**This conversation never actually took place**
During the Pope’s recent apostolic visit to the United States, while at a forum in Washington, DC, a Baptist minister stood up to test Benedict XVI.
“What must I do to be saved?”
“What is written in the Bible? How do you read it?”
“Accept Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.”
The Pope said in reply, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself and asked the Pope, “What does it mean to ‘accept Jesus into your heart’?”
In reply, the Pope said: “There was a poor man, a crackhead, on your streets. He came to the States from South America, because the living conditions back home were no longer viable. You see, a certain corporation moved their coffee bean field outside his village and the chemicals used to catalyze the growing process poisoned the water table underground, rendering all the well water in the region undrinkable.
“He knocked on the door of a church in the first major city he could hitchhike to, thinking to himself, ‘A Christian, and that in the Land of Opportunity, shall understand my plight and give me honest work.’ The man who answered the door, a right-wing evangelical pastor who bled Red-White-and-Blue, turned this man away for he was dirty and could not speak English. After repeated events such as this, the only work the man could find was dealing drugs to others in differing yet similar situations on the same harsh street.
“A representative from ACLU, doing an investigation on the poor living conditions of the residential motels in this man’s area, took pity on this man and fought to make sure this man, and those like him, had honest work and decent housing, despite his past, his economic status and his ability to speak the local language. This representative also connected with Green Peace to fight the unjust practices of the corporation who made this man’s homeland unlivable to begin with.
“Tell me, which do you think was the one who accepted Jesus into his heart?”
The minister replied, “The one who lived out John 13.35: ‘…you are my disciples if you love one another.’”
The Pope told him, “Go, and do likewise.”
**Note: As Jesus didn’t think priests and Levites were inherently bad (being He is the one Who founded their roles), so too this is not a blanket statement concerning right wing, patriotic evangelicals. The point (concerning this specific aspect of this piece) is that we need to make a distinction between cultural Christianity and real Christianity.**
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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