It’s the dream sequence that has got the Christians roaring like lions. : God and Jess

I have two sources of information in the Valley when it comes to matters that combine the ecclesiastical and the secular. One of them is God. The other is Jess Moody.

God is busy much of the time and tends to become snappish when I call, due to past references that have displeased Him.

He does not, for instance, appreciate being referred to as Big Daddy and denies that he has either a press agent or a board of gods to advise him.

So it didn’t surprise me when he refused to take my call relative to “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

Like any father, he probably did not want to discuss public rumors regarding the sexual fantasies of his son.

I know how he feels. When my own son was very young, he fell in love and ran away to Riverside. That was not exactly a sexual fantasy but a sexual reality.

The Riverside police found him and insisted I punish him severely. I said by the time I got through with him he’d never run away to Riverside again. He’s got better taste than that.

The next time he took off, he went to Santa Barbara.

I called God in an effort to determine what movie I ought to see Friday night, “The Blob,” “Young Guns” or “Last Temptation.”

My wife and I alternate, and it was my turn to choose. Her choices include movies of high artistic quality and moral redemption.

I lean toward films that embrace the artistic qualities of Japanese science fiction. Some of them cause sensitive people to stagger from the movie house retching and screaming.

My inclination this time, however, was to see “Last Temptation.”

“You want to see a Christian movie?” she said. “I can’t believe this.”

“I’ll see anything that stirs up the fundamentalists,” I said. “But first I’ll get a little advice.”

Jess Moody, thank God, was not too busy to talk to me.

You remember Jess. He is senior pastor of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church in Van Nuys and the man who recently performed the ceremony that united Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson in holy matrimony. Well, as holy as a Hollywood marriage can get.

He is also the man who once announced that God had urged him to move his church to Chatsworth in order to save the West Valley from Satan’s grip. That caused such a stir here on Earth that God changed his mind, and the deal fell through.

When I wrote about the incident, Jess was delighted to be mentioned along with God and, in gratitude, wanted to take me to a nice Italian restaurant. He suggested the Pizza Hut, but I am emotionally incapable of eating at a place that serves pizza. Gaetano’s, perhaps, or the Fontana di Trevi, but not the Pizza Hut.

“How did you like ‘Last Temptation’?” I asked him the other day.

He was one of a hundred clergymen who got to see it in a preview at Universal Studios.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, in the kind of drawl that a Baptist preacher ought to have. “I’ve always felt that Jesus ought to be humanized. He was a man. But I preached once that Jesus hiccuped and had bodily functions and I lost 200 parishioners.” He laughed loudly at the memory. I like that about Jess. He laughs easily. But he wasn’t laughing at “Last Temptation.”

“It could have been a masterpiece,” he said. “Instead, it was a perversion, worse than the script. I couldn’t walk out of there and recommend it.”

It’s the dream sequence that has got the Christians roaring like lions. Jesus has sex with Mary Magdalene then marries Mary, the sister of Martha, and has sex with Martha too and children by both Mary and Martha. Just like in the suburbs.

“The plus side, though, is that there are more people talking about Jesus than ever before,” Moody said. Then he added: “We’re going to give out copies of the Gospel of John in front of the theater. We’ll tell ‘em, ‘You’ve seen the movie, now read the book.’ ”

Jess said he wasn’t one of those who was out there marching and yelling that the devil was going to get us all. He didn’t want to align himself with the anti-Semites.

“After I saw the movie, I noticed that one guy was carrying a sign that was anti-Semitic,” he said. “I told him to take it down.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me to go to hell.” Another laugh. “Well, he was one of those foreigners from Orange County. What do they know?”

The other protesters, he said, were nice people. Jess thought about that too.

“They were too nice, in fact,” he said after a moment. “You wanted to slug ‘em, but you couldn’t because they’d have just turned around and kissed you.”

All in all, he thought “Temptation” was a sincere effort that missed.

“But at least it’s gotten the Christian Church off its butt,” he added. “I’ve been trying to do that for 40 years.”

“How would you rank ‘Temptation’ among all the movies you’ve seen?”

Pause.

“I liked ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ a lot better.”

When we parted, he said he still wanted to take me to lunch. I said sure. But I’ll be damned if I’ll go to the Pizza Hut.