What if you're too rich to get into heaven

(696 words)

 I was sitting there feeling fidgety. I was without a book or a magazine and pulling out the phone in my situation would have been crass.

Then, lo and behold, I spied a book that had been left there for just such an occasion.

It was the Bible!

It was like a sign from God.

Sure, I was in church awaiting Sunday service but —  what the heck? — I chose to ascribe divine implications. 

I picked it up and began a Biblical browse.

I confess, when I’m in church my prayers often center on things like me hitting the lottery.

That I’ve been steadfastly doing this in vain for five decades now led me to years ago compose what is, for me, a profound line worthy of either a fortune cookie or maybe Bible II: “Pray for riches and you’ll get nothing. Pray for wisdom and you’ll need nothing.”

I can’t help it. I still pray for riches.

That’s why the first page I flipped to caught me off guard. It was the book of Matthew, 19:23-26. It reads verbatim:

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’”

You can check it out yourself. There is no asterisk. No wiggle room. And this isn’t some run-of-the-mill prophet.

This is Jesus Christ.

He’s saying it’s practically impossible for a rich person to get into heaven.

Well, isn’t that a real kick in the ass?

We devote our every waking moment to scoring more loot. Then after a life of scheming and grubbing we get to heaven and hear, sorry, you’re too rich. You can go straight to hell.

I gleefully imagine Trump at the heavenly precipice finally releasing his tax returns and pleading, “See! I was never really as rich as I said I was! It was all a lie! I’ve always been poor! Poor! Poor!”

To paraphrase Don McLean, “I hear Satan laughing with delight.”

Truly, it would be a confounding reversal if everyone of us had it all wrong and our mad dash toward accumulated wealth was spiritually defective.

But the Bible is explicit.

The meek shall inherit the earth. The first shall be last, the last shall be first.

I gotta tell you, I’m liking my odds.

I ain’t got squat, but if squat’s all I got then I got a lot.

Being poor is a defining characteristic of my life. I’m in debt, prospects remain bleak, savings long gone. When it comes to nothing, man, I have it all!

How poor am I?

In a cost-saving maneuver, we just slashed our cable options and I lost every single sports channel. If I want to watch a baseball game or Penguin playoff hockey, I have to go out to a bar.

I’m now the poorest man on earth.

Or am I?

I still have a comfortable home, a reliable vehicle and enough disposable dough to squander on sudsy hootch when I feel obliged to go out and watch sports in a bar.

That’s not all. I have a family I adore, squads of great friends and a sunny optimism that leads me to believe everything will one day work out just fine.

Poor?

Hell, in many, many ways, I’m among the richest men on earth.

How about you?

Do you fear you’re too rich to get into heaven? Does material excess clutter your spiritual highway?

I have a simple solution:

Give it all to me!

We can solve two problems in one fell swoop.

You can live in righteous compliance with the Word of God and I can restore my cable sports channels.

Then I can devote my life to finding either a really tiny camel or else a really big needle to one day prove if it’s possible to slide a camel through the eye of a needle then it’s possible for a really rich dude like me to squeeze into heaven.

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Re-Run Sunday: "Boston Corbett, America's Greatest Eunuch!"

I’m delighted a Re-Run Sunday coincided with one of my favorite historical days of the entire calendar. It’s Boston Corbett Day!

He’s the eunuch who killed John Wilkes Booth. It happened 150 years ago today.

This is my third most popular post ever and continues to enjoy robust readership. 

You won’t see it anywhere in the news today. There will be no stirring memorials. Congress won’t pause to honor the actions of the man who should be acclaimed as America’s greatest eunuch by unanimous consent.

All hail, Boston Corbett, the man who killed the man who killed President Lincoln! It happened 145 years ago this very morning.

Really, can you even name a single other great American eunuch?

I can’t.

I guess we’re all stumped.

And so are the eunuchs, but in a much more literal way.

A eunuch is a man who undergoes deliberate removal of his testicles for any number of offbeat cultural reasons. Throughout history, eunuchs have served royals as courtiers, harem servants and trusted guardians of virginal princesses

Some have even willingly become eunuchs so they could serenade a discerning king with a treble voice of unmatched loveliness.

It sounds extreme, but I’m surprised no one’s tried it yet on American Idol. I guess in these days of instant fame, making a real sacrifice for the sake of art is no longer fashionable.

Of course, Corbett makes each of those motivations seem like pikers by comparison.

Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he eventually moved to Boston, where he picked up a nickname with slightly more dash than if he’d have moved to say, Passadumkeag, Maine.

In 1858, at the age of 26, is when things got interesting. Fired with the religious passions, he grew his hair long in an attempt to imitate Jesus.

Then he did Jesus one better. Two better, to be precise.

The history books say he was so consumed with lust for Boston prostitutes he resorted to dire remedies. So one night he took a pair of rusty scissors, dropped his trousers and -- snip! snip! -- cut off his troublesome testicles.

That’s taking safe sex practices to a whole other realm.

The he sat down and had a nice dinner and attended a Methodist prayer meeting before finally staggering off for medical attention.

Amazing. For literary purposes it would be great fun to discover that the entree was meatballs, but the menu is lost to history.

The man is testament to the fact that it doesn’t take real balls to be a real man.

In April 1861, he enlisted as a private in the New York Militia, was honorably discharged after his three-month commitment, then re-enlisted to fight again. He was taken prisoner in 1863 and was captive for five months in the notorious Andersonville prison before being freed in a common prisoner exchange. He would later testify for the prosecution in the death penalty trial of doomed prison commandant Capt. Henry Wirz.

After again re-enlisting, it was Corbett on this day in 1865 at the Garrett tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia, who against orders shot the bullet that struck John Wilkes Booth in the back of neck, about one inch from where the dastardly Booth slew Lincoln on April 14.

“Providence directed me,” he said when asked why he’d disobeyed orders.

Then, like today, you can get away with a lot if you can convince believers that God whispered in your ear, “Pssst, hey, buddy . . .”

Corbett’s post-war life became increasingly erratic, perhaps, because of exposure to mercury when he worked as a hatter in New York and Boston. Because of his fame, he was appointed doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives, where he pulled a pistol on some men who he’d caught yawning about the morning prayer.

He was sent to an insane asylum, escaped and lived for a while in a hole that www.allaboutbikes.com today lists as the No. 1 scenic attraction in Kansas.

It may be a big state, but I’ll drive hundreds of miles out of the way if I can avoid a state where the most scenic site is Corbett’s hole.

He is believed to have died along with more than 400 others in the Great Hinkley Fire that consumed hundreds of acres of Minnesota forest where he’d built a cabin and was living when the fire spread on September 1, 1894.

His story is the reason I never fail to engage airplane seat mates about their lives.

I’m sure he shared many stagecoach rides with men and women too engaged in their 19th century iPad equivalents to hear the stories of this fascinating eunuch who killed the man who killed the president.

So, to honor America’s greatest eunuch, I suggest we all cut the work day short.

Please don’t feel the drastic need to cut off anything more significant.

And just to be safe, let's all steer clear of the prostitutes in Boston at least for today.

Related . . .

Change name of New England Patriots to Boston Corbetts

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Of humdingers & sockdologers

Jesus, Tebow's a winner

I was confused the first time I saw the Denver Bronco jerseys with the name Jesus above the no. 15.

I try and follow the NFL draft news, but was unaware Jesus Christ from, I guess, Nazareth State was eligible. I felt a flush of chagrin the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted an Ohio State defensive end over the King of Kings.

Jesus, I’m sure, has range, plays hurt and brings a host of intangibles like the ability to turn Gatorade into wine, which I think sideline sophisticates would appreciate.

Then I realized my mistake. The Broncos didn’t draft Jesus.

The jerseys were referring to Tim Tebow, a devout Christian and the most controversial player in a league rostered with wife beaters, drunk drivers, dog fighters and manslaughter convicts.

And what does a straight arrow milk-sipper like Tebow do that’s so controversial?

He wins.

He’s won three of his last four games, a better winning percentage than league stars Tom Brady and Michael Vick.

I hope he wins the Broncos straight into the playoffs.

I know what you’re thinking, “Holy reversals! Aren’t you the guy who just last year wrote you were hoping to see Satanic end zone celebrations to honor the Prince of Darkness?”

That’s true. I find overt Christian intrusions in sports annoying. I think devout running backs should thank offensive lineman because they, not Jesus, open holes in the Red Zone.

But I see a key difference with Tebow in contrast to other Christ-honoring NFL stars.

Tebow stinks.

He is the worst quarterback in the game. Maybe one of the worst ever.

He fails at one of the key quarterback requirements teams need to win games.

He’s can’t toss a football.

In order to make a catch, receivers usually need the oddly-shaped ball to approach them in a tight spiral. Tebow’s passes spin wildly out of control like aerobatic planes moments before air show tragedies.

Then there’s this. The ball needs to be thrown in the vicinity of where the receiver is. And until they change the rules so a player can catch a ball on a bounce, it can’t be 10 feet short of the intended target.

Tebow’s coaches are beginning to understand these weaknesses and game plan so their quarterback will have to do as little quarterbacking as possible.

For instance, in Monday’s game Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rogers, right now the game’s best, completed 25 of 32 passes in a 45-7 stomping of the Minnesota Vikings. Thirty attempts per game is about average.

On Sunday, the Broncos let Tebow throw just eight times in the entire game. He completed two. Two! That’s lousy.

And what drives the NFL analysts nuts is, good gracious, he won again. The Broncos beat the Kansas City Chiefs 17-10.

Tebow winning infuriates the sports military-industrial complex of commentators at ESPN who are on a mission to exalt the NFL as the realm of god-like immortals.

They don’t know what to make of a man who doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a mortal who likes God.

The fundamentalist Christian in America has few foes more fierce than I. I hate their politics, their bigotries and the divisive pain they inflict on families. These are Tebow’s biggest fans.

I don’t presume his critics hate him because of his Christian beliefs. They hate him because he’s guilty of the blasphemy of proving them wrong in their religion.

He defies their sacred charts that say a QB has to be upright in the pocket, look off multiple receivers and deliver the throws with righteous Old Testament authority.

And with every victory, they become more exasperated.

Tebow seems positively unfazed by their often cruel criticisms.

He’s one of those rare guys who seems strengthened by crucifixion.

I root for guys like that, even when some of their biggest fans act like obnoxious jerks.

Heaven Can Wait

The snarky headlines are already popping up all over creation. My favorite so far: “Apocalypse Not Now!”

I’m not one to so rapidly write off devout people of faith. After all, the Biblical calculations The Reverend Harold Camping relied upon to predict the Rapture never mention leap years.

The other aspect of this that no one seems to have considered is that maybe the Rapture has occurred and there were only like five or six Christians on the planet deemed worthy of saving.

That’s about how many I can name.

I was talking with a Gideon the other day -- and how many people can say that? I’m doing a story about how Gideons have managed to place nearly 2 billion Bibles and New Testaments in so many hotel rooms around the world.

It’s a fascinating movement. I’ve read about and interviewed people who’d entered hotel rooms thinking of suicide and found a Bible they credit with saving their lives.

On the flip side, I also talked to one hotel manager who said she wishes she had a nickel for every time she’s opened a drawer Bible and found a condom stashed inside.

There’s a whole range of stuff going on in our nation’s hotel rooms. Remember to always pack slippers.

I’ve found the Gideons to be sober and serious about their mission and certainly joyful about their impact. They should be proud. I remain disappointed that I didn’t find one Gideon so wildly enthused about Bible distribution that I could declare him or her a Giddy-on.

Maybe that’s a movement ripe for launching.

So I exaggerate when I say there are only five or six Christians worthy of saving.

There are, of course, multitudes that do so much good and I’m proud to have them as friends who, no doubt, pray for my miserable soul.

And I now have a Gideon saying prayers for me, which I find cool.

We concluded a lively interview with me asking all the questions before he turned the tables on me and asked: “Chris, are you a Christian?”

I wonder about myself. If he was a Scientologist or a Hindu and had asked me if I was of either of those faiths, would I have said, “Hell, yes!” just to ensure the story conclusion would be smooth?

I don’t think so.

I guess I’m a Christian who disdains Christians. That’s bad. I really should love my fellow Christians. That tenet is at the heart of my faith.

But I have trouble pulling it off when I see so many Bible-thumping Christians starting wars, hating gays, doubting presidential birth certificates and health care initiatives and pretending God whispers to them things like who He is and isn’t sending to hell.

I see so many Christians saying and doing things that lead me to believe Jesus Christ spends a lot of time in heaven slapping His forehead and lamenting, “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!”

That might be what He was doing every Camping predicted today the world would end.

A friend of mine said he was disappointed I hadn’t written about Camping and the end of the world. I told him nothing gets past this blog.

I wrote about Camping way back on January 3. It’s about why I was looking forward to the Rapture so it would mean goodbye to aspects of earthly Christianity that have always ticked me off.

But since it looks like we’re all going to still be in this together for a while, here are some suggestions for evangelicals like Camping and his forlorn followers to help us get along until the next Doomsday.

• Let the hair grow. Jesus looked like a hippie, but today’s Christian evangelicals look like they all go to the same barber, the one based in Mayberry on TV Land.

• Stop using the oxymoron Christian rock. It may be Christian, but it ain’t rock. When it comes to rock, my sympathy’s for the Devil.

• Remember, having a great relationship with the Lord doesn’t mean you can treat the rest of us like crap.

• Don’t interrupt a really good football game by taking the time to thank God for opening up a hole on the right side allowing you to score. Instead, thank the right tackle.

• Be consistent: Don’t condemn all the gays then extend divine forgiveness when one of your high-profile believers or political supporters gets caught playing footsie in the mens room at the Minneapolis airport.

• Admit the difference between believing and knowing.

• For heaven’s sake, stop predicting an imminent end to a world many of us enjoy with gusto. If you’re going to Rapture, next time please keep it to yourselves.

And don’t let the Pearly Gates hit you on the ass on the way out.

When idiots pray

God heard two prayers this week from two devout young men beseeching Him for freedom from what each believed was unjust incarceration.

One was 22-year-old Allah Mohammed Agha, an inmate in a Kandahar prison.

The other is Matthew Elrod, also 22, who’s been praying weekly that God helps him escape Redemption Island, a faux place of penal isolation, on the CBS reality game show, “Survivor.” 

God granted only one of their prayers.

Yes, the Almighty, it seems, opted only to answer the prayer of an imprisoned Taliban soldier. Agha was one of nearly 500 Taliban who crawled to freedom in the outrageous tunnel escape.

“I’d been praying to God that He would free me,” Agha later told reporters. “And tonight He answered my prayers.”

And He continues to ignore my fervent prayer that He cease listening to prayers from devout young idiots.

Elrod studies pre-med at David Lipscomb University, a fundamentalist Church of Christ college in Nashville. 

In show after show, he’s been featured praying the way the Bible says Job did after God laid waste to his every reason for being.

“I don’t know why, Lord, you’ve chosen me to suffer this humiliation,” Elrod’s said. “But if this is the burden you’ve chosen for me, then I shall endure it. I will do your will, no matter the hardships.”

The crucified Christ did less whining.

It’ll once again tonight have me leaping out of my chair to scream at the television, “You’re on a #&$!%* game show! Leave God the #&$!%* out of it!”

I’ll never understand the vanity of praying to a God in the belief that He’s immersed in the petty details of soft lives when He’s apparently indifferent to the prayers of those beseeching Him for justice in a world that too often seems truly godforsaken.

What? Is His prayer spam detector broken?

Want to know what I pray for?

I pray for the sick, the lonely and the sad. I do it every night down on my knees with my daughters.

It’s fun praying with little girls. They ask God for things like help in getting the stupid dog to quit whizzing on the carpet.

Just the other night, the 4 year old came up with a classic mingling of the secular and the sacred when she concluded her Easter eve prayer with “. . . and God bless the Easter Bunny and God bless yourself.”

I do on rare occasion pray for myself to be a better father, a better son, a better husband and, yeah, the essence of those prayers revolve around more success and more (some!) money.

In this way, my selfish prayers are not unlike the fictional rail bird the legendary New York Times sports columnist Red Smith once conjured. I remember it so well from Ira Berkow’s outstanding 1986 biography of Smith.

The bettor, Smith wrote, beseeched God to help his horse break the gate strong and, please, God, let the jockey be wise in going to the whip. Lord, I beg thee, he said, help the pony sense he’ll need strength at the final post. He prayerfully coaxed the horse around the entire track into a commanding stretch lead.

That’s when the bettor said, “Thank thee, oh, Lord, I’ll take it from here . . . Go, you son of a bitch! Go!”

I wonder if all our pitiful little lives aren’t really just part of some reality game show God enjoys watching the way I enjoy “Survivor.”

I’m fascinated by the interactions and the treachery, but no matter what they say or what I wish, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change any of the outcomes.

I just sit there and watch the show.

My Biblical confusions

I remember reading what to me seemed a profound Biblical phrase from when I was about 25. My recollection of the precise wording was: “He who uses well what he is given shall be given more.”

My memory of it is crystal clear.

So I was surprised this morning when I went to look it up and saw that for nearly 25 years I’ve had it all wrong.

The passage attributed to Jesus Christ that struck me as so indelible is from the book of Matthew 13:12 and says, “For to him who has will more be given and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

I don’t know why I’m surprised I had it wrong. I often forget the “not” part in many of the Ten Commandments, oversights that are forever getting me into hot water with my wife, my neighbors and, I guess, the Almighty rule maker.

And -- sorry, Jesus -- my version’s better. It’s more concise, makes more sense and doesn’t ramble about in such confusing fashion.

What do you expect? He’s just a carpenter. 

I’m a professional blogger, well, as professional as any blogger who doesn’t earn a dime relentlessly blogging can be.

So let’s go by my phrasing and issue a report card for over the past 20 years. That’s a fair enough time for a reckoning. What have I apparently used well enough to be given more?

Let’s run it down:

• Spare change -- If you ever need a quarter, I’m the man. I’ve always kept piles of change handy in my life. Ever since 1986, I’ve always tossed the daily change into an old wine carafe. Once it fills, I count it up and usually get about $115. So if my interpretation of the Biblical phrase is true, I’ve done well with change and have been given more.

• Friends -- A morose friend of mine was saying the other day he believes we only have one real friend in our lives. Nonsense, I told him. I’ll bet I have about 50 really good friends -- and I’m not talking about people whose mere company I enjoy. I have hundreds of those. I’m talking about 50 people who will without question help me do things like bury bodies in the woods. I tried to cheer the guy up by telling him, “Hey, there are probably two or three people right in this bar that are your friends -- and you’re not even very popular.” I’m glad I have so many good friends because that man is now very pissed at me.

• Wives -- It gets tricky here because, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the definition of the word “use” is. I’ve only had one wife and, believe me, that’s plenty. But have I used her wisely? I know some very religious men who insist the wife should be submissive. These men, one in particular, must use their wives very well because they are working on acquiring their third and fourth ones. I’m convinced most men don’t want real wives. They want mail-order brides unfamiliar with the English language. Maybe I should try that. I could really use a mail-order bride.

• Golf balls -- This confuses me because I don’t use a golf ball very well. I can’t hit it straight, far or near where I aim. Yet, I have hundreds of them.

• Folding money -- I think this is the source of why I remembered that phrase with such clarity. It seemed like such a simple roadmap to riches. Use it well and you’ll be given more. If that’s so, then it’s damning evidence that I’ve done poorly with my money. I believe I use my money wisely. I’m not extravagant. But frets about money have dogged me my entire life. Life is not giving me more and I’m certainly not going to demean myself by running around after it.

• Time -- What gives with this? I’m a man with all the time in the world. I’ve fatigued proselytizing Hare Krishnas who fled my house saying, sorry, time to run. I’ll spend 15 minutes talking nonsense with the guys who work the butcher counter at the local supermarket. But have I used my time well? I’m 48 have no achievements and made no mark. I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun, but is that a wise use of my time?

Maybe one day it’ll all make sense, but it seems the one thing in my life I’ve really used well is, alas, my cents.

"Man up!" Never a good idea

Can we all agree from now on the only people allowed to say, “Man up!” are those directing pornographic films?

We live in a world historically awash in testosterone and it’s led to a world of trouble. Manned up men are already starting and fighting wars galore around the globe, running roughshod on Wall Street and the manly men who run the NFL are bent on boosting the regular season schedule from 16 to 18 games.

That’s so much testosterone coursing through our culture it’s surprising we don’t need hip waders to keep from staining our (speaking of guys who really ought to man down), Bret Favre-promoted Wrangler jeans! 

We need men to man down because men are good at causing problems, but not fixing them.

This is a tricky topic for me because I’m staunchly pro-man. All my best friends are men -- and I mean that in the manly sense and not in the gooey, “I married my best friend” sense you read about in things like RedBook, which I browse whenever I’m feeling my manliness is about to bust loose from the sanity corral.

I’m one of those men who’s spent most of his life way, way up, and I don’t mean that strictly in the four-hour Cialis side effect sense of “up.”

I mean boisterous fun.

My whole life I’ve been accepting crazy dares, raising hell and being goaded into so many bone-headed misadventures it’s amazing I’m still upright approaching 50.

I’ve wrestled alligators, jumped out of perfectly sky-worthy airplanes at 3,500 feet and had 50-pounds of concrete smashed on my chest with a sledgehammer as I lay on a bed of nails. I’ve eaten bugs for bucks, guzzled moonshine ‘til midnight and been the last man standing at raucous parties around the planet.

And some people think all writers are sissies.

To be fair, only half of those feats were “man-up” inspired challenges; the rest resulted from some National Enquirer editor asking, “Which of our brain-dead freelance writers is in most desperate need of $1,000?”

“Man up” to me implies reacting without thinking. It means to stomp on the accelerator and blow through the red light, collateral damage be damned.

Manning up inevitably leads to dumbing down. It leaves no room for tact or subtlety.

Three of the most consequential men to ever roam the earth -- Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandi and Martin Luther King Jr. -- resisted repeated calls to man up.

They loved their fellow man. They turned the other cheek.

I don’t think someone like Gandhi ever felt the need to defend his masculinity when his drunken buddies said, “Mahatma, man, don’t be a sissy. Man up and have another shot of Wild Turkey!”

Oh, would if I had Gandhi-like restraint at that challenge every time it’s been issued since I was in the fifth grade!

That all three died horrific and brutal deaths at the bloody hands of really manned up men only exalts the examples.

Contrast their accomplishments of these three historic giants to say, well, me.

I have a happy little family, in a happy little house, a bank account near zero and professional accomplishments that won’t earn any historic comparisons to the mentioned immortals.

Yet, in many traditionally manly endeavors, I could kick all three of their non-violent asses. I could out drink ‘em, out race ‘em and in a barroom rasslin’ match I could have the Son of God yelling “Uncle!”

Would that make me the better man?

No, in fact, it would probably earn me global condemnation, not to mention an express elevator straight to hell.

That and a few shots of Wild Turkey from all the manned up men who’d be impressed by my wrestling prowess over the Prince of Peace.

And I guess that would be fine with me because, alas, I’m da man.