Trickster Christ? The Happy Tutor over at Wealth Bondage lays out the stakes when it comes to this Divine Riddler.

I suppose we all see in Christ our own image: Born in a Dumpster; died on a Gurney. That is how I see him; the Fool I follow. For others, he is the child of privilege (God’s only son), who came to save others like him, and damn the rest to hell. To me he is the prodigy who confounded the priests in the temple and spoke in riddles. To others, he laid down the law and left them in charge. Yes, he left a Book, but those of us who are Teachers can only smile. How are we, who are so illiterate, to know what it says? We who cannot read even a poem or a paragraph? The Book too he left us to learn our own limits. Those who speak in his name have yet to get their Final Grade. From what I see on TV, the annointed had better take PE and Intro to Anthro and hope squeek by with an average above D. Maybe in Limbo is where they will learn to read the Text they quote so freely.

If the Book didn’t so clearly show us both characters—and insist they are one and the same—I would still count myself among this Fool’s followers. But until he can separate his wheat from his chaff, he won’t be for me any more than the first among equals.