Jesus In Your Heart

I was watching TV in the afternoon. As it usually happens, not much was on. I was watching the Christian Channel. There was a little cross embossed in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

(As far as I know, there is no actual Christian channel. There is Odyssey, but it's too pan-denominational to be entertaining. They used to show Davey and Goliath in the wee hours of the morning, and I used to tape them for my sister Matie. That was their only suitably disturbing show.)

The Christian Channel had a lot of scary shows. I had read once on the Internet about a Christian children's show featuring an amputee and his pirate puppets. My subconscious treated me to an artist's conception of this show. There were many humorous fire-and-brimstone preachers, and call-in chat shows. I was going to call into one of the chat shows, when I remembered we have illegal cable. I've heard that they sometimes show false phone numbers on TV in such a way that they're only visible to people with pirated cable, and I wouldn't put that past the Christians.

A new television show came on. The set was an abstract living room -- bright yellow, no ceiling, modern art chairs. It was very bright. The cast wandered on, a mix of old men, fat housewives and several specimens of that sort of slimy young man with a bad haircut who tends to embrace religion at 30. The camerawork was amateur and the people weren't wearing makeup.

The show began so normally that I have little recollection of it. The extras paid attention while one older man took center stage. He began preaching in the standard fashion, talking about Jesus and all that stuff.

After a while, he talked about how you had to know the Bible to be a godly man. He sympathized with the people who couldn't remember things very well, then he explained how to get the Bible in your heart.

A camera showed the top of his podium as he took out his Bible and opened it at random. The preacher selected a verse and drew a circle around it. Then he wrote it down on a Post-it note, which he folded in half, so the adhesive stuck to the opposite side of the paper. The camera began showing closer shots of him and his workbench, and the show more and more resembled a do-it-yourself show.

The preacher started reciting Bible verses from memory, louder and louder.

"How do I remember these verses? How have I called the Spirit into my flesh? By calling the flesh away to the Spirit!"


He took a white handkerchief from his back pocket. It had blood spots all over it. He then slammed his left hand on the podium, palm down, and began unfolding a pocketknife with his right hand. It took him a little while, because he was doing it one-handed. Also, he was missing one entire finger on that hand, as well as several of his first digits.

"The way to remember is to make yourself a remembrance. Give willingly of your flesh, and the Son will give willingly of His blood."

He then took his knife and chopped off the first section of his left index finger. Several other fingers on that hand were similarly truncated. As the blood spurted, he wrapped the chunk of meat in his handkerchief. He started repeating the Bible verse in a crazed sing-song, and the crowd helped. A shot of the crowd all holding up their hands and swaying, eyes glazed, proved that they had already known this technique. A few of the people in the audience had been following along with the lesson and were missing new bits of finger. Others had their white cloths, spotted with old blood, tied around their heads.

"THIS is the MARK! The MARK of a GODLY MAN!" yelled the preacher, veins standing out on his forehead. His finger was still bleeding, some of the high-pressure spray hitting the delighted crowd He started to lose his balance, as though the blood loss was finally becoming too great. The preacher stopped chanting his verse, although the crowd continued.

He walked back to the podium and bent the flexible microphone around his left wrist, then jammed it between his stomach and the side of the podium, effectively clamping his arm down. Then he took out a Zippo from his shirt pocket and ignited it. The chanting reached a climax as he burned the tip of his finger, cauterizing the wound. His face became red and purple as his jaw clenched with pain.

"THAT is a fitting testimony for the SON of GOD!"