God Decides to Test America’s Christians
God had been listening.
For years, American politicians had invoked his name. They opened meetings with prayer, quoted Scripture in speeches, carried Bibles into campaign events, and promised voters that America could be saved if only the country returned to Christian values.
God decided it was time for a test.
He called his son.
“You went once before,” God said. “Go again.”
Jesus looked down at the United States.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Run for office.”
Jesus considered this.
“As what?”
God smiled.
“A Democrat.”
Jesus understood immediately.
It was a test.
He announced his candidacy and began traveling the country.
At his first campaign stop, someone asked what government should do about hungry children.
“Feed them,” Jesus said.
By evening, conservative television had its headline:
JESUS EMBRACES SOCIALISM
A Republican senator warned that giving people food without requiring them to work for it would destroy individual responsibility.
Jesus traveled to another city.
A woman asked what should happen when poor people became sick but could not afford a doctor.
“Care for them,” Jesus said.
The next morning:
JESUS BACKS GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE
An insurance executive appeared on television to explain that although compassion was important, the American health-care system depended upon personal choice and free enterprise.
Jesus kept campaigning.
At the border, reporters asked what should be done about strangers who arrived seeking shelter.
“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,” Jesus answered.
Within minutes:
DEMOCRAT JESUS SUPPORTS OPEN BORDERS
A pastor with a television ministry said Christianity required compassion, but added that Jesus clearly did not understand the complexities of modern immigration policy.
Another reporter asked about crime.
Jesus told them about a woman who had been caught committing adultery. A crowd wanted her punished.
“What did you do?” the reporter asked.
“I told the person without sin to throw the first stone.”
That evening:
JESUS SOFT ON CRIME
Then came the economic questions.
A reporter asked Jesus what he thought about billionaires.
Jesus told the story of a rich man and said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.
Wall Street fell before he finished speaking.
Several billionaire donors immediately announced a new political action committee.
AMERICANS FOR BIBLICAL CAPITALISM
Its first commercial showed a dark photograph of Jesus.
A frightened voice warned:
“Jesus wants to punish success.”
Then researchers discovered something even worse.
His earliest followers had shared their possessions. Some had sold property and distributed the money according to need.
Cable television interrupted regular programming.
BREAKING NEWS: JESUS MOVEMENT LINKED TO COMMUNAL PROPERTY
A congressman demanded an investigation.
“This sounds like Marxism,” he said.
Someone pointed out that Jesus had lived nearly eighteen hundred years before Karl Marx.
The congressman said that only made the conspiracy more troubling.
The attacks continued.
Jesus praised a Samaritan for helping an injured stranger when respectable religious men had walked past him.
JESUS SIDES WITH FOREIGNERS
He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
JESUS WEAK ON DEFENSE
He said people should love their enemies.
JESUS REFUSES TO PUT AMERICA FIRST
He overturned the tables of men making money inside the Temple.
RADICAL DEMOCRAT ATTACKS SMALL BUSINESS
The religious leaders became increasingly concerned.
They reminded their congregations that America was a Christian nation.
They warned that Jesus represented values completely foreign to traditional Christianity.
One prominent preacher told millions of viewers that Christians had a duty to defeat him.
“We must ask ourselves,” the preacher said, “what would Jesus do?”
Jesus watched from backstage.
Election Day drew closer.
The polls showed that most white evangelical Christians intended to vote against him.
Church parking lots were filled with campaign signs for his opponent.
Pastors warned that a Jesus victory could destroy America.
Finally, God called his son.
“I have seen enough,” God said.
“So have I.”
God looked down at the churches, the campaign rallies, the television preachers and the politicians still invoking his name.
“What do we do?”
Jesus looked at his father.
“What we did to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
I’d leave the ending exactly there—no explanation, no final moral.
