Don’t speak lovingly of a charity that’s only offered to the elite. Don’t preach to me of your own “personal” Jesus, who has none of the characters of the Jesus in the Scriptures, who showed mercy to all and cast stones upon none. My ears are deaf to the mercy and “grace” given with prerequisites, your own “conditions” -terms mortals make, while judging sins infinitely less egregious than those they practice, winking at their own transgressions while pointing fingers at those who don’t “fit” their prepackaged idea of “mainstream Christianity.” A religion is another name for man made rules and protocols- a church the name of a place where these are carried out. The “house of the Lord ” David speaks of in his Psalms isn’t built by mortals and hasn’t anything to do with “organized” religion. Tithes being placed in offering plates and gossip masquerading as social repartee are things done by mortals in Jesus’s name yet having nothing to do with any Jesus other than the manufactured one thess church going Pharisees worship. With tongues coated in honey on Sunday mornings, they sing hymns and chant the Scripture, while, privately, they slash like vipers.
Those who worship at the alter of society’s Jesus must be from a certain cut and cloth, and, if they are not, they must be “remade” or, if incapable of a makeover, discarded like the expired, unwanted food the Sunday school ladies dole out to charity.
Where is your “good will,” oh holy ones? You reserve mercy for the “select” , and it is given at your discretion. Were you not attaching yourselves to a religion, this behavior could be relegated to the “all too human.”
But are you not missionaries of God? Called to serve, no less. But who are you serving? Look in the mirror, oh most self righteous of mortals, and you will see the “god” you truly worship. For to be a genuine follower of Jesus – not your fundamentally empty but outwardly posh society one – but the real, sandal wearing Jesus of the Bible, who declared, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone”- you cannot pick and choose whom you think is worthy of love, of grace, of charity, of mercy. Francis Schaeffer once said the defining mark of a Christian was Love -not love that is like a weather vane or love that must determine the value of the receiver before its given – but Love as Jesus commanded, in keeping with the second of what He said were His two most important commandments, “to love your neighbor as yourself.
And, oh, ye hypocrites, with your chanting of Scripture and your honey tongues singing hymns, how dearly you love yourselves. How closely you cling to your “Happy Meal” lives where status, prestige, and a flush bank account mean everything. How dearly you prize being a “pillar” of your man made building calling itself a “house of god” and how greatly you fear ever being in need of the charity you measure out, your lips curving in a simper as you feel the warmth of praise from your latest charitable deed.
Do you think Jesus looks at your deeds or at your heart? Or do you imagine, down deep, that the real Jesus- the one in sandals, born in a manger to a virgin named Mary, the one who didn’t cast stones, who showed love to all equally, whose mercy was boundless- do you actually imagine He didn’t exist or was replaced by your manufactured one, the one who will understand when you explain how you had to keep up appearances when you cast off that “needy person” who might reflect badly on you and when you were cruel and your heart was full of spite, but it was all well deserved, since, after all, You are a pillar of the church, you are the one who knows the Bible cover to cover, you are the one who hasn’t missed Sunday morning service in over a decade but who, rain or shine, sick or well, sits in a pew and listens to that service and mouths the words to those hymns You know by heart.
What a twist of your idealized fate to one day hear God say, “I never knew you” – what a knife twist to your malicious, spite filled, elitist, hypocritical heart it shall be. Yet, what a textbook – or, rather , Biblical example of God’s eternal judgement it will also be. For, you see, God never called the ones who were full of their own righteousness to Him. Jesus died for the sins of all mankind, yet He knew that only those who actually saw their own darkness, their own iniquity, their own mortal frailty, would ever genuinely accept Him as their Lord and Savior. For those who can save themselves are in no need of anyone or anything to save them. And only those who recognize their inability to be good outside of the absolute redemptive power of Jesus Christ, will ever humble themselves enough to receive the gift of His grace.
