The Bishop

I always refuse to place my spirituality in a box. This is because of a lot of grey areas i have come to witness within religions. Also, i believe that there are a lot of things to believe in so i have decided not to limit myself.
When we got married, we moved to Capetown in the Winelands. It was a beautiful small town placed right in the middle of mountains. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It was a high density subarb and very mixed, as far as race was concerned. However, most people had one thing in common. Christianity. The people in this town were Christians. All kinds of Christians. Having been raised as a Christian myself, i kind of could not join any of the denominations because of the language barrier. Afrikaans and Xhosa were foreign languages to me.
Often, i would watch people dressed in their best outfits, walking purposefully to their respective houses of worship.
The house opposite ours was a place of charismatic worship. Often, the loud music would wake us up on a lazy Sunday morning. It would go on for 3-4 hours of people clapping. Voices everywhere, shrieks of melodious hymns would fill the air. Every Sunday. Like clock work.
My husband later introduced me to the Bishop who ran the church. I had seen this guy many times before. The bishop was a shameless drunkard. He drank every single day. Alcohol was cheap. It wasnt called the Winelands for nothing. The only time he wasnt drunk was during the church services. By Sunday afternoon he would be back to his old ways. It was a scene right out of a book!
I have no idea how that man managed to fill up his tent at the back with congregants. Who went to his church? Who on this earth would trust anything that came out of this guy's mouth? His clothes were always dirty, except on Sunday. He wore a blue checkered three piece suit and a crisp white shirt every Sunday service. The transformation was almost hilarious if not tragic.
I never heard him preach, so i guess the word of the Lord through his mouth always left the devil on the rout. I wouldn't know. However, whatever he said in there made people attend church every single Sunday.
Who am i to judge? I have my own sins to mind. So if he was getting a few coins out of his people, so what? Everything has become a transaction these days anyways.
My husband once asked him how he manages to handle a congregation in his alcoholic state. He gave the poor man a sermon about how he used to be a killer too but that never stopped him from preaching the word of God. It was all about repentance he said. I had so many questions. Were you ever arrested for the crime? Did you kill more than one person? Turns out it was a metaphor. Actually i thought that man had no ounce of killer instinct in his being. If anything, he could have been a serial pick pocket or a seller of cheap drugs in his previous life.
He probably still has his church there. He probably still drinks. People probably still believe in his word. Is he going to heaven? I have no idea. I mean, what do i know?

The end