Rendering

Twice I've read The Bible cover to cover. Several books (e.g. the Gospels) I've read I don't know how many times. But I've read the entire collection at least twice.

Two times I read a story that struck me as so funny I laughed and chuckled over it for days after. One was Esther, when a proto-pharisaical Haman got his comeuppance for trying to double-cross an honest man. The other was when Christ's critics were attempting to trip Him up and He shut them down with the "Render unto Caesar..." rebuttal (Matthew 22:21).

It was in college that I first gave attention to religious topics (my schoolboy atheism could get me only so far, you understand). I'm sure that I'd heard the "Render unto Caesar..." directive before that time and had vaguely classified it as a variety of wisdom saying -- ironically, probably as something on par with "Give the devil his due." Being a late religious bloomer meant that I was unprepared for what the evangelists actually recorded -- and when I did finally get around to them the fact that I had something resembling an adult mind meant I could get the joke. Without a doubt it's a consolation, but I suspect it's perhaps because the stories of Esther and Christ weren't clichés that I laughed so long over the unexpected plot twists.