HOW PATHETIC

 [March 2, 2014 at 12:37am]

I do not deny that about anything under the sun, I would love to make a pun. I do it though not out of malice but just purely to have some fun. How pathetic isn’t it? But wait till I share a story about it: There said to have a pathetic punster who’d never cease, despite his previous entries had been repeatedly rejected, to join in an annual prestigious pun-writing contest.

This year, he submitted ten puns wishing at least one would be selected. However, when came the judges’ verdict, to his much dismay, no pun in ten did.

When I travel by bus within Metro Manila ever since, what annoys me a bit and leaves me no choice but to just shake my head, is when a dapper man in dashing outfit gets on a bus where I too ride in, gets his Bible, prays and starts to preach.

I have no problem with any of his chosen and discretionary subjects, especially with his personal judgment in picking a place or prospects. For I also firmly believe that the Word of God should be preached, whether in a house or in the streets, in a mountain or in the beach.

And in the bus or internet. Even if you say it’s pathetic.

My problem lies with those bus preachers’ S.O.P. after each and every preaching, when they would pass around the hat, envelope or sling bag, allegedly for ‘love offering.’  Could you blame the thinking crowd if they would end up instead so very frustrated, and develop a mindset that in believing in God, one would become a beggar instead?

Was it not Jesus Himself said that in preaching the Kingdom, “…Take nothing for your journey, neither staves nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece” (Luke 9:3)?

How can you make one believe that God is love actually, when for that love you preach you make him involuntarily pay? I thought salvation is free. Then how can you convince someone that the Lord is the God of all riches on Earth, in Heaven and afar, when His followers and preachers turn out to be a professional beggar?

Yeah, Paul may have had said that Christ would be preached even of goodwill or strife and envy, notwithstanding likewise of pretense or truth, every way (Philippians 1:15-18). But there is a conflict if one preaches for any other motive and agenda, squeezing the Word to suit his purposes rather than vice versa.

And worse, sometimes, pun intended, men would subtly add a new rule in the already established laws without being immediately seen. Like, although it’s practically true, I must not agree with a concocted “11th” commandment that “Thou shalt not eat salt because it is a sin (asin).”

How pathetic.