The REALLY New Testament

The New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs section features a segment from the Book of Job. No no, I mean Jobless:

“Have you seen the fastnesses where Overtime and Sudden Death abide? Can you explain, near the end of the year, who exactly is eliminated, and why, or can you say who will be chosen for the bowls? The runner who solicits my blessing leaps beyond his enemies; I cause their feet to stumble as if entangled in a snare, and they are laid low. Victorious, he kneels by the cushioned pole, removes his helmet, and prays earnest thanksgivings to me with a great host looking on. What is your complaining, compared to this?


“Yes, and consider even this example: When my servant David Ortiz, last year or the year before, in an important situation, entreated me in his heart for a hanging curveball, and I heard him, and ordained a hanging curveball to be thrown, and he smote it hip and thigh, and ended up at second, and stood there in the lights pointing straight up to the firmament where I in fact was, David Ortiz praising me before all the assembly and those at home, did you then understand the vastness of my power, or can you unfold for me the art of causing hanging curveballs in important situations which I employed there?

“Can you make a thirty-cubit putt drop at your command? The faithful petitioner squats upon his haunches, he weighs and judges the path, he closes his eyes and silently raises a solemn prayer to me. Are you conversant with the ways of the Bermuda grasses, and do you comprehend how the inclination of their blades to one direction or another affects what rolls upon them? Know you how the little pieces of plant food, invisible in the grasses’ lower depths, have a significant influence for success or ruin? Surely this knowledge, which is mine abundantly from the beginning of the world, is yours as well. "

Read the whole thing.