Beware

Some of them

Will come to your door

Seeking to serve

Their souls lean towards this one goal

If they see you in need, they will offer you gifts

Whatever they have to give

Others of them

May come to your door

Seeking to rattle your hinges

With their bullhorns,

To let you know they are gift-ed

One of them has a halo, but doesn’t talk about it

The other will tell you that his own halo is very bright

But you’ll have a hard time confirming this

With your eyes

One tries to show a face like The Lamb

The other believes The Lamb shows a face like his.

But…

But these two will never agree on what The Lamb’s face looks like

The haloed one believes He looks like peace,

And he sees a call to love in The Lamb’s smiling brown eyes

This he hopes to reflect,

The haloed one’s great aspiration is to be a mirror to the Cross

But the other sees the cross as a mirror to his own

Glory

He gazes in rapt fascination at his own face

He practices his proud smile,

And I’m so doing

He bleaches The Lamb’s skin,

And he straightens The Lamb’s hair

He does not see peace in The Lamb’s steel blue eyes,

He sees only: authority and righteousness— and he invokes The Lamb, to extend that authority

And that righteousness

To himself

And to his own sphere

He imagines that the LORD favors his zeal

One sees The Lamb as a challenge to live for others

And to die unto himself

He sees love of The Lamb as a cross to bear

The other sees the Lamb as a confirmation

That his wide path is the right path

And through this bias towards self, he takes his Indulgences

He is guilt free

Not by virtue, nor by good deeds but by spiritual gymnastics

And he only ever holds a fragile dream: airs of right justice and

And airs of Holiness

As a celebration of self

He is guilt free, but never blame free.

One clings to God’s side,

The other cleaves away

But remains fool enough to believe

That God is on his side

One lives by the beatitudes, and the other doesn’t feel so moved

He considers them outdated

One takes nothing for the journey, the other takes the journey for the clout

And for the money

One serves one master The Master is Love

He rejects all false gods

The other worships a pantheon:

Of Greed and of Fear and of Self and of Money

The faithful one, he is married to poverty

And the cheating one is full of lust

He chases prosperity

And they both call themselves Christians, but they mean it differently

One means he’s a member of the lowly

The other wears his faith like mask,

And he means to let the world know

He’s so very holy