St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption – Praha
By the time I pulled into Praha for church number four, I had hit my holy wall.
Too much legend. Too much myth. Too much fabrication. Too much sensationalism. Too many saints. Too many murals of heaven breaking open with shafts of golden light. I was saturated. Spiritually full—but not in the good way.
Honestly? I was done. For the day.
Done with Jesus.
Done with liturgy.
Done with holy overstimulation.Done with the Christianity of faith, not history
So while the rest of the visitors was marveling at the vaults and arches and Stations of the Cross, I wandered off—not physically, but mentally. I started scribbling in my notebook. Not sketches or notes, but a sarcastic brain-dump about the historical Jesus. What started as a harmless little internal protest turned into this absurd, tongue-in-cheek FAQ.
It was therapy.
This is what i wrote down.
Questions and Answers About What I Think the Bible Teaches About the Historical Jesus
(Spoiler alert: the answer is always NO)
I wasn’t trying to be edgy. I was trying to breathe. To think. To peel back the centuries of stained-glass mythmaking and get back to the raw, dusty, first-century figure. Not Jesus the Eternal Logos. Not the platinum-haired prince of your grandma’s devotional calendar. But the unvarnished, unpredictable man from Nazareth—who never asked to be worshipped, creeded, or cross-stitched.
And if this offends you? Forgive me. But sometimes honesty is the only prayer I’ve got left.
Did Jesus exist before the world began?
NO. (Unless you’re reading the Gospel of John like it’s a Marvel origin story.)
Did Jesus claim he was God?
NO. (The Synoptic Gospels didn’t get that memo.)
Was Jesus born of a virgin?
NO. (Try telling that to Matthew and Luke without them clutching their genealogies.)
Was Jesus born in Bethlehem?
NO. (More theology than geography.)
Did Jesus come to start a new religion?
NO. (He was trying to reform Judaism, not launch Christianity.)
Did Jesus preach about traditional Hell and eternal damnation?
NO. (Most of what he said was about this life, not the afterlife.)
Was Jesus a feminist?
NO. (Progressive for his time, sure. Feminist? Not quite.)
Was Jesus literate?
NO. (Odds are low, unless you’re imagining him with scrolls and spectacles.)
Was Jesus white?
NO. (Sorry, Renaissance paintings.)
Was Jesus middle-class?
NO. (He came from peasant stock—think day laborer, not life coach.)
Was Jesus a Christian?
NO. (That label came decades later.)
Was Jesus obsessed with sin?
NO. (He was more about love, mercy, and justice. The sin obsession came later.)
Did Jesus write anything down?
NO. (Not a single line. Not even a selfie quote.)
Did Jesus endorse family values?
NO. (Unless you count “hate your father and mother” as family friendly.)
Did Jesus travel far and wide?
NO. (He basically stayed within a 100-mile radius his whole life.)
Was Jesus universally adored?
NO. (He annoyed just about every group in power.)
Was Jesus consistent across all four Gospels?
NO. (Pick one. They don’t match.)
Was Jesus buried with dignity?
NO. (Romans didn’t usually do that for crucified criminals.)
Did Jesus come back from the dead?
NO. (Depends who you ask—and how much sleep they’d had.)
Did Jesus speak English?
NO. (But people sure quote him that way.)
Did Jesus read the King James Bible?
NO. (It came out 1,600 years after he died.)
Did Jesus speak in red letters?
NO. (That was a printing decision, not a vocal inflection.)
Did Jesus speak Aramaic with a British accent?
NO. (But that hasn’t stopped Hollywood.)
Did Jesus hang out with clean, respectable people?
NO. (More like lepers, prostitutes, and tax cheats.)
Did Jesus say the Sinner’s Prayer?
NO. (No hands raised. No altar call.)
Did Jesus say the Bible was inspired, infallible, inerrant?
NO. (He never once said, “Turn to page 642.”)
Did Jesus invent the Eucharist?
NO. (He shared a Passover meal. Paul theologized the rest.)
Did Jesus think the world was round?
NO. (Like everyone else back then, he probably thought it was flat.)
Did Jesus preach substitutionary atonement?
NO. (That came later—from Paul, not Palestine.)
Did Jesus believe he had to die for your sins?
NO. (He expected a kingdom, not a crucifixion.)
Did Jesus start the church?
NO. (He never built a building or formed a denomination.)
Did Jesus have a middle name?
NO. (It wasn’t H.)
Did Jesus say anything about abortion, gay marriage, or gun rights?
NO. (But that hasn’t stopped people from pretending he did.)
Did Jesus write any creeds?
NO. (Those came centuries later at theological cage matches.)
Did Jesus ever quote Paul?
NO. (Paul came after. That’s not how quoting works.)
Did Jesus ever meet a Gentile named “Christian”?
NO. (The term didn’t exist until long after his death.)
Did Jesus perform miracles on demand to prove a point?
NO. (He usually told people to shut up about them.)
Did Jesus say, “God helps those who help themselves”?
NO. (That was Ben Franklin, not the Beatitudes.)
Did Jesus hate the Romans?
NO. (Oddly, he seemed to save most of his fire for the religious elite.)
Did Jesus know he’d be worshipped for 2,000 years?
NO. (He expected God’s kingdom on earth, not global branding.)
Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene?
NO. (But the Da Vinci Code sure helped book sales.)
Did Jesus write a Gospel?
NO. (Though you’d think God-incarnate might want to jot something down.)
Did Jesus have a last name?
NO. (Christ wasn’t his surname. It’s a title—like “Messiah,” not “Mr.”)
Did Jesus own a home?
NO. (The Son of Man had no place to lay his head—real estate included.)
Did Jesus own anything of value?
NO. (Unless you count the one robe they gambled for.)
Did Jesus say the Lord’s Prayer as we know it?
NO. (He gave a version. The church polished it up later.)
Did Jesus create Christianity?
NO. (Paul and a few enterprising Greeks get more credit there.)
Did Jesus expect to die?
NO. (He expected vindication. Not crucifixion.)
Did Jesus plan a Second Coming?
NO. (He thought the first one would be enough.)
Did Jesus ever mention America?
NO. (Sorry, Founding Fathers. Jerusalem wasn’t in the Bible Belt.)
Did Jesus preach to large crowds with a mic and PA system?
NO. (He had lungs, not lavaliers.)
Did Jesus speak against Rome?
NO. (Oddly cautious. He saved his fire for the temple, not the empire.)
Did Jesus leave behind written instructions for church leadership?
NO. (No org chart. No bylaws. No email list.)
Did Jesus have disciples who always “got it”?
NO. (They mostly missed the plot and ran away at the end.)
Did Jesus promise personal salvation to everyone who repeated a certain prayer?
NO. (He talked about the kingdom—not a magical phrase.)
Did Jesus physically glow with divine light?
NO. (Unless you’re counting that mountaintop vision and taking it literally.)
Did Jesus abolish the Old Testament?
NO. (He quoted it like his life depended on it—because it did.)
Did Jesus ever say, “I died for your sins”?
NO. (That’s Paul’s line, not his.)
Did Jesus care about doctrinal statements?
NO. (He cared about how you lived, not what you signed.)
Did Jesus endorse the American Dream?
NO. (He said sell everything and follow—not upgrade and accumulate.)
So there I was—sitting quietly in one of the most ornate, over-the-top churches in all of Texas—writing this long-ass list of “NOs” while Jesus looked down at me from a golden dome.
He didn’t seem mad.
Just… tired.
I have to say, though, once I got it all out—once I exorcised the pious fog and let myself say what I actually think—I could breathe again.
And suddenly, I could see the church again.
And what I saw surprised me.
It wasn’t the grandeur. It wasn’t the Catholic opulence. It wasn’t the holy mother statues or the golden tabernacle. It was the care. The labor. The artistry.
Somebody painted that ceiling.
Somebody carved those pews.
Somebody believed enough to build this place, one brushstroke at a time.
And even though the Jesus I believe in isn’t the same Jesus they built it for—
I still felt something like reverence.
Because faith—however misguided, misquoted, or mythologized—still has the power to move people to beauty.
And this church, for all its theological problems and historical hiccups, is still a thing of beauty.
So I closed my notebook, took a breath, and whispered a quiet, ironic prayer:
“Thanks, Jesus. For not being who they said you were. But for being someone worth writing about anyway.”
Click.
Jack.
