It was one week ago that I stepped on a nail.

Never one to pay any mind to safety precautions, I was chopping up an old cabinet with an ax. My wife and I are in the middle of a massive kitchen renovation project, and in order to haul of some of the old rotting boards I had to chop them up into more manageable pieces. Sometimes I use an ax. Sometimes a sledge hammer. And sometimes I get all manly and aggressive and just use my shoe…my tennis shoe, because I’m not that manly.

As I kicked a somewhat wet board it gave away a little quicker than I was expecting so my foot traveled with it down to the ground where my foot landed directly on the nail that had previously been used to keep the board upright. Long story short, I ended up standing flat footed on a two-inch nail. It did a bit of nerve tissue damage…I went to the doctor after about 5 hours of not being able to feel a couple toes.

It’s been one week since then and I’m still hobbling around. It still hurts to put much weight on my foot. I haven’t been very good about keeping my foot up and staying off it. But God has been gracious despite my ignorance and I’ve avoided major infections and all the bad stuff that can come with a nail in the foot. But it’s still been a week and I barely can walk anywhere.

This leads me to the swoon theory of how Jesus faked his death and resurrection. The first known proponent of this theory was in the 1780s by a German guy named Barhrdt. He posited that Luke gave Jesus some really good drugs, made it look like he was dead, then was revived by Joseph of Arimathea. He then was transported through secret tunnels and appeared to followers.

When the Romans crucified people they put a nail through their foot.

In the words of Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban…”And so for this reason, I’m out.” Having stepped on what would be a comparably tiny nail that didn’t go all the way through my foot and still hobbling around after a week there is absolutely no way that Jesus could have pulled off this hoax. Maybe if it was in our era and he could chill out on a golf cart and travel seven miles on the road to Emmaus that way, then maybe I could buy it.

Or if there was a text that said “Jesus hobbled and winced in extreme pain as he walked to the upper room.” Or perhaps, “And when she approached the tomb, Mary asked Jesus why he was cringing every time he moved.” But there are no accounts of this in the gospels. That’s not surprising, of course his followers wouldn’t divulge the limp. But don’t you think all those trying to disprove the resurrection would point to his hobble?

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