Peace Be With You...'Til 10:30

It’s another fine Sunday morning, and the freshly paved and striped church parking lots are brimming with the SUVs and minivans that transported impeccably dressed and well-coiffured families to their weekly appointment with god. Souls will be cleansed, business cards will be passed, wafers will be eaten and untaxed income will be collected.

I have chosen, once again, to take a pass on the hypocrisy, content with the knowledge that I provide the worshippers with someone to look down upon the remaining 167 hours of the week. I prefer to spend this quiet hour at the grocery store or car wash with other godless heathens, before the highways and byways explode with the hustle and bustle of the freshly saved. Today, since the fridge is already stocked and the car was washed by rain this week, I choose to manufacture a little blasphemy. Consider it a modicum of balance to the abundance of artificial good will that is fabricated, and left behind, at church. Stoke the lightning, cuz here goes:

Pastors, priests and the other assorted and sordid paid proselytizers have failed. The Great Novel’s protagonist was crucified for expressing his disdain at the conduct of commerce at a place of religious meditation. Yet the modern day mystagogue has effectively melded commerce and religion into a business enterprise. A pastor’s job entails filling pews with customers and offering baskets with cash. As compensation for his efforts, he receives cash salary plus a benefit package: health insurance, retirement plan, parsonage or housing allowance, and tax breaks. The pastor now has a vested financial interest in filling pews and baskets, which creates a conflict of interest.

These preachers should exhibit a greater sense of responsibility toward the spiritual health of their customers. They should readily detect the danger signs of literal interpretation by their customer base. When they know that the customer has allowed metaphor, allegory and symbolism to become a reality in his life, they should intervene to prevent this emotional distortion from further skewing the mind of the cultist. But they don’t, because they know that a customer with a healthy spiritual intellect will realize that a glorious sanctuary and convenient parking have nothing to do with spirituality. The customer with a healthy spirituality will comprehend that "church" is a portable concept carried in his mind rather than within an edifice with a postal address. "Church" need not happen on a schedule, conducted by a salaried representative who offers sales presentations at 9:00 and 10:30. "Church" need not involve payroll and infrastructure.

But the proselytizer is motivated to perpetuate the ongoing competition for paying customers, and accomplishes that end by perpetrating the infliction of emotional and intellectual irrationality.

Amen. So there.

Hey, I see the churches have spilled out the first wave of believers. They are lining up at the stop sign at my corner, honking and cursing at the guy waiting to make a left turn. The race to the mall is on, and that miserable sumbitch is going to cost them a few choice parking spaces near the Starbucks entrance.

See ya in hell, suckas. I’ll be the guy who doesn’t look surprised.