Third & Forthcoming

Matthew 25:40

What if we’ve got it all wrong and there is
no Second Coming, but instead He comes 
again and again; like an Indian Brahman, the 
Dalai Lama, or a porn star great at their job? 

What if every time He returns to us, we 
crucify him again? A Jew in 1940s Germany, 
with the audacity to believe his cross-
wearing neighbors didn’t hate him—

gassed at Auschwitz. A Black man in the South, 
who dared to commit the crime of walking 
on the same side of the street as a young white 
woman, hung on a tree between two thieves. 

A homosexual in 1980s New York—crucified 
by a bigoted government Who ignored his cries 
and let the crucifix of AIDS ravage his body.
I am no prophet, but I tell you that the Jesus 

of today is an overweight trans woman trying 
her best to hide her burgeoning whiskers and 
hairy knuckles over scarred palms, terrified 
for her life to use a public restroom. And how 

we treat her 
shows just how 
unchristian 
we’ve always been. 

Austin Beckstrom grew up Mormon (victory for Satan: 1). He had an unshakable faith and served a mission (stateside) and married in the temple to his wife (seemed like a good idea at the time (spoiler: it was.)) His unshakable faith began shaking in retrospect at @ age 5 when he learned the truth about St. Nick and wondered if the same could be said about St. God n God Jr. But he was a faithful believing Mormon until his late 20’s when the evidence against the church’s truthiness outweighed the evidence to the contrary. The following months and years consisted of sorting through the rubble of former belief for things of worth. No longer a Mormon (2) or even a Christian, he still believes many of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth have goodness and virtue in them, and he calls himself a “fan,” if not a disciple. Many readers may understand/agree that Mormonism is as much a culture and people as it is a religion (victory for Satan 3), and so is still a Mormon (4) poet, if not a believing one. He believes comedy is one of the only things we should take seriously, and religion is something we must grow out of—but still honor—if we as a species want to survive.