June 30, 2001
4:40pm

I've been reading this book called Choke. The author's name is Chuck Palahanuik (or something like that, I can't even pronounce it). He's the author of Fight Club as well. Lord know that as poor as I am I shouldn't be buying new books (even if they are 30% off). However, it's the #1 fiction book in the country right now and the first chapter was very interesting (It basically tells you not to bother reading the rest of the book - a little reverse psychology at work.) Little did I know how tawdry and vulgar it would be. However, (as in many things) if you learn to look past that you can see an interesting story.

The narrator's name is Victor Mancini. His crappy childhood involved floating around different foster homes and constantly being kidnapped by his crazy mother. He has a crappy job, one friend, is a nymphomaniac, and lives in poverty while trying to pay for his mother's expensive hospital stay. She's 62 and very sick. She doesn't even recognize him. He can say he's anyone and she will believe him.

I'm not going to go through the whole story (it's too much to explain and I'm not finished yet), but I read something in it that really made me think.

Victor's mother's diary says that she thinks Victor is Jesus Christ (How she came to that conclusion is a long story.). Anyway, at first Victor and Dr. Paige Marshall (who translated the diary for him because it was in Italian) think her story is the ramblings of a crazy woman. However, things start checking out as Dr. Marshall does a little investigating. She starts to believe that Victor's mother could be right. This dismays Victor because he's always believed himself to be a pretty rotten guy, and besides he doesn't feel like being Jesus Christ. He wonders if the way he acts now is the way Jesus acted before He knew He was Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

I think that's a good question. There's a big chunk of Jesus' life that we don't know about. There's the story about His birth, then His time in the temple at age 12, then He's in His 30s getting baptized by His cousin John the Baptist and beginning His ministry. What happens between age 12 and 30? No one knows.

I thought I read somewhere in the Bible that God trained His son in His ways so that He could carry out the plan of salvation. Wouldn't it be strange if that took some trial and error? Wouldn't it be stranged if He made some mistakes or even sinned while He was being trained? (Though I'm certain He wasn't a sad nymphomaniac like Victor.)

Of course this would bring up the question of the Bible's claim that Jesus was blameless. A lamb without blemish was required for the plan of salvation to take effect. My little hypothesis would only work on one condition: Jesus' baptism.

Christian baptism today washes away sin. However, this is (I believe) due to the fact that Jesus has already been sacrificed. If baptism worked the same way during Jesus' time then Jesus could have sinned before His baptism, but not after. If He never sinned after the baptism, then He would still be blameless when the time came for Him to be sacrificed.

I asked the evangelist of my church about Jewish baptisms and he said they were a symbol of commitment to God. No washing away of sin was involved, so my hypothesis cannot be correct. It was neat wrapping my mind around that for a while, and even though I was wrong I have learned something.

I think entirely too much.