The topic of altar calls -- that innovative American technique for efficiently mass-producing false conversions -- came up again. So, let me post a parable: In the distance, the rejoicing company could dimly perceive their destination, the glittering City of God, the focal point of every honest human aspiration. An arena stood athwart the road, with two gates leading into it. At one gate, jovial ticket sellers gave away free tokens granting access to the bleachers. At the other gate, flinty-eyed scalpers sold admission to the locker rooms, but at a price. “It will cost you your life, but give you the only life worth living,” said one of the scalpers, a Mr. Bean Farmer. “This gift isn’t cheap, it cost God His Son.” And the marchers faced a choice: were they to spend their lives as spectators? Or as players? “Well, I didn’t come this far just to watch,” Samuel Sondesbok said. “I want to be in on what the King is up to. I want a piece of the action.” He walked through the narrower, less popular gate, and immediately encountered the Weeping Willies and their Tragic Fours. “Tell me your stories,” he asked, knowing that costly, valuable wisdom awaited him. Willy Weekday spoke first. “See these scales?” he asked, pointing at the measuring device. In the right pan slumped four people who had lost in life. In the left pan, a million people cheerfully waved their spectator tickets in the air. And verily, in every way except mere numbers, the right hand scale pan was weightier than the left. “What doth it profit a man to carve a million notches on his Bible, and lose his own children?” Mr. Weekday asked. Willy Wafer spoke next. “I, too, had my audiences of millions,” he said. “Then, I noticed something strange. Out of every hundred recruits whom I directed towards the bleachers, four got away and scampered instead into the locker room. The remaining 96 took their seats, not knowing that the bleachers were mounted on a pivot. And as they filled, and reached their tipping point, each set of bleachers did tilt back, and peacefully dump the spectators into the River of Forgetfulness.” Samuel wept with the Willies, then forged ahead on the footpath. He knocked on the door of the locker room, and immediately met a friend from years ago. As they warmly clasped hands, Samuel noticed a chain of people, each of whom obviously knew, and knew well, the people on either side of them. The chain stretched back through the mists of time to a harried pair of refugees from a garden, and forward to a Garden City. Time after time, the far door of the locker room swung open, and another team roared onto the field, exuberantly played their innings, then took their places in the Sky Boxes, the only safe spectator booths, to cheer on the next team of players.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 09:17:38 +0000
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