Man Attempting to Imitate Jesus Becomes Celibate Carpenter

Seattle, Washington

As with Nicodemus, poor Henry Marshall is perhaps taking things a bit too literally. He recently heard from his pastor at Sienna Church of Seattle that we are to imitate Jesus in all things.

His pastor boldly proclaimed that we live in a culture that emulates foolish cultural heroes and celebrities where it should copy the lifestyle of our cultural savior Jesus. "Jesus came into this world to show us how we ought to live," the pastor confidently and heretically proclaimed.

Since historical Reformed doctrines like justification, regeneration, adoption, and the like, get no traction when one is trying to build a large church, the pastoral staff at Sienna Church decided to mine Jesus' teaching for inspiration in making heaven for ourselves through action, according to our own desires, right here and now.

But silly Henry interpreted his pastor to say that he should immediately leave his wife and enter a trade school to learn the skill of carpentry, and begin selling wooden sculptures at the local farmer's market. The pastoral staff at Sienna immediately intervened, suggesting to Henry that he was perhaps mis-handling the Bible. But Henry remains unwavering. He sites back to the pastors their claims that we are to follow the example of Jesus, and that through our actions of giving up sex and making things out of wood we can make a better world.

The pastoral staff, for their part, clarified what they meant by imitating Jesus. Jesus obviously meant that we were to be vegans and fight against whiteness and climate change and capitalism and America! The pastors are still perplexed that anyone could interpret the Bible so recklessly. Then they returned to their studies of Origen, Rob Bell, and John Yoder.