TheTenant: Eh, by the way, it’s me again, can I talk to you?

Me: Ach! How did you get back in, I had you evicted the other day. Everything was nice and quiet….

TheTenant: It’s like the man said, I just came round to have a look at the old house, and there it was, neat and tidy and warm and empty. So how could I resist?

Me: I’m not putting up with this. I’ll count to ten and if you’re still around I’ll use the name of the Trinity….

TheTenant: No really, I just want to talk to you about William Wallace, I mean, harmless really…

Me: I’m no expert on Scottish history….

TheTenant: You don’t need to be, big man, to know what I mean when I say he was a terrorist….

Me: He was a man of his times…

TheTenant: But he did things that other men of his times didn’t dare to do- burnt down towns without mercy, murdered officials, made a scabbard for his sword out of the skin of his defeated enemy after Stirling Bridge….

Me: As I said, a man of his times…

TheTenant: But it worked because it was savage. People thought that if independence was worth being damned for, it must be worth fighting for. It was the extremity of it captured peoples’ imagination, just like Daesh.

Me: Sorry, I see where this is going, I shouldn’t have allowed you to speak…..eh…hang on a minute, would you repeat your last sentence?

TheTenant: I think I said it was the extremity of it that captured the imagination…

Me:  That’s it! ” the extremity captured the imagination”, yes, very good…

TheTenant: What are you going in about. Sometimes I despair of humanity. It’s hardly worth tempting idiots…

Me: It’s the element in Jesus people don’t talk about,- his terrorism.

TheTenant: What on earth do you mean?

Me. Think what it was like to be told to leave your work and family to follow a man with nothing but a message;,what it was  like to be told to hate your mother and father and even your own life; what it was like to be told to shoulder your execution stake; what it was like to be on the road with someone who told you his destination was death.

TheTenant: He was always a miserable git…

Me: No! Not miserable at all. Extreme! He was a terrorist, someone who threw his life at the opposition without restraint, who made them afraid of his savage criticism, while convincing his followers to have no fear of death. It was his extremity that captured their imagination. If he could shoulder his execution stake, so could they!

TheTenant: All that is just rhetoric. He wasn’t a real terrorist like William Wallace. No killing, pillaging, burning…

Me: But truly, my friend, shouldn’t we say that Wallace wasn’t a real terrorist like Jesus, who didn’t need to kill since he could terrorise his opponents by his love for them. They must have felt real terror at a man who was so little afraid that he could desire their good as well as his own….

TheTenant: This is madness. You’re living in a fairy tale world while people like Daesh get on with the job….

Me: No, he knew that you couldn’t dispossess the strong man unless you tied him up first…That’s what he taught them: to have no fear of violence and bodily death, but to beware of the real enemy who could kill their souls by inspiring a love of wealth and power….

TheTenant: Crazy dreams…

Me: Crazy dreams that allowed his community of slaves and powerless people to overcome a world empire…..

TheTenant: And then? Then they fell in love with wealth and power and turned to terrorising heretics and heathens. You may say it took a long time for them to defeat Rome but it took me hardly anytime at all to corrupt the church once Jesus became respectable…

Me: Once people forgot he was a terrorist. And did I hear you say “it took me” ? You must know that when you remind me who you are, you put yourself in my power, well not mine but rather the power of…

TheTenant: OK! I won’t argue. I’ll go……till the next time…