Jesus wasn't a liberal. He wasn't into redistributing wealth, either, regardless of what you've heard. Jesus was a monarchist who, most likely, favored the gold standard for every nation. Anything that smacked of socialism would have offended His free-market sensibilities -- according to the folks at the right-wing Web site Conservapedia.

That's why these righteous conservatives have taken it upon themselves to strip Scripture of the liberal biases laid upon it by modern Bible translations. Too many contemporary Bibles have turned Jesus into a left-leaning, market-hating, compassion-mongering tool of American spiritual and military emasculation. "Blessed are the meek"? How did that lie get into our Bibles?

The folks at Conservapedia.com have named their online effort the "Conservative Bible Project." Dubbing itself the only "encyclopedic resource on the Internet [that] is free of corruption by liberal untruths," these men gallantly strain out gnats and swallow camels in their search for eternal truths that reflect the strain of Christianity that prevailed in America before the Marxists, feminists and gays turned Jesus into Mr. Rogers.

According to the Conservative Bible Project, none of the 8,000 Bible translations currently in existence contain enough conservative principles to make a printed Bible worth a damn -- no, there is not even one.

To give you some idea of how serious they take their mission, the Conservative Bible Project identifies Luke 23:34, Christ's prayer of forgiveness on his tormentors at Golgotha, as too liberal for their taste: Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

What kind of anti-Christian propaganda is this? In the entry about that verse, the question is asked: "Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible."

There's nothing new about an agenda-driven, selective reading of Scripture. Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, literally cut out all references to Jesus' miracles in his Bible. He preferred a Swiss cheese approach to the New Testament rather than deal with a Jesus who offended his Enlightenment ideals by turning water into wine or rising from the dead. He wasn't the first or the last to construct a Jesus in his own image.

When I heard about the Conservative Bible Project, I immediately thought of that scene from Monty Python's "Life of Brian" where Jesus is delivering his Sermon on the Mount. The folks stuck in the back of the crowd can only hear mangled fragments: "Blessed are the cheese makers" is what they comprehend.

"Well," one of the characters says to a companion dumbfounded by Jesus' words. "Obviously it isn't to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products."

Shortly before Jesus finishes delivering his message, there is a melee in the back of the crowd between a few people who could only hear every other word he said. The lesson of the sermon is lost on them. They argue over their bad interpretation and other silly things -- including who has a big nose. While they're fighting, another group of folks who were better positioned to hear the sermon approached, discussing what Jesus said.

"Blessed is just about everyone with a blessed interest in the status quo as far as I can tell," one man says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He clearly heard what Jesus said, but he wasn't impressed. "What Jesus fails to appreciate is [that] it is the meek who are the problem," his friend replies as they step past and over the brawlers. It is a brilliant scene that has always stayed with me.

When I was a teenager, I holed up in my bedroom one lazy afternoon and read the paperback version of Anton LaVey's "The Satanic Bible." Its black cover featured a pentagram and marked it as a "forbidden" book, even for someone who wasn't a regular churchgoer like myself at the time. Because I was curious about religion, even "deviant" ones like Satanism, I read it just to see if it was what I expected. It didn't take long to figure out that it was a monumental waste of a beautiful afternoon.

I couldn't take the Satanic bible seriously after reading the Nine Statements of the faith. Looking back, I'm struck by how much it has in common with a laissez-faire view of humanity promoted by unregulated capitalism and social Darwinism. Here are a few principles from LaVey's book:

1) Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. 2) Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams. 4) Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates. 5) Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. 6) Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires.

If the folks from the Conservative Bible Project don't watch out, they could end up going full circle and drinking out of the same cistern as the clownish Satanists.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.