Imaginary Jesus

by Matt Mikalatos

  “It’s no problem, honey. Is everything okay?”

  “We don’t know yet. Krista is bleeding. We were going to surprise you in a couple of weeks. She’s pregnant.” I looked at Krista, whose eyes were already red from weeping. “We think she might be miscarrying, but we’re not sure.”

  Our parents prayed for us. We were glad to know people were praying, because our God is just and loving and powerful. I had been praying since the moment Krista told me she was bleeding, Dear Jesus, please protect our baby.

  Meanwhile, Krista’s cramps got worse.

  Finally, the nurse called Krista’s name and took blood samples, asked all the questions, gathered the insurance information. We prayed with everything we had. Emotionally exhausted, trying hard to hold on to some shred of hope, we prayed and told Jesus what was happening, because we knew he could fix this. The nurse showed us to our hospital room, and Krista started the humiliating process of putting on her flimsy backward shirt. A sitcom played on the television, trying to assure us that life is a comedy, that in half an hour all our problems would be solved.

  “I don’t want this to be happening,” Krista said, lying in the hospital bed.

  “Me neither.” I held her hand, with nothing more to say.

  In a while someone came and took Krista for an ultrasound. I watched that tiny black-and-white screen with desperate hope, searching for the miniscule movements and miniature body parts that mean a baby.

  “I’m sorry,” the technician said. “I don’t see anything.”

  We already knew, we had known somehow, but we both melted into tears. The doctor came and gave Krista a pill. “For the pain.” And she told us that the baby had probably died before tonight, that there was nothing we could have done, that it wasn’t our fault.

  We stared at the television until the paperwork was done. The baby was gone. Now every place we would go—the hospital, our home, the plane to Thailand the next morning—would be just one more place we didn’t have a baby. One more place to fill with tears.

  Krista’s Vicodin kicked in. “I know our baby just died, but the pills make me feel so . . . happy.”

  I rubbed her arm. “That’s why people get addicted to them, I guess.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “How can I mourn and be happy at the same time?”

  Now I turned away from Motorcycle Guy and burst out of the emergency room, running through the parking lot. I could see Jesus on the edge of it, where the last of the streetlamps pooled their meager light. I ran to him and grabbed him by the tunic. I shook him but he wouldn’t look at me. “Where were you?” He didn’t say anything, and I pounded my fists into his chest. “What happened to ‘Ask and you shall receive’? Are you going to say that I didn’t have enough faith?” I pushed him down into the grass. “God healed her hands but you couldn’t stop this?” I could barely speak, the rage was pulsing through my face, hot tears burning my eyes.

  Jesus held up his hands to me. “You have such limited understanding, you don’t know all that I know.”

  “I know that she was pregnant. I know that my baby died and that you could have stopped it, that I asked you to stop it, and you didn’t.”

  “It’s all for the best,” he said. “Perhaps the baby had a developmental disorder—”

  I kicked him once as hard as I could in the side. “SHUT UP!” I wiped furiously at my face. “I don’t care. I would have taken her! I would have loved her.” I kicked at the ground. I clawed up some dirt and threw it at him. He covered his face with his hands. “I would have loved her however she had been born.”

  “Be careful how you speak to me.” He stood and pointed at me angrily. “You think you have it worse than other people? You think a miscarriage and a couple of bad breakups make you an example of suffering in this life?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We suffer and what are you doing about it? I know that other people have it worse than me, how could I not? With all the genocide and war and rape and abuse and children starving, I have it pretty good. But the question remains, Where were you when my baby was dying?”

  “In this world of sin . . . ,” he started, but I furiously waved at him for silence and he, as always, obeyed me.

  “The more important question is why I’m even talking to you about this. Because he hasn’t answered me, I guess.” I pointed at Imaginary Jesus. “Your answers infuriate me. I’m done with you. I want to speak to the true Jesus.”

  “You’re questioning God’s power,” he said.

  “No. I know he has power. If he were helpless, I wouldn’t feel betrayed by him.”

  “You’re questioning his goodness.”

  “I know he’s good. I know he loves me. He’s proven that often enough. But why didn’t he show up on this day? Why did he heal her hands but not our baby?” I leaned against a car, grabbing my chest. I could barely breathe. I heard a screaming child being carried into the ER, and that piercing wail brought tears cascading down my face again. I fell to my knees. “Where is my little girl?”

  “She’s safe,” Jesus said, and he knelt beside me.

  I pushed him away. “I don’t want your platitudes. I want to talk to the real Jesus, not some fantasy from my own head.”

  “What would you say to him?” Motorcycle Guy asked.

  “I would tell him that if he had been here, my daughter wouldn’t have died,” I said. “That no one’s daughter would ever die. I would ask him how he puts up with Death and all his friends—Pestilence, Disease, Famine. I would ask him, ‘How long, O Lord, righteous and true, will you continue to let us suffer?’”

  Motorcycle Guy gently put a hand on my shoulder. “You said all those things to him months ago. You said them the day of the miscarriage. You said them on the plane to Thailand. He heard your cry. He heard your questions.”

  “But he hasn’t answered.”

  “I have one more place to take you,” he said.

  I grabbed his jacket. “Can you take me to a place where I’ll see my lost loved ones? Are you going to show me my grandparents and let me hold my lost child in my arms?”

  Motorcycle Guy crouched beside me and said with infinite kindness, “No. Your grandparents are gone. Your little one is gone. They aren’t here, just as he—” Motorcycle Guy nodded toward Imaginary Jesus—“isn’t here. Anything I showed you would only be a fantasy. They can’t come down to you, you must go up to them.”

  “Just show me their faces,” I whispered. But he shook his head and we walked to his bike.

  He flipped up his visor and said to Imaginary Jesus, “We’re going to Mount Hood.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he said.

  “Stay away from me,” I pleaded. “Please.”

  Imaginary Jesus put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m not going to leave you. I’ll meet you at Mount Hood.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Learning to Listen to Your Inner (Tube) Voice

  It’s roughly fifty miles down the Columbia River Gorge to Mount Hood. The Columbia moves fast through the Gorge, and the wind howls consistently and hard, making it one of the most popular windsurfing locations in the world. Riding a motorcycle through this area is desperately cold.

  I was inordinately pleased when we pulled up the long, winding road to Timberline Lodge just as the sun was rising. It’s an upscale, rustic lodge—the type of place you’d see in a 1930s movie, where the beautiful women smoke long cigarettes and wear stylish ski clothes and the men stand around in tuxedos and make snappy comments.

  Motorcycle Guy led me past the high-ceilinged lobby, through the wood-paneled hallways, and into an exterior courtyard paved in flagstones with a low stone wall. Beyond the wall were the ski slopes and three thrones made of ice. Imaginary Jesus sat on the center throne, and to his right sat another Jesus who did not smile or acknowledge us, but seemed lost in deep thought. To Imaginary Jesus’ left sat a Jesus who seemed more ordinary than my own, and he smiled when he saw us, lifting a hand in greeting. All three wore ski outfits, c
omplete with goggles, scarves, and ski pants.

  I grabbed Motorcycle Guy’s sleeve. “I don’t want to talk to imaginary constructs anymore,” I said.

  Motorcycle Guy narrowed his eyes and frowned. “Then why do they keep showing up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whose imagination do they come from?”

  I looked at the flagstone at our feet. “Mine, I guess.”

  “So when you’re sitting in a café and Pete walks in and asks some questions and your imaginary Jesus makes a run for it, who made him do that?” I didn’t answer. “When he’s hiding, who is the one hiding him?” I kept my head down. Motorcycle Guy made a good point. “Haven’t you noticed that he shows up whenever you call him? He’s not the one on the run. You are.” He crossed his arms. “I’ll be waiting by my bike.”

  The center Jesus stood and motioned to me, and I walked over, clenching my jaw.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get ski clothes on over robes and sandals?” he asked. When I didn’t laugh he said, “Just kidding.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  Imaginary Jesus looked at the other Jesuses sheepishly. “I wanted to give you some answers about where God was when your baby died. We’re three possible answers. On my right is Meticulous Providence Jesus, I’ll be playing the part of Free Will Jesus, and over here on the left is Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus.”

  I sighed. “And we’re going to have some sort of debate.”

  Jesus grinned. “Of course not. We’re your imaginary Jesuses after all. And we know how much you hate debates, so we came up with another solution.”

  Pete trudged around the corner of the building, a look of utter resignation on his face, crowned with a scowl so deep it was dragging in the snow behind him. Looped around his arms were four inner tubes. “Pete!” I said.

  “Kid, I’ve evicted a lot of imaginary Jesuses, but yours are a special pain in the patookis.”

  “What’s with the inner tubes?” I asked.

  Jesus clapped his hands and cheered. “An inner tube race!” he cried. “And the winner will be the answer you adopt about God’s providence.”

  “God’s what?”

  “Providence. How God interacts with people and the world.”

  Pete lined up the inner tubes at the crest of a small, icy rise. “Let’s get this over with,” he said. Each Jesus chose a tube and sat on it. Pete motioned for me to get on one, so I did. Pete told me he’d meet me at the bottom, assuming I survived.

  He leaned close. “Remember, this isn’t some dream. You could really get hurt here. It’s not Calvin and Hobbes.”

  “Thanks, Apostle Mom,” I said. The great white slope stretched out below us, an impressive expanse of speedy white. I love inner-tubing and was ready to feel the icy wind on my face. “See you in the funny papers.”

  Pete moved in front of us, slipping on the ice and almost falling before he caught himself. He lifted his hands and said, “Remember, this is a race. The Jesus who reaches the bottom together with Matt is the ‘winner’ and will get to remain with him. Ready . . . set . . . SLED!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  One Jesus Down . . . Way Down

  Our descent started out slowly, and the three Jesuses clumped up near me, each of them hanging on to my inner tube. Someone was dragging his feet, and we weren’t picking up much speed. Meticulous Jesus and Free Will Jesus exchanged a glance, and one of them said, “You know, Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus isn’t even omniscient. We should ditch him now.”

  Omniscience, of course, meaning that he knows everything. An essential attribute of God, and if what they said was true, then he was definitely not the Jesus for me. I looked over at him just as we hit a small bump in the ice, which accentuated the look of complete horror on his face. “That’s not true!” he said. “What an underhanded way to start this. It’s just that the future is unknowable because there are free choices to be made that I’m not going to interfere with. I can influence events, and I know what I myself am going to do. I know everything there is to know, anything that can be known.”

  We were picking up speed now. “Sounds shaky to me,” I said.

  “Do you see that invisible cat?” he asked. The other two Jesuses rolled their eyes as if to say, “The old invisible cat argument.”

  I scanned the snow field as we rushed past. “No.”

  “Because you can’t see an invisible cat.” Now we were really moving, headed straight for a major bank on the hill. If we didn’t figure out a way to turn our motley crew, we were going to go over the embankment, through the trees, and off what appeared to be a sheer cliff. “Look,” Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus said, “you can choose to turn us so that we stay on the path or drive us through those trees. I’m not going to interfere. I want you to choose. My preference would be to stay on the path. It’s the same in life.” We were picking up speed. Snow was spraying up from the sides like a puddle being splashed. “I knew your child dying was a possibility. I wasn’t certain that was the way it would go. I hoped it would work out differently, but some of the choices in life brought this about. Maybe it was something some company spilled in the drinking water, or maybe your doctor wasn’t paying attention, but the thing is, I wanted you to have your choices, and in the end I was saddened by the way it turned out. I didn’t want it to go that way, and I am so . . . so . . . sorry.”

  Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus actually had tears in his eyes, and I was touched. He seemed to care, and I knew that it wasn’t that he couldn’t help me, but that he valued my free will more than my baby’s life. Which was pretty lame, come to think of it. And he hadn’t known for certain what I would choose before I did? That seemed sketchy.

  Meticulous Jesus coughed and said, “Did you see this coming, Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus?” And his leg shot out with a savage kick that sent Can’t-See-the-Future-Because-It’s-Unknowable Jesus’ inner tube careening away from us and into the woods.

  As he spun away uncontrollably he shouted, “As a matter of fact, I did, but I hoped you would choose more wisely and—oh no—not the edge, not the . . . AAAAAAAAaaaaaahhhhh!”

  Meticulous Jesus and Free Will Jesus both let fly with a hearty laugh, and Meticulous Jesus said, “Ha-ha, that really glorifies me.” His savage kick had sent us spinning back on track.

  Free Will Jesus laughed, snow caked into his beard. “You sure seem cruel and heartless sometimes, Meticulous Jesus.”

  “I’m misunderstood!” He frowned at me. “Mikalatos probably doesn’t even know what meticulous means.”

  As a matter of fact, I did know what it meant. “It’s when you enroll in a school,” I shot back.

  “That’s matriculate,” Free Will Jesus said. “Meticulous means uptight.”

  “No, it means in control,” Meticulous Jesus said. “Nothing surprises me. I cause the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the righteous and the wicked alike. I cause the birds to sing in the trees. I cause the cat to stalk the bird. All these things work together for the good of those who believe in me. All of this works for my greater glory. Meticulous means that I’m a God who cares about details.”

  Just as he finished saying this, we went over a large bump and all flew in the air. When we came down my head hit the ice and Free Will Jesus’ hat flew off. “Did you cause that?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Meticulous Jesus said.

  “And what about rape and genocide and babies dying? You cause sin, too?”

  “Not exactly.” A clod of snow came up and hit me in the face. I brushed it out of my eyes and lost control of my tube for a moment. Meticulous Jesus reached over and steadied me. “Before I made the world I looked at all the possibilities. And I chose to make this one, knowing all the terrible things that would happen. Rape, genocide, death, all those things. I don’t like them. I knew they would happen. But they are against my will.
”

  “Against your decreed will,” Free Will Jesus put in.

  “Come again?” I said.

  “Against his public will . . . you know, don’t kill, don’t steal, et cetera. But then there’s his secret will, where he wants it all to happen so that he gets more glory.”

  “Your secret will?” I asked. “You mean deep down you want all this to happen?”

  Meticulous Jesus shrugged. “Of course. This is the best possible world for my end result, which is glorifying myself. People are still responsible for their choices. I merely chose the world where they chose evil. I allow free will, but in a different way than Free Will Jesus.”

  “The end justifies the means?” I asked. “Is that really what you’re saying?” Just then a branch from a tree smacked me in the face. “OW!”

  “You had that coming,” Meticulous Jesus said. “Since before the foundation of the earth. Show some respect.”

  Below us the trail split in two, and the Jesuses started jockeying for position. I think each one figured that if he could pull me his way and ditch the other Jesus, that would be the end of the contest. But the trees were coming up fast, and I was headed straight for a big one. “Guys,” I said, “you need to let go of my arms.” Neither of them budged. They were each yanking and twisting, trying to break me loose from the other. The trees were coming fast. I closed my eyes and prayed, and then realized that my Jesus was right here beside me, just an inner tube away.

  “WATCH OUT FOR THAT—!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Oooooooh! TREE!

  Both Jesuses looked up and gave simultaneous cries of dismay before letting go of my arms as if in rehearsed tandem. Their release sent me careening straight for the trunk of a monstrous tree ahead of me. “GOOD-BYE, CRUEL WORLD!” I shouted, then curled into the fetal position, determined to leave the world in the same way I came into it.