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By Lee Duigon
December 27, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

If you’d like to be spiritual without the hassle of being a Christian, and you’ve received money or a gift card for Christmas, you may want to buy one or more of the new, improved Bibles that are coming out.

We’ve all heard of the new “gay-friendly” or “Queen James” Bible (see this link) that terms a sin into a blessing, or whatever. Well, this is going to be taken one step farther for the Self-Esteem Bible.

Published by the Stunata Foundation, the Self-Esteem Bible is “guaranteed to give you a warm glow every time you look into the mirror to pray,” according to a recommendation by Joseph Procrustes, an incarcerated felon. “After all the nasty things that all those people said about me at my trial, it’s nice to know that Jesus digs me just the way I am. It’s something to buck you up while you’re doing time for murder and armed robbery.”

Some stick-in-the-mud critics have objected to the insertion of such verses as “Whatever I do is great with God,” “I am where it’s at,” and “We don’t need no stinkin’ repentance.” But the editors of the Self-Esteem Bible reply, “These are not so much additions to Scripture as they are clarifications of its true meaning.” Even so, there will always be some quibbling about the editors’ tinkering with Revelation—in which Christ in glory smiles at the unrepentant sinners and says, “You’re the tops!”

Best of all, the Self-Esteem Bible is only about a quarter of the size of the original. All those archaic and annoying references to sin, atonement, and redemption have been deleted.

Along similar lines proceeds the We’re All Okay Bible, an “interfaith” rendition by the Multicultural University Theology Teachers. Editor-in-chief Lotta Surimi predicts it’ll be an instant best-seller.

“Almost everybody already believes our message, anyway: as long as you’re sincere, it doesn’t matter what you believe. Everybody goes to Heaven, and all the gods are there. Ra, Mercury, Odin, Hanuman, Huitzilopochtli—they’re all up there. There’s even a nice corner of Heaven reserved for atheists,” Surimi says.

Surprisingly minor changes were needed, she said, to turn the old Bible into the We’re All Okay Bible. “For instance, the first of the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’—all that needed was a little tweaking to bring it into line with modern thought. So now the First Commandment reads, ‘Thou shalt have whatever and however many gods thou likest—or no gods at all, if that floateth thy boat.’

“Look—or should I say behold? All cultures, all religions, all beliefs are equally true, equally valid. You can be a Buddhist one day, a Sikh the next, whatever you feel like on any given day, and you still wind up in Heaven. The great thing about our bible is that it will be equally valuable to you whether you’re sacrificing a chicken to Sheemish or dancing around in a badger costume at a Presbyterian USA conference.”

Not to sell these two bibles short, but the big winner among the newbies looks to be our third entry—The Obama Bible, by the Reverend Jamie Foxx.

Foxx, who used to be a comedian, shot to the top of the theological charts last month when he said, at the annual Soul Train awards show, “First of all, give an honor to God and to our lord and savior, Barack Obama.” He tried at first to pass it off as a joke.

“But it isn’t a joke, is it?” said the executive editor of the Obama Bible Project, Rev. Arius “Punchy” Haynes. “Look at his miracles! One hundred percent of the vote in district after district—a hundred and ten percent in some! Look at all the dead who rose up to vote for him! Why, Jesus only handed out some bread and fishes. Barack Obama hands out phones!”

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Predictably, there are spoil-sports who call this blasphemy. They ignore startling developments—the whole Washington press corps suddenly speaking in tongues, and being baptized en masse into the First Church of Obama the Savior; the near-instantaneous creation of Islamic jihad states all over the Middle East and Africa; the rapid, radical transformation of America into a kind of Zimbabwe with snow.

The creation of the Obama Bible was an uncomplicated process, simply replacing all references to God and Jesus Christ with the name of our miracle-working president. In a few cases, prominent Democrats were consulted to make minor changes. Thus the marriage feast in Cana (John, Chapt. 2) becomes the celebration of a gay marriage, and Pontius Pilate’s name is changed to “John Boehner.” But these are trivial matters.

So that’s it, everybody. Out with the old, in with the new—just in time for New Year’s.