The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 53
“Jesus looked down into the pit. He was tempted a great deal this time, more than when he was hungry, because he was young and healthy and had confidence in his physical fortitude, and much more than when Satan offered the kingship of pleasure palaces, because Jesus was faithful and knew that the kingdom he had set out to establish made Satan’s construction seem sandstone caves. The third time Jesus was tempted to his limit, because he himself wanted to know if God, his Father, loved him as completely as he had been told, because he wanted to know if the angels were quick, because he wanted to know that he could not fall were he deliberately to throw himself into the pit of Hell. Jesus stepped to the edge and raised his arms, prepared to dive. And then he took courage, and then he laughed. Without looking back at Satan, Jesus said that he did not need to test God, his Father, further than this, and that he felt ashamed that he had tested God this far. Jesus said, ‘I have been forty days with you, Satan, without food or weapons or security, and yet I still want to live. You are evil incarnate, yet I am still capable of laughter and play.’ Jesus flapped his arms as a child imitates a bird. Satan withdrew from Jesus, to bide his time.”
Father Saint Stephen stood, went to the cabin door, opened it, pointed toward the gangway that I presumed led below decks. He waited while I summed up quickly for Grandfather what he had said. Grandfather nodded approvingly.
Israel suddenly grabbed my arm and asked me to get out of there with him right away. I did not answer. I confess I was too hungry for knowledge of God and man, to leave then, as I should have. I was tempted by Father Saint Stephen’s story, and wanted more, wanted also to test my faith in God and Grandfather and Israel and my own sense of decency. I did not think then, and certainly do not now, that Father Saint Stephen was a devil. Nor was he an evil man. He was weak, in his own way. He had read the Gospels for his own purposes, the way good and bad men have done since Paul, and though Father Saint Stephen’s interpretations (or misinterpretations, his black, black exegesis that I shall present as best I recall) had led him and his brethren to vertiginously bad judgments, Father Saint Stephen’s opinions were still grounded in a compelling parable, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. In that sweltering, rolling cabin aboard The Free Gift of God, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Father Saint Stephen’s sermon offered me raw revelation of what we had chanced upon in the world.
Father Saint Stephen continued to me, “That is what happened in those forty days, my child. Think hard that Satan withdrew when he failed to tempt Jesus to damnation, yet also that Satan is said to have bided his time.”
Father Saint Stephen explained that since that day in the wilderness, twenty centuries of blasphemous critics had attacked Jesus’ courage. These critics had declared that mankind will worship anything, bird, star, or machine, for bread, power, and security. The critics said Jesus lacked pity, that he arrogantly presumed mankind was as strong as he. The critics said that mankind was desperately eager to forge even one kingdom on the sand to secure peace and prosperity, and that Jesus was irresponsible and pretentious to refuse Satan’s proffered kingdom, for Jesus then could have provided, however incompletely, some measure of love and health for mankind.
Father Saint Stephen identified the worst of the critics, the Russians, the Germans, the English, and the Americans, who he said were “the weaklings of the north, impatient and reckless.” These in particular claimed that there was so little goodness in the world, the world had become so inhuman, that a leap into Hell might be the only way to test if God still lives. They claimed that if Jesus had doubts enough to accompany Satan to the precipice, then who are we, sad sinners, to presume that God loves us?
In the late twentieth century, these critics had used their attacks to usurp Jesus’ power. Father Saint Stephen said they had announced they could nurture mankind better than Jesus ever had. They had established vast earthly empires that had knitted into one kingdom, filled with towers of Babel, offering food and weapons of security to the multitudes. And the rulers of this blasphemous kingdom had told the servants of God that mankind had no more need of God or knowledge of God. They say that God is a hypothesis that has proved unnecessary.
Father Saint Stephen said that the “obvious” has happened. He said that Satan had bided his time and continued to tempt men, and finally in the late twentieth century he had triumphed. The blasphemous kingdom had fallen under Satan’s control in exchange for food, power, security. It was not enough for Satan. Satan reviled any man who continued to hunger for more than bread, who continued to turn from earthly power for obedience to heavenly wealth, who continued to refuse to test God and his angels. He said that those people that Satan reviled he had had cast out of the blasphemous kingdom. He said that these outcasts were easy to identify, they were “obviously” the most meek, the most wretched, the slaves, the ones for whom God sent Jesus.
“You ask what happened at Ascension Island,” said Father Saint Stephen. “The same that has happened in the Caribbean, aflame with race war, or in the Pacific, where there are famine, tyranny, massacres.