KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, ETERNITY — Jesus Hubert Christ is the Chief Salvation Officer at Heavenly Hosts, Inc. — the subsidiary that operates Christianity’s headquarters — and he does not have much good to say about one of his franchisees in Jemison, Alabama. Pastor Phillip Guin over at Rocky Mount Methodist Church in Jemison recently made headlines when he decided to take a tax-free parcel of land next to where his congregation worships every Sunday and turn it into a gun range. Guin claims it was because of all the requests he was getting from his parishioners to teach them basic gun safety that he decided to build a holy handgun range, but Christ is not at all pleased.
“I said to turn the other cheek, not turn the other chamber,” Christ said at a recent press conference. “I mean, I’m not one to usually comment on how our individual franchisees run their stores,” Jesus said, “but clearly when you’re involved with a corporation whose CSO was himself a victim of a violent and bloody murder on Earth, it doesn’t make much good sense to build what is essentially a training center for helping Christians become more deadly accurate with their weapons.”
Christ says that while he acknowledges that some of his disciples did in fact carry swords for protection that “isn’t much different than a celebrity having an armed body guard now” and that “someone deciding to protect themselves against attack isn’t” what he takes umbrage with. “It’s the fact that they’re glorifying violence that gets me so mad. Violence is sort of an inevitable part of human existence, apparently, but one of my biggest messages when I was down there was to try to avoid violence. It begets just more violence, right? Isn’t that literally in the Old Testament? Of course it is,” Christ said, answering his own question.
“It just wreaks of a cynical money grab to me,” Jesus said, adding, “I mean, this is Alabama we’re talking about. Fucking Alabama. I am sure you can’t throw a rock without hitting a gun range. Is Pastor Guin really trying to make us believe that in deep red Alabama there aren’t enough gun ranges to help train good, clean, Christian folk in how to steady their aim and pop a couple caps into people? Of course there are. I did a quick Google search for gun ranges in Alabama and came up with three damn pages of locations.”
Mr. Of Nazareth told reporters that he “enjoys a good shoot ’em up movie” and “playing GTA V like everyone else” but that he understands those things are meant to “sublimate the urge to kill or perpetrate violence” and that “not everyone who even owns a gun is a nut job” but that “clearly if you can’t even leave your piece at home for a few hours every Sunday while you gather in fellowship and praise, you have probably gone to the cuckoo side.”
“Look, if you want to own guns, own guns, you know,” Christ said as he was wrapping up the press conference. “Just don’t mix up guns and Christianity. Guns are only meant to kill. Period. Yes you can point them at inanimate targets and practice, but what are you practicing for? Oh, that’s right, killing motherfuckers. So don’t go telling me that implements of death and destruction have any place in a house of worship dedicated to a guy — me, FYI — that was all about loving your fellow man, not filling him full of lead. I just want my franchisees to engage their critical thinking skills every now and then and really ask themselves if what they’re saying or doing remotely sounds like something I’d approve of, and for the record,” Christ said, “I do not approve of gun ranges at churches. What’s next, a nuclear test site at a church?”
