Peeing Jesus

I stopped drinking bottled water a few months ago, but now I am having second thoughts. I just learned of a new bottled water designed to bring me closer to God. I checked out one website selling this stuff and read about Formula J. The “J” is for Jesus.

According to the website, “We all need to believe in God, and we all need to believe in ourselves in order to accomplish positive thinking, which leads to positive result. It is up to us to make our day go either good or bad and we bring our luck to ourselves, so why not pray, drink purified water more often to stay healthier and more fit, and have God with us throughout the day? You can have it all with Spiritual Water.”

OK, let’s assume that English isn’t their first language, and forgive them their grammatical sins. And let’s assume they really don’t give a damn about theology and are just spouting this gibberish to sell me water from a bottle with the head of a thorn-crowned Christ printed on it, and therefore forgive them for their garbled spiritual message. With all this assuming and forgiving, the question remains: Do I need to drink this stuff? I just might.

Again the website, “Do you need Jesus in your life? Do you want to have Jesus with you thru the day? Grab a cold Formula J Spiritual Water bottle, read the prayer, believe in God, believe in yourself and the sky’s the limit…” Let’s go into this slowly.

Do I need Jesus in my life? It couldn’t hurt. Unless of course he is following me around asking, “Who do you say I am? Who do you say I am? I know you are but what am I?” That, I think, would be very annoying.

Do I want to have Jesus with me throughout the day? This seems like the same question, but on the off chance it isn’t, I would answer, “yes.” I think having Jesus with me throughout the day would be a good thing. First, it would cut down on my grocery bills seeing as how he can feed thousands with a couple fish and a five loaves of bread. Second, if I got injured or even died he could fix that without asking if I have health insurance. And third, he might nag me into being a nicer person now and then.

Here is the prayer I am to recite: “O my Jesus, forgive us of our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen.” Now all I have to do is believe in God and myself and the sky’s the limit. But shouldn’t I believe in God before I recite the prayer? And if I have to believe in myself aren’t I making myself into a god? And what does “the sky’s the limit” mean? Is heaven in the sky or beyond it? And if it is beyond it, and the sky is the limit, how do I get to heaven? Or if we aren’t talking about heaven, why bother drinking Jesus water at all?

But none of this is what keeps me from drinking Formula J. While I like the idea of having Christ within me, I am troubled about having to pee Him out. I remember Andres Serrano’s photo of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine. Called Piss Christ, the photograph got Serrano in lots of trouble. Wouldn’t peeing Jesus be even worse? Or maybe I could take a photo of a crucifix in a bottle of urine generated by drinking lots of bottles of Formula J? Would that be sacred or sacrilegious?