Smelling Like Hell?

Jesus was the founder of the new spiritual math. We thought we had all the eternal equations memorized and the ledgers of good and evil balanced, then He came and wrecked it all. He said whores and fraudsters were getting into the kingdom of God before the churchy types. But he also said you had to be more righteous than the Pharisees (religious professionals).

These kinds of statements should lead us to examine the demographic characterized by our churches. An honest look at ourselves can tell us more about the “gospel” we preach than our statements of faith ever will. Don’t get me wrong- what we believe is important. But what we say we believe and what our lives prove we believe often makes us guilty of a kind of spiritual perjury.

Where I come from people say that it’s only Jesus that can get you into the kingdom of God. What they often don’t say is that Jesus only chooses heterosexual non-smokers who vote for the Conservative party (Republicans in the USA); the odd crack addict is thrown in to add a little spice.

It’s fortunate for us- the clean religious types- that society knows you need to shower, shave and have a clean set of clothes in order to go to church. That way we only have to make people feel welcome when they look and smell like us. I just hope we don’t smell like hell.

(For the record, being a whore or a fraudster doesn’t automatically guarantee you a ticket to an eternal party. What Jesus was saying is that people like that often know that they need a deeper soul scrubbing than any religion can provide.)