LUDIC LOG

When little Charlie was six years old, he broke one of his mother's favorite bone china plates. Charlie hid the broken plate from his mother, because he knew that she would be very cross. (Charlie's mother was a brittle, unloving old New Englander with the short temper and cold demeanor of a staunch Calvinist, but Charlie loved her anyway, because he was afraid not to.)

Charlie was ashamed and didn't know what to do, so he turned to the local parish priest, a dour and squat Nantucketer named Father Blearey. "What should I do, father?" asked the nervous young lad. "Ernest," Father Blearey replied (for his memory was bad), "in any situation, good or bad, you should let one question be your guide in finding the right course of action. And that question is this: what would Jesus do?"

The old priest tottered back to his chamber to rip a huge, moist fritter, leaving Charlie to contemplate this wisdom. Well, he thought, what would Jesus do? He certainly wouldn't lie, and he wouldn't want to conceal a wicked deed, even if it was an accident and he faced a birch-whipping if he 'fessed up. So Charlie told his mother what he had done, and even though his mother beat him with a stripped-off stick while his port-soaked father looked on giggling like a schoolgirl, he knew he had done the right thing -- he had done what Jesus would do.

Charlie let this simple rule be his moral beacon as he grew up, and it never let him down. Once, when he was in junior high, some hoodlums from a poor neighborhood tried to 'turn him on' to some marijuana cigarettes in the church parking lot. Remembering the words of Christ -- "my father's house is a house of prayer, and you have made it a den of thieves" -- he did what Jesus would do: he pulled up a fencepost with nails protruding from it (for he was growing into quite a strapping fellow) and whaled on the underprivileged youths until they were reduced to bloody scraps. His 'father's house' was pure once again.

In high school, Charlie, who was a handsome and robust gentleman by then, was often 'propositioned' by the sluts who passed for the flower of female beauty in his small home town. Remembering that Mary Magdalene "chose the better path" by submitting fully to Jesus, and how the dirty whore was embraced by the Lord after supplicating Him, once agaid Charlie chose the right road by doing what Jesus would do: he humiliated the women, forcing them to anoint his oft-stinking feet with oil, to wash his musky, athletic body with their perfume-drenched hair, and to lick the fluids clean with their tongues, before finally allowing them to fellate him to the point of orgasm. Then, realizing it would be wrong to despoil the tramps outside the sacrament of marriage, he sent them away, refusing to ruin them with any sinful stimulation. He knew that their souls would be better for it.

Later, Charlie went to a prestigious East Coast liberal arts college. He wanted to go to Bob Jones University, but the Ten Commandments dictated that he honor the wishes of his horrible mother. At school, he encountered a number of 'hippies' who irked him to the point of distraction with their constant flashing of the 'peace' sign. Remembering the words of the blessed Savior -- "I come not to bring peace, but a sword" -- Charlie once again proved his faith and devotion by doing what Jesus would do. He purloined a cavalry sword from the local Museum of Antiquities and hacked one of the unkempt ne'er-do-wells to pieces, and buried the chunks in a drainage culvert on Highway 2 where they would never be found. What joy there is in serving the Lord!

After a brief graduate school flirtation with the Gnostic Gospels that, due to a rather narrow interpretation of one particular verse, resulted in an unsuccessful sex reassignment surgery, Charlie finally decided he would truly do what Jesus did: he traveled to the Middle East and, declaring himself the Messiah and King of the Jews, attempted to lead the faithful into Jerusalem, a sequence of events he hoped he would culminate in his eventual passion and transfixion by the Romans. Alas, the government of Israel was more than used to such eccentric behavior from tourists and had him deported. So, relying on that wonderful moral compass that had guided him lo these twenty years, he thought long and hard about what Jesus would do, and sure enough, he found the answer. Using the last of his savings, he flew to Italy and paid an Sicilian pimp $121 to nail him to a makeshift cross with a ballpeen hammer and some railroad spikes, whereupon he died in extreme discomfort of a combination of blood loss and lockjaw. What a glorious life we may lead, when we simply ask ourselves: what would Jesus do?