And now, the Question burning in the Hearts and Minds of Christendom all across the globe: Who will be the next Kingdom of Heaven Idol??!!

Yes, it really is the burning question on the hearts and minds of Christians all over, and apparently has been since the beginning, when the original twelve asked this very same question of Jesus. So, who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, anyway?

Jesus didn't have any qualms about calling them out, either:

"Then he said, "I assure you, unless you turn from your sins and become as little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." Matt 18: 3-4

Maybe this is why I always feel so irked when I see the quintessential professional pastor with his dark suits, silk ties and perfectly coiffed and inhumanly perky wife, standing in front of ten-thousand people in a gigantic amphitheatre of a church (the cost of which probably could have built housing for 50,000 orphans in Africa or something, I might add), trying so hard to be such a grown up.

It is the very same "spirit", if you will, as what one sees in the typical catholic priest - the self-declared "father", who arrogantly believes himself a more perfect vessel of God's word than the simple parishoners whose calling it is to treat him like the mini-God of his cathedral, imparting blessings and taking them away, forgiving sins or not, as he sees fit.

Sometimes I really believe that the God I believe in is a vastly different kind of being than the thing that most Christians worship .. and if I didn't know better I would think that hardly anyone ever actually read the gospels, but instead subsist on things they have heard about it, or the officially sanctioned doctrines of their "church".

Clearly, Jesus is not interested in all the pomp and ceremony, he just wants someone who will put his arms up and say "Abba!". I struggle with this, with being a child, sometimes, though I make it an intentional habit to always be myself when I am at church, or being in the company of Christians. I very specifically do not dress myself up, or make my spikes one iota smaller, for the occassion, because this is who I am, and that is what God wants.

Because at the end of the day, we are NOT contestants on any kind of Idol show, and it is not the opinions of some celestial Simon Cowell, nor the votes of the rest of Christendom that will determine our path or success. On American Idol, the contestants have to exist behind masks of popular culture and live at the mercy of whatever America is into this week. The ones who really make a stand for what they believe in never make it to the end, and that's a shame, because there is more value in one artist doing what they really love, than a thousand American Idols working for America's collective approval.

Similarly, there is more to be said for one raggamuffin, fringey, disenfranchised soul, giving up his meagre gifts back to God and being happy in that, than in a thousand professional evangelists with their expensive churches, expensive images and expensive spouses.