No one likes it when sleazy salesmen try to sell us something we don't really need. I was reminded of that while talking to a guy named Matt at a wedding last weekend. He had come to our church for a while, but I hadn’t seen him for three or four months. I asked him if everything was all right and, as it turned out, he had gone through a lot of stuff lately that had him feeling angry at God.

He shared some of it with me, and I told him that I might have had the same reaction if I were in his shoes. After a few minutes he started opening up to me and said he was exploding on the inside because he’s been keeping all this pain and bitterness bottled up. Even though he’s been angry at God, he told me he thought he needed religion back in his life.

I didn’t think he needed religion. He grew up in religion and walked away from it. I thought he needed someone to be Jesus to him and listen to his problems. So we kept talking for quite some time, and he started to ask me what I thought about Jesus. So we talked about Jesus. But there were a lot of questions he had about why Christians did some of the things they did with traditions, customs, and rituals which made no sense to him. They made no sense to me either, so I told him that.

To sum it up, he’s a guy who would like to give God another chance in his life and really likes Jesus, but frankly has no idea if he should turn to a priest or a televangelist to find him. They and everyone in between keep trying to sell him something in addition to Jesus, and it turns him off. Kind of like when you buy a car and the sleazer behind the desk keeps trying get you to buy additional warranties, options, and rust-proofing that you really don’t need.

At that point I shared with him about how I was shopping at Sam’s Club last fall and heard over the PA that there was a free gift for anyone who stops by one of the tables by the meat counter. I went and got this free potato peeler thingy, which doesn’t peel potatoes at all and which we haven’t used once because it's not practical. Yet we still hold onto it. It’s lying somewhere in our utensil drawer, and we will keep it there because it was free and I had to sit through a 15-minute presentation to get it.

Anyhow, in order to get it, I had to listen to this guy going over a spiel that he has given at least 500 times before and could give in his sleep. He was trying to get us to buy this cookware set that normally goes for $800 for the special one-day price of $350. It was pretty cool for cookware. He set a pan on a burner and turned the heat on high and put a piece of cheese and a raw egg on the pan and let them burn. Because it wasn’t made from Teflon but some titanium creation that was also used on the space shuttle, the stuff wiped right off.

So point being, these pans were better than my pan (singular), and I didn’t get them because I needed time to think about it and because I didn’t have the money then and there and it was only a one-day deal. So instead, I left with only the magic potato peeler, which doesn’t sell on E-Bay.

They say word-of-mouth is still the best form of advertising.  Have you ever wondered why Toyota Camrys never have to advertise? I think the reason is that people who own them are sold on them and love giving people rides and showing them what’s under the hood.

I still have occasional thoughts about the pans (like whenever I burn dinner). If someone who owned a set of the pans and loved them as much as the cheesy salesman claimed to love them, I would probably own a set right now. Yet on that day, I felt somewhat unsure of how great the pans were because of the salesman trying to use a gimmick to get me to buy them.

So I told Matt that even though he might not like the guys trying to market Jesus, it’s still a good idea to take his time and give Jesus a fair try. It seemed to me that Jesus was trying to reintroduce himself to Matt, so I told him I’d be willing to meet with him to answer any questions he may have as he tries to get to know Jesus more. We’re meeting for coffee later this week to look under the hood.