Jesus would like to welcome a guest commentator this week: His Holiness the Buddha!

There seems to be yet another hullabaloo over at Fox News. In a discussion about Tiger Woods and his restoration into the grace of the public eye, pundit Brit Hume said this week, “The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

Understandably, this angered some Buddhists.

Predictably, Ann Coulter jumped on the Brit Bandwagon and started spewing fiery red viciousness out the hole she calls her mouth. She writes: “Hume’s words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals’ copious ignorance of Christianity.”

Well, Jesus and the Buddha are here to set the record straight about Christianity and Buddhism. Who better to hear it from than straight from the horse’s mouth? So, grab a notebook and a pen, Ann, and take some notes from the masters.

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Hi, Ann, Jesus here. First of all, I’d like to correct you. Hume’s words are, from my perspective, 50 percent factually correct. That is, in half of what Brit is saying, he is 100 percent correct. We Christians are indeed quite forgiving. As I’ve always said, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”

Hey there, Ann, Buddha here. Boy that Jesus is really something, isn’t he? From my perspective, too, Brit is only 50 percent correct. That is, in the other half of what he’s saying–that there is no forgiveness in Buddhism–I must take offense. First of all, like Jesus, I have also always said “If robbers should attack you and cut you in pieces with a two-handed saw, limb by limb, and one of you should feel hate, such a one is not a follower of my gospel.”

I’d say that’s pretty close to the equivalent of…

Turning. One’s. Cheek.

Forgivetothaizzle.

Word. In fact I’ve also always said that “if men speak evil of you, this must you think: ‘Our heart shall not waver; and we will abide in compassion, in lovingkindness, without resentment. We will think of the man who speaks ill of us with thoughts of love, and in our thoughts of love shall we dwell. And from the abode of love we will fill the whole world with far-reaching, wide-spreading, boundless love.’” That’s pretty forgiveful, too, if I do say so, myself.

I second that emotion. So now that we’ve set the record straight on Brit, I’ve got a couple of bones to pick with you, Ann. You say that Christianity is “the best deal in the universe” because “God sent his only son to get the crap beat out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you’re in.” Ah, don’t you always have a way with words… Okay, fair enough. All it takes to believe is just to believe. But that doesn’t have anything to do with forgiveness. Forgiveness is an act and it’s bestowed on those who follow my teachings–not just those who believe I was materialized through a virgin mother and made water into wine. Forgiveness comes by being forgiving; like I say, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” In fact it’s not so easy to just get into the Kingdom if you are merely “washing the dishes or walking the dog or just sitting there minding your own business hating Susan Sarandon,” as you say, and just accept that I’m the son of God. That’s because, “on the day of judgment you will have to give an account of every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” I think a lot of pundits who are making beaucoup dollars inciting anger and ignorance in people who don’t know any better are going to have to give an account of a lot of careless words they’ve uttered when they go up to see the big guy in the sky, if they think that’s where they’re going.

Agreed. I also want to say that anyone can be a Buddhist. It’s just like being Christian. You believe in the eight-fold path and you follow it. That’s all there is to it. You can believe some dude was sent down as God’s only son and was murdered on the cross, and follow him, or you can believe that some dude was enlightened under a tree and follow him. Neither one is inherently better or easier than the other. Whatever you choose, you have to work at it. I think I’ve said some things Tiger might be interested in. This one, for example: “From lust arises sorrow and from lust arises fear. If a man is free from lust, he is free from fear and sorrow.” And this: “When a man knows the solitude of silence and feels the joy of quietness, he is free from fear and sin and feels the joy of the dhamma.”

Another forgiving passage! Way to go, Buddha! As a final though to Ann, I would just like to sayeth:

“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

And from the Buddha:

“He who has to walk with fools has a long journey of sorrow, because to be with a fool is as painful as to be with an enemy; but the joy of being with the wise is like the joy of being with a beloved kinsman.”

Poor Tiger.

First his marriage goes kaput, then he goes on a golf hiatus, then Accenture revokes their “Be a Tiger” ad campaign. Even Jesus doesn’t know who is reprimanding him harder: his former endorsers or his wife.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported an image-cleansing campaign at Accenture almost as pervasive as Stalin’s or Saddam Hussein’s propaganda ministries.  Tiger’s face has been replaced by an anonymous skier’s, his name has been taken off their website, all Tiger posters have been taken off the company’s walls, and to top it off, employees were asked to throw away their Tiger hats.

However, if you’re traveling through Washington Dulles, Dallas-Fort Worth or Atlanta this holiday season, treat yourself to a gander at one of the now highly amusing posters, in which Tiger seems to be channeling his future self from the past: “Tougher than ever to be a tiger,” he calls from the green. (How did he know!) Or “What you do next: 90%. What you did: 10%.” Spooky.

“The Accenture ads with Tiger finally make sense,” says Quentin George of Interpublic Mediabrands. Phew. Here no one even knew what Accenture was; now we know their ads were just a way for future Tiger to warn present Tiger about the dangers ahead.

Or did he have divine help? Jesus sayeth:

“To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’”

The lord cometh in mysterious ways.

A family in Bryan, Texas, has spotted the Virgin Mary on their side view mirror, in the form of, yes, a mutated bird dropping which appears to be glowing in certain lights. See if you have better luck identifying our Holy mother the Madonna than Jesus did:

“Image of Virgin Mary appears in bird dropping on area family’s truck” (KBTX-TV)

Salvador Pachuca, who owns the car, explains that “I told my brothers come over here and see what this is and they say this is the Virgin.”

Apparently Salvador and his family are going to take the side view mirror off the car and put it on a shelf for safe keeping. “I’m not going to wash it off,” he said.

Nor should he.

Jesus confirmeth:

“I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

Finally.  Someone with some brains in their head is coming to clean up this trashy mess we call the Bible.

Conservatives over at Conservapedia (that’s a real site, by the way) have put together a helpful, numbered list of things they’ve caught Liberals trying to sneak behind our backs into the Holy Book. Get in on the Conservative Bible Project Wiki before the Second Coming!  As of today,

No more #10: “Liberal Wordiness,” like the “consistent use of the word ‘Lord’ rather than ‘Jehovah’ or ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Lord God.’” What do the Jews know about the Bible, anyway?

It’s about time we #7: “Accept Free Market Parables” so that we can teach the young’ins “the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.”

And certainly it isn’t explicit enough that we #6: “Accept the logic of Hell.” Logic will save us “with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.”

Very, very real existence, sayeth Jesus:

“So it will be at the end of the age.  The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

(Jesus is trying to figure out how to add a digg icon onto his posts, but in the meantime, you can digg this article here!)

This is Ann Minch.  She has paid her minimum monthly payments on her Bank of America credit card every month for years, and now BofA has raised her montly interest rate from 12.9% to 30%.

As she tells the Huffington Post, when she tried to negotiate the outrageously high the interest rate, BofA said they’d “send it to corporate.”  Basically, Ann says, “Bank of America’s message to me was, ‘Tough shit!’”

Ann has a message to BofA and any other bank preying on its loyal customers: “You are evil, thieving bastards.  You have reaped ungodly profits in your behemoth casino scams, then lost.  Only to turn around and usurp the wealth of this great nation by the outright rape and pillage of middle class Americans, whose sweat and toil built it.”

Jesus agreeth with Ann:

“The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil.”

It’s like this: Silvio Berlusconi, dictator of Italy, is notorious for his antics cavorting around with young laydays.  The Roman Catholic newspaper, Avvenire, finally found it within themselves to condemn Berlusconi, but in so doing stoked a media war with the dictator’s kingdom of newspapers, in particular Il Giornale.

Here, translated by the New York Times, is what Avvenire originally said about Berlusconi:

People have understood the unease, the mortification, the suffering that this arrogant neglect of sobriety has caused the Catholic Church

After calling the editor of Avvenire “a homosexual known to the Italian secret services,” here is what Il Giornale (owned by Berlusconi’s brother) replied in retaliation:

Gossip isn’t enough to crucify someone… Or rather it was enough, it has been enough, only in the cases of two people: Jesus Christ for some of his miracles, and more recently Silvio Berlusconi for some of his dances with women who in truth were very available.

Well!  If they were available…

This is what Jesus wants to know:

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

I performed that one little miracle of raising myself from the dead.  On the day of judgment, I’d like to see how Berlusconi does it!

Thank the Holy Father for our Holy Government.  They’ve really got this whole torture thing down to a science.

Turns out that the people questioning Al Qaeda suspects in the last few years weren’t Interrogators Gone Wild, but were following the government’s torture guidelines to the letter.  You may not have read the recently released and hundreds-of-pages long documents detailing what interrogators were allowed to do during their interrogations, so here’s a snippet of what’s included, according to the New York Times

Managers, doctors and lawyers not only set the program’s parameters but dictated every facet of a detainee’s daily routine, monitoring interrogations on an hour-by-hour basis. From their Washington offices, they obsessed over the smallest details: the number of calories a prisoner consumed daily (1,500); the number of hours he could be kept in a box (eight hours for the large box, two hours for the small one); the proper time when his enforced nudity should be ended and his clothes returned…

The required records [for documenting waterboarding], the medical supervisors said, included “how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.”

You can read the documents, including swaths of black censored paragraphs here.

Jesus sayeth, interrogators or government, it’s all the same:

“Can a blind person guide a blind person?  Will not both fall into a pit?”

Revenge, according to the proverb, is a dish that is best served cold.

But apparently, it also can be served like a pulled pork sandwich.

That’s the speculation of an Aurora woman who found her car slathered with barbecue sauce and pickles on consecutive nights.

It soundeth to Jesus like the attacker just wanted to make a gigantic Chicago dog.

Jesus sayeth:

“It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Goodbye, Katie!  Goodbye, Charlie!  Goodbye, Tina! Goodbye, John!  Goodbye, Levi!  Goodbye, Saks!  Goodbye, Bush Doctrine!  Goodbye, Troopergate!  Goodbye, Natural Gas Pipeline!  Goodbye, Al-ah-ska!

Goodbye, cruel world!

Jesus haseth but one thing to say to the Republican party if it knoweth a good thing when it seeth it:

“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.”

Have you seen the naked airline pilots in Air New Zealand’s new air safety commercials?

They’re giving the Flight of the Conchords a run for their money.

Jesus thinks he may fly out for a casting call…

Jesus warneth Air New Zealand:

[B]lessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.