead.
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What followed was one man’s bloody journey into the dark night of his own soul; where he would find that sometimes, the line between justice and vengeance... is drawn in blood.
17
This summer, Taylor Lautner is ONE... GOOD... SAMARITAN.
THE SHREWD MANAGER
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There was a certain rich man who had entrusted his riches to a wealth manager; and a rumor began to spread that the manager was wasting the man’s possessions.
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So the rich man went to the manager, and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management.”
20
And the shrewd manager looked up, rose slowly from his desk, and said, “An accounting of my management? Thou seekest ‘an accounting of my management’?
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Look around. Look at this office. Look at this view. Look at this pen. Platinum. How’s that? How’s that for an ‘accounting of my management’?
22
Listen, buddy: I’ve been spinning gold out of thin air since before bozos like thee were suckin’ on thy Mommy’s yaboes.
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And as a
result,
I have grown wealthy.
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As a
result,
my boat containeth an onboard lake containing a one to ten scale model of the boat itself, including its own lake and scale model.
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As a
result,
my third house is to thy house, what my first house is to my third house.
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Verily, buddy, I operate on intellectual levels whose very existence could not be dreamed of by the likes of douche bags like unto thee.
27
Thy money is fine, OK? Now go.
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Go.
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Go home to thy family and keep spoon-feedin’ ’em that bullshit about what a man thou art.
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Mazel tov, fuckface.”
31
That manager died on the lam in Mexico worth $50 billion.
CHAPTER 15
THE SAYINGS OF JESUS
1
It is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle, than two camels.
2
What profiteth a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul? Besides the whole world, I mean.
3
With God all things are possible; but with money all things are probable; and with a good accountant they’re all deductible.
4
Judge not, lest ye be judged; unless thou art a judge; in which case, judge away.
5
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet when thou ... what? So I like flowers. So what?
6
If the blind leadeth the blind, both shall fall into the ditch; which is pretty funny.
7
Man shall not live by bread alone. Yet at restaurants it is easy to forget this and end up full before the appetizer.
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The L
ORD
is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. Then one morning he bringeth me to the shed out back and
boom!
, he maketh me into lamb chops.
9
Do unto others as others would do unto thee the second thou turnest thy back, the bastards.
10
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Not that I meaneth to compare Ethiopians to animals. Ethiopians have beautiful skin, actually. Why would they want to change it? I love Ethiopians. Thou knowest what, forget this whole saying.
11
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s. It might help to put them in two piles.
12
When thou givest alms, do not let thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing. Whereas with juggling the opposite is true.
13
If a man strikes thee on one cheek, turn to him the other. Then, having shown thyself impregnable to cheek attack, beat the crap out of him.
14
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares; and their spears into pruninghooks; and their other weapons into other types of obscure agricultural equipment; and nation shall fight nation no more, but instead do dull farming stuff.
15
He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. Then, stones 2 through 1,000 are open to anybody.
16
The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the goat. And the products of these unions shall be liambs and goatpards, respectively.
17
I tell ye, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Seriously. Try it. Hold on; I would get this on tape.
18
God never shuts a door without opening a window; for he wants thy house to be drafty.
CHAPTER 16
1
O
nce his material was written, Jesus debuted it in his first major sermon, at a popular local venue known as the Mount; and on the strength of that appearance he gained a cult following.
2
Yet more than his words, it was his deeds that won him renown; for he had already developed a reputation as a miracle worker, one who could do for the sick, possessed, and deceased what a boutique hairdresser can do for the split-ended.
3
Miracles are a tricky business; their impact on an audience is matchless in terms of oomph, yet they tend to raise certain expectations that grow ever harder to meet.
4
We collaborated on 37 miracles during Jesus’s three-plus years as a minister, a rate of one a month; a good pace, coming not so often they were taken for granted, yet not so rarely that the crowd grew restless.
5
The miracles were of four varieties; the most common were healings, of which there were 19.
6
Blindness; deaf-muteness; dropsy; leprosy; fever; paralysis; internal bleeding; we had a nice mix.
7
The healings were always received with awe; for this was a period when the proscribed medical treatment for most of these ailments was hillside abandonment.
8
By the end the clamor for Jesus’s restorative gift became so overwhelming, we were obliged to stem the number of miracle-seekers, lest the rest of his ministry grind to a halt;
9
So H. G. devised a tedious series of questions on parchment that all would-be patients were obliged to complete in duplicate before they could even schedule an appointment with him; and this proved effective.
10
Eight other miracles spoke to Jesus’s control over nature: his supernatural ability to calm a storm, or walk on water, or provide last-minute catering when a horde of followers crashed what it said
specifically on the invitation
was a disciple-only dinner.
11
These I liked best, for they were on a grander scale; they were spectacles of a kind I had had little occasion to produce since Exodus, and I had missed the razzle-dazzle.
12
The Feeding of the Five Thousand was especially memorable; for not only did I turn seven loaves and fishes into food for 5,000 people, but I heightened the marvel by transforming the bread from white to ciabatta, and the fish from carp to Dover sole.
13
Seven of Jesus’s miracles were exorcisms; and of these I was highly dubious.
14
He believed himself to be removing demons from the possessed; the possessed themselves later believed this to be the case;
15
But I was witness to all of them, and in my opinion of the seven “possessed” souls, three were epileptics, two were schizophrenics, and one was manic-depressive.
16
Only one—the Gerasenes demonic—was legitimately possessed, and even this must be regarded with an asterisk;