What Would Jesus Think?

I've been seeing this group on facebook titled 'Jesus Would Have Thought Bush Was A Douchebag'.

OK, it might strike you as funny at first. It did me.

That is, until I thought about it.

Forget about the fact that Jesus is alive and that, therefore, the "Would" and "Was" in that sentence don't work.

I believe Jesus and Bush probaby would part ways on a lot of their ideas about who runs the world and how it should be run. I'm confident that Jesus would have a few pointed words to say, were the two of them ever to sit down and talk.

But even at Jesus most angry (and he got angry and, I can only assume, still gets angry), I've never seen any Biblical reference of him thinking someone was a douchebag, and not just because they hadn't been invented yet.

For Jesus, the word might have been fool, and he has hard words for those who might demean others by calling them fools.

For Jesus, it was the actions that he always found intolerable, not the people.

After telling the rich man to sell everything he has and give it to the poor, the rich man refuses and walks away.

The Bible doesn't say "and he turned to his disciples and said 'What a douchebag.'" It says that Jesus loved him. In fact, it was Jesus' love for the rich man that made Jesus command him to sell what he had.

I know the group is made in fun and I know I risk coming off a humorless crank on an Andy Rooney rant.

But Anne Lamott wrote that "you can be sure you've created God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do." That goes for Presidents who might believe that God hates Iraqis. And it goes for his detractors who think that God hates the President too.