A middle aged man walked into his dining room early on a Sunday morning. He knew that he was due at the church in a little over an hour. Still, he decided to sit and have a nip of whiskey and enjoy one more cigarette before going and helping people govern their lives with the immutable word of the Lord.
After downing the whiskey with much haste, he put the brown spotted filter of the cigarette into his still burning mouth. He thought to himself, if only his congregation knew that this is one of the few great pleasures in life. Every Sunday, this pious phony told his followers that their bodies were temples that God built with his bare hands to house their souls until the judgment day.
On his way out the door, the preacher had a bit of a coughing fit, nothing out of the ordinary he thought, until he looked down at his fifty-dollar silk handkerchief that God helped him buy. On it, he saw four or five sizable blotches of blood. He had made a pact with God himself though, so instead of driving a block away to the hospital, he made the three-quarters of an hour trek to the multi-million dollar, state of the art Jesus Christ Celebration Center that God himself had commissioned.
He straightened his two-hundred dollar tie in his rear view mirror before getting out of his brand new sports car that God cosigned on for him. He hadn't made it two steps towards the solid gold door before he began to get unbearably dizzy. He told himself that was just the five-hundred dollar aged whiskey that God had gotten him for his birthday doing it's job. He made it exactly six more steps before losing consciousness and crumbling onto the asphalt.
He awoke several hours later in the hospital that was named after him after he made a quite large, quite well publicized donation. The doctor told him when he came to that he had inoperable lung cancer, and he had two weeks to live.
The preacher prayed to God every night to cure his incurable ailment. He told God that he wasn't ready to die, he didn't have all of his affairs in order. The following Sunday, the preacher's condition wasn't any better. He begged and begged the doctor to let him go to church one last time before he died. The doctor even called a limousine for the sickly old codger.
The preacher walked slowly up the aisle when he reached his destination. When he got to the lectern, he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, and lit it much to the chagrin of his congregation. Still, nobody stopped him as he uncorked the communal wine and took a nice healthy swig. He told his flock that their money had afforded him a great deal of opportunities, and for that he was thankful. He also told them that he expected to see hell first hand very soon, but first he wanted to tell them to enjoy a good glass of whiskey and a cigarette whenever the situation allowed it. His last words were, "Praise him who allows us all this excess."
Then God spoke to the preacher with a glass of whiskey at his side and a cigarette clenched firmly between his first and middle fingers. He gave the preacher a firm pat on the back and said that he was proud of him. The preacher was the first man who had ever lived up to Gods expectations. And after a life of lying and stealing, the preacher shared a finely aged whiskey and a pack of smokes with his Almighty Savior.
