The Church of the Comic Spirit

By Paul Enns Wiebe

A comic sendup of twelve Bible stories. Father Alazon Lustlieb claims to have had revelations from On High telling him to find and translate the Bear Lake Scrolls and to start The Church of the Comic Spirit. The scrolls include a film script ("Miss Holy Land," starring Abraham and Sarah), the diary of Moses, and the transcript of a basketball game between the David and Goliath teams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Enns Wiebe
• Release date: Sep 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201873196

Paul Enns Wiebe

Armed with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Paul Enns Wiebe taught comparative religion at Wichita State University until taking very early retirement from his tenured position to become an independent writer. He has published nine novels and counting, as well as a pair of nonfiction books and a passel of articles in his academic specialties.  

Book preview

twelve parodies

Paul Enns Wiebe

If you really want to make a million . . .

the quickest way is to start your own religion.

—L. Ron Hubbard

Founder of

The Church of Scientology

Author’s Preface

The Bible does not come with instructions for use. Why, then, should The Church of the Comic Spirit, which features The Bear Lake Scrolls (the original version of the Hebrew Bible), be prefaced by directions on how to read it?

In pondering this question, I bore in mind the average American reader.

Now, I am as impressed as the next author with both the range and the skill of that reader. He or she has a remarkable knowledge of the Western Canon, including of course the Bible, and it is all too easy to underestimate his or her ability to comprehend the hidden meanings of even the most demanding literary materials. In my view (and I am admittedly in the minority), the common American man or woman could devour the complete works of Shakespeare in the course of an ordinary weekend and still have time on Sunday evening to enjoy a popular television quiz show. This is provided, of course, that he or she ignored the scholarly notes that sit uninvitingly at the feet of those grand speeches, those To-be-or-not-to-be’s and Tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow’s, to which our attention is naturally and quite properly drawn.

So if I choose to risk offending the reader, I do so with the reminder that I hold him or her in the highest esteem, and with the promise that I will offer, not a complete set of instructions, but two simple suggestions, for using this book.

My first suggestion is for that rare reader who does not each day spend half an hour reading the Bible. It is this: before reading each individual Scroll contained in the second section of this book, you may wish to refresh your memory by rereading the short Bible story to which that Scroll bears some resemblance. My good friend the editor has been kind enough to cite the relevant passage or passages. (Should you for any reason have misplaced your Bible, I take the liberty of reminding you that copies are available in bookstores, libraries, and motel rooms.)

The second suggestion is that the reader take time to peruse the footnotes. I extend this advice, not just because the editor has taken great care in their composition, but also because hidden within them there is a subtle plot regarding a murder mystery.

The Lustlieb Story

Prophet, Founder, Saint

1

That a dropout from a rabbinical school in upstate New York, an ordinary young man with the ordinary young ambition of moving to Hollywood and becoming a film star, should be chosen to discover and translate the now-famous Bear Lake Scrolls and then to establish what quickly has become the fastest-growing religion in America, seems incredible. I must confess that when Father Lustlieb first told me his story, I too was skeptical. In fact, I thought it was a joke. But after spending eleven years in his illustrious presence and giving his testimony careful and prayerful study, I am convinced that Alazon Lustlieb was exactly who he claimed to be: a true prophet, and an authentic saint.

Naturally, I do not expect anyone to embrace my conviction without weighing the evidence. In our last private conversation, Father Lustlieb confided that he was depending on me, his most trustworthy and capable disciple, to prove his legitimacy and to dispel the malicious rumors that were already beginning to arise about the origin of the Scrolls. He made it clear that he expected that when I came to publish this, the final and authoritative edition of the Scrolls, I would demonstrate both the truth of his story and the authenticity of the Scrolls themselves.

One rumor has it that the Bear Lake Scrolls were pirated (either by Father Lustlieb or by a second and unknown person) from the computer files of a prominent comedian from the last century just past (Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, or even one of the Monte Python lads). The evidence behind this spurious rumor is that the Scrolls bear a slight resemblance to some of the writings of all those sources.

Spurious is indeed the word. All that need be said in rebuttal of this idle gossip is that neither Mr. Brooks nor Mr. Allen nor, for that matter, any member of the Python troupe, has filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement.

A second rumor is that the Scrolls are a spoof, and that Father Lustlieb himself was their author. The theory is that he conceived the plan while attending a convention of Biblical scholars in Anaheim, California; that a steady diet of listening to pedantic professors drearily debating the fine points of the Dead Sea Scrolls nearly drove him mad; that in order to maintain his sanity he fled the convention hotel and headed for a well-known theme park; that the sight of live cartoon characters tripping festively about the park created in his fertile but misguided mind the idea for composing twelve playful pieces and then passing them off to the world as The Bear Lake Scrolls.

This rumor is, of course, false to its core. I have Father Lustlieb’s word for it. In fact, when I first mentioned this fanciful theory to him, I was astonished to learn that he (innocent soul) had not even heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls! I had to explain to him that they were documents of great historical value, discovered in 1947 by a simple shepherd in caves above the Dead Sea on the Israel-Jordan border and sold to scholars for a large sum of money, documents over which succeeding generations of scholars have shed a large quantity of blood.

According to a third and even more defamatory rumor, Alazon Lustlieb, far from being the saint for which his many followers and admirers take him, was an impostor with a history of fraud and had never even been near a rabbinical school. The evidence brought forward to support this flimsy conjecture is that he was the author of a book that had a moment of notoriety in the early 1970s, a self-help manual in the Hidden Tax Breaks series, entitled How to Start Your Own Church.

Anyone who bothers to research the matter will find that this rumor is based on a misunderstanding. Though there was such a book, its author was not our Alazon Lustlieb, but one Al (Unlucky) Luciano, a small-time con man who was swiftly apprehended by the authorities and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, who subsequently pleaded innocent, was let out on bail, and promptly disappeared.

The fourth and most preposterous rumor is that the Scrolls were written by Father Lustlieb himself; that he either borrowed some of Mr. Brooks’s or Mr. Allen’s or the Python group’s ideas or attended the Anaheim convention (or both); that he was the impostor who wrote the manual for overtaxed citizens and who later surfaced in order to perpetrate an elaborate hoax; and that he was a fraud who was no Jew but was actually a Protestant!

This notion is merely a hodgepodge of the first three already-refuted rumors, with the added suspicion that Father Lustlieb was not even Jewish. The further evidence is the frail assumption that, because of the Scrolls’s linguistic dependence on that old Protestant favorite, the King James Bible, only a Protestant could have written them. In answer to this suspicion, I need only mention that that old Protestant favorite is widely recognized, even by Catholics and Jews, as the classical translation.

Why do these false rumors persist? In a word: persecution. This is not of course a novelty in the sad history of religion. New religions have always been subject to oppression by those they have sought to replace. The ancient Hebrews were persecuted by the Egyptians; the early Christians were persecuted, first by the Jews and later by the Romans; the original Protestants were persecuted by their Catholic foes, and returned the favor; the first Mormons were persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics, as were the Jews before them—the list has no end. Why would things be different in the case of Father Lustlieb’s new church? One might even go so far as to say that those of us who have been converted to this new religion have every right to take these malicious attacks as badges of honor.

So much for the refutation of the rumors. But the question remains: what about positive proof? Is it possible to establish the truth of Father Lustlieb’s story about the origin of the Bear Lake Scrolls?

2

The official version of the story is, of course, the one that astounded the American public when, on that memorable evening exactly one year ago as I write, Father Lustlieb related it on national television. A careful examination of the 4/1/99 transcript of Lenny Prince Live will be enough to establish the accuracy of his account.

Prince: Have we gotta show for you tonigh! We’ll lead off with an exclusive interview with The Most Reverend Alonzo Lustlieb. Rev. Lustlieb is the guy who came up with—get this—who came up with what by all accounts is gonna be the hottest property to come along in many a moon, the Bear Lake Scrolls! Later on, if we have time, we’ll also touch base with the President of these United States, who’ll stop by and give us the scoop on his future plans. But first, gotta go to this.

It is significant that Mr. Prince considered Father Lustlieb’s story important enough to preempt the widely-advertised, highly-anticipated interview with the President. Though this fact proves nothing, it is, considering Mr. Prince’s reputation for journalistic integrity and accuracy, powerful testimony in favor of the story’s plausibility.

Prince: We’re back, and we’re speaking with Father Al Lustlieb here. Mind if I call you Al?

Lustlieb: That’s what my mother used to call me, Lenny.

King: So how’d it happen, Al? How’d you run across the Bear Lake Scrolls?

Lustlieb: You want the whole shtick?

Prince: That’s what we’re here for.

Lustlieb: Well, it goes all the way back to 1968, March 31 to be exact.

Prince: That’s, let’s see, thirty-one years ago yesterday.

Lustlieb: Right. At that time I was driving around this great land of ours, taking an early summer vacation from Hebrew Theological Seminary, up in Buffalo on the shores of Lake Erie, and I happened to stop for the night at this little town called Bliss Beach on the shore of Bear Lake, when—

Prince: Some of our viewers might not know the whereabouts of Bear Lake.

Lustlieb: It’s on the border between Utah and Idaho.

Prince: So what’s a Jewish kid from Buffalo doing in Mormon country?

Lustlieb: I was in a state of great spiritual anguish, because of my inadequate progress in the Hebrew language, to quote the good rabbi, and the thought crossed my mind that it’d be a great time to head out to the West Coast, where I had this uncle in Beverly Hills. Anyway, Uncle Jerry was gonna set me up with a screen test, and if that didn’t pan out I thought I’d sell a screenplay or two, and if worse came to worst I figured God’d show up and put me back on track, get me out of this major funk I was in, due, as I mentioned, to the lack of a basic background in Holyspeak, plus not having my special brand of humor appreciated by the rabbis.

Prince: Which is what happened. God came through for you.

Lustlieb: Did he! The story is, I enrolled for the night at this establishment in  Bliss Beach—. . . no, check that, first I had a bite to eat, etcetera, maybe a coupla beers, and then I went over to this sleeping establishment, I cannot for the life of me remember its name, except that the word Motel figured prominently, and checked in.

Prince: You could buy beer in Utah?

Lustlieb: This was on the Idaho side.

Prince: And that’s where the divine revelation took place? On the Idaho side?

Lustlieb: Right.

Prince: In case anybody’s wondering, these details are important. Lots of tourists dish out big bucks to be at the site where the Almighty has been known to surface.

Lustlieb: Anyway, at the stroke of midnight this angel showed up in my room.

Prince: Out of the clear blue? No thunder, no lightning, no nuttin’?

Lustlieb: This is how it happened, I was in the process of calling upon the name of the Lord when suddenly there was this great and boundless light appearing at the foot of my bed and then all of a sudden, poof, this angel emerged out of thin air and just stood there, hovering about six inches off the ground and kinda smiling.

Prince: Tell me, Al. What’d he look like, this angel?

Lustlieb: He looked like a she, Lenny, a blonde, blue-eyed, willowy she, and I’d give her about a nine and a half.

Prince: Why not a ten? You’d think God would settle for nuttin’ less.

Lustlieb: Well, that maybe reflects my own personal taste, the nine and change, having mostly to do with the fact that I don’t find thick glasses and an academic robe and a mortarboard headpiece that much of a turn-on. I guess you could say I’m from the old school.

Prince: You got lotsa company there, buddy. What about wings?

Lustlieb: Wings?

Prince: Angels are known for having wings, are they not? Isn’t that what the pictures advertise? Did your angel have wings?

Lustlieb: Uh . . .

Prince: Well, did she?

Lustlieb: Come to think of it, her shoulder blades stuck out a coupla inches more than the average.

Prince: You sure it was the shoulder blades?

Lustlieb: I could be mistaken. It was dark.

Prince: Maybe she wasn’t really an angel, you ever stop to think? Maybe she was there to make a buck?

Lustlieb: No, she was an angel, all right.

Prince: How do you know? She show you her feathers?

Lustlieb: She gave me her name and address.

Prince: Yeah?

Lustlieb: She introduced herself as Michelle and said she was sent by God, with a message.

Prince: A message, huh? I guess that proves your point.

Lustlieb: That, plus the name Michelle, which is the feminine derivative for Michael, which happens to be the name of one of the top archangels.

Prince: I’ll say this, Al, you got a strong case. So how about the message?

Lustlieb: She had it all written out. There were these four major points. One, she says, go to this cave on a hill above Bear Lake—and she sits down next to me on the bed and points it out on a map—where you’ll find a leather-bound dictionary of the Ur-Hebrew language, plus—

Prince: Pardon my French, but what the hell’s Ur-Hebrew?

Lustlieb: It’s the original form of Hebrew.

Prince: How come I’ve never heard of it?

Lustlieb: Because I’m the only living person who knows it. That’s the whole point, the instructions said I’m the one chosen to learn Ur-Hebrew, it’ll come in handy later on, which is getting ahead of the story. Anyway, I’m to go to this cave and dig around for this dictionary, plus a granite slate which has chiseled on it a bunch of hieroglyphics, which is the key to the dictionary, being the Ur-Hebrew alphabet. Am I making myself clear?

Prince: Perfectly. Point two?

Lustlieb: Point two, I’m supposed to spend ten years learning the language, and keep in mind that languages aren’t my ace up the sleeve, I’m more of a people person, which explains why I was headed out for the West Coast by way of Reno in my old ’56 Chevy.

Prince: Hey, that was some automobile.

Lustlieb: They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Kids used to tie raccoon tails to the antennas, remember?

Prince: Yeah, and hang furry dice from the rear-view mirror. Point three?

Lustlieb: Point three, I’m supposed to keep it all a secret, for the time being. Tell no one, says Michelle, not even your wife.

Prince: You had a wife.

Lustlieb: Had is the operative term. And point four, come back in exactly ten years to this very same establishment, if they haven’t closed it down.

Prince: Okay, so she gives you this message. Then what?

Lustlieb: So next morning bright and early I take the map and jump into my two-tone Chevy and head up the mountain high above beautiful Bear Lake and get out and stomp around in the sagebrush and find the cave and go inside and shine my flashlight around and locate the leather-bound Ur-Hebrew dictionary plus the granite slate that looks like a crippled chicken has tiptoed around on it while the cement was drying, both items exactly as advertised, except she forgot to mention there’s a large animal guarding them, but luckily I happen to be carrying a box of popcorn, which I feed this unfriendly mammal, and when he’s busy picking the hulls out of his teeth with his claws I grab the items, the dictionary and slate, and hightail it out of there, being allergic to bears.

Prince: What happened to Michelle?

Lustlieb: After delivering the message she ascended into heaven, whence she had come.

Prince: After? Right after?

Lustlieb: Well . . . next morning. After goodbyes were said.

Prince: Tell me, Al, what’s it like to be said goodbye to by an angel?

Lustlieb: Lenny, it’s outta this world.

Prince: Which reminds me, gotta get to this. Don’t go ’way, we’ll be right back.

Divine manifestations are not as common today as they once were. Classical cases include the revelations to Moses, to the prophet Isaiah, to suffering Job, to the three main disciples of Jesus, to St. Paul, to St. Augustine, to five of the Buddha’s disciples, to Muhammad, and, in more recent centuries, to Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Most of these displays of divine power are accompanied by miracles: burning bushes, the appearances of seraphim, voices from whirlwinds, voices from undisclosed sources, shining faces, bright lights, claps of thunder, flashes of lightning, earthquakes, shouts reverberating from heaven to heaven, divine beings grasping the recipient of the revelation—the prophet—by the throat, angels floating alongside bedsides, etc. The time of the revelation is also important. In almost every instance the revelation occurs while the prophet has been in a state of anguish or some other form of spiritual distress. And the substance of the manifestation is most often a marvelous, sometimes secret, message that is of extraordinary significance for a decadent but waiting world.

The prophet is commonly not a hero but is an ordinary, flawed human being. Moses had a speech impediment (I am slow of speech, he admits, and of a slow tongue) and was wanted for the murder of a rival gang member. Isaiah was foul-mouthed (I am a man of unclean lips). Job, by his own account, provided a poor role model for his children (It may be that my sons have sinned). St. Peter, the chief disciple of Jesus, lacked loyalty to his master. St. Paul persecuted the Christians before joining them. St. Augustine was a thief (I stole pears, he confesses, and threw them to the very swine) and had a son out of wedlock.

How, then, can one possibly doubt the truth of Father Lustlieb’s story of his divine revelation? The miraculous events, the appearance of the angel, his state of great spiritual anguish, the message Michelle brings from above, his lowly status as a flunk-out and class clown, his enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures, his use of down-to-earth language—what do these items demonstrate if not the gospel truth of his account?

The next part of his story provides further confirmation.

Prince: Our guest is Reverend Al Lustlieb, and we’re discussing what a lot of experts are calling the find of the last millennium, the Bear Lake Scrolls. So what happened next, Al? You do what the lady told you? Follow the rest of her instructions?

Lustlieb: To the T. I spent the next ten years, this was from ’68 to ’78, learning Ur-Hebrew.

Prince: This was in Beverly Hills?

Lustlieb: It was in Pocatello, Idaho, population 46,340.

Prince: Uncle Jerry didn’t come through for you? No screen test?

Lustlieb: Oh yes, I had the screen test, all right. In fact, they pointed out I had talent—was loaded with it, actually—but they said somebody had already played the part I was cut out for.

Prince: Which was?

Lustlieb: Moses. In The Ten Commandments.

Prince: So Charlton beat you to it. Then?

Lustlieb: Then they suggested I get a job in the religion sector of the economy, which I ended up doing, having an uncle in Boise. This was Uncle Schlomo, who knew somebody who knew somebody in Pocatello, which is how I happened to spend the next ten years there as a rabbi, in deep scholarship, conjugating the Ur-Hebrew parts of speech, not much else to do, the ponies not being a part of the Pocatello scene.

Prince: You ever get in touch with Michelle again?

Lustlieb: Exactly ten years later, March 31, 1978, I go back to the same little town, Bliss Beach, and check into this sleeping establishment—

Prince: The one whose name slips your mind, except for the word Motel.

Lustlieb: No, that one is boarded up By Orders of the Local Constabulary, quote unquote, so I settle for a Motel 6.

Prince: A real motel.

Lustlieb: Right. So I settle for a real motel, check in, then stroll down to the local café for a bite to eat and something that has the right combination of chemicals to wash it down with, all the time being in a state of deep spiritual despair, thinking about Michelle and wondering whether I am still on her schedule or whether I’ve wasted the last decade of a perfectly good life learning a dead language that’s not gonna do me or anybody else a damn bit of good.

Prince: Lots of people could identify.

Lustlieb: Then I sit down in a booth with a plastic seat split down the seams and look over the menu, which is sitting up straight and tall between the salt and pepper bookends, and suddenly there is a sound as of a rushing wind and my personal angel of the Lord appears at my elbow with a pencil behind her ear and chewing Wrigley’s finest and she wipes off the leftover hamburger and Heinz products from the last customer and asks for my order.

Prince: This was Michelle.

Lustlieb: Right, and this time I’d give her about an eight.

Prince: Whatta you got against waitresses, Al?

Lustlieb: I demand a certain level of class in my angels.

Prince: You’re like God in that respect. Go on.

Lustlieb: So I place an order for a Waldorf salad and a Manhattan, just to see her reaction, and then I ask her when she gets off work and what her plans are for the evening. Her reaction is, she scribbles down my order without batting an eyelid, then she says she gets off at ten but she’ll appear in my room at the Motel 6 at the stroke of midnight, first she’s got other business to attend to.

Prince: She show up on time?

Lustlieb: She’s half an hour late, but I don’t mind, I’m busy perusing some material placed there by the Gideons.

Prince: She knock, or she come in with all guns blazing?

Lustlieb: Same as before, same great and boundless light, same hovercraft act, same glasses, robe, mortarboard, which I’m beginning to find more attractive.

Prince: Some women have a tendency to grow on you.

Lustlieb: This time she’s all prepared to give me a test. An exam. On my knowledge of the Ur-Hebrew.

Prince: Which you ace.

Lustlieb: A-plus, he said proudly.

Prince: Which means you’re ready for Message Number Two.

Lustlieb: Right. Then what she does is, she pulls this sheet of paper out from somewhere under her robe and reads me the latest instructions from On High.

Prince: Four major points?

Lustlieb: To the decimal. Point one,