And you think YOU have failings?

Many years ago, when I was running an advertising agency, a very wise client of mine in the pest control business gave me a wonderful lesson in the vagaries of human nature. “Never,” he said, “show a picture of a cockroach in a pest control advertisement.” The reason, he explained, was that because human beings always tended to turn away from things that offended their sensitivities; most magazine readers, for example, would quickly just turn the page if it depicted a cockroach.

It made immediate sense to me.  How often do we look the other way if we pass a cripple in the street? How often do we not employ someone just because we think they are ugly? How often do we shy away from people who have a speech impediment, a drinking problem, or are simply too fat, too small or too short?

And how often do we secretly judge people who nod off during a sermon to be unworthy Christians?

Well, if you are someone who suffers from any of these afflictions, diseases or circumstances, take heart; there’s proof on the Internet that God not only loves you but proved it eons ago by surrounding himself and his son Jesus Christ with disciples, advisors and others who were by no means the goody two shoes, holier-than-thou people we thought they were.

Moses, I am reliably informed, had a stuttering problem, yet God gave him enormous responsibilities. Perhaps we should be forever grateful that God did not suffer from the human weakness of discrimination and choose someone other than Moses to become custodian of the Ten Commandments. Imagine if there were 100 commandments. The very fact that Moses would have taken forever to explain them has ultimately made life easier for generations of catechism classes with short memories.

Zaccheus was a really tiny fellow who would have disturbed a lot of human beings, but that certainly didn’t worry God. Neither was he in the least bit put off by the fact that the great prophet Isaiah had the rather peculiar habit by our standards, of preaching to large crowds of people without a stitch of clothing on.

Imagine if your parish priest sauntered up to the pulpit at Sunday Mass in the buff? It would undoubtedly be his last homily before being carted off to some sort of asylum by his irate bishop, to the accompaniment of sage nods of approval from everyone in the parish, from the pastoral council chairman to the gardener.

But God didn’t mind!

We look down our noses at prostitutes, to the point of wanting them all slung in jail (or at least tarred and feathered), but Rahab was one of God’s special people in spite of making a bundle by selling her body to the blokes of her time.

Paul was considered by just about everybody to be far too religious, almost to the point of fanaticism, but God didn’t mind. It also didn’t worry Jesus that a lot of his disciples fell asleep when they were supposed to be praying.

Noah loved his liquor, and was seen falling about drunk a lot of the time. Elijah was suicidal, Jonah was a scaredy pants and had the reputation of running away from God at the drop of a hat. Job went bankrupt and Samson had the reputation of being a bit of a womaniser.

God was not deterred by the failings of such people.

And how about Gideon, who was afraid of his own shadow? Or Jacob, who used to fib, right, left and centre?  Or Isaac, with his habit of daydreaming instead of getting on with important things?

Whether or not one should take these strange bits of Internet information seriously or not, there is a wonderful message in it all: If God and his son Jesus had surrounded themselves only by disciples and acolytes who were (to coin a cliché) as pure as the driven snow, how many of us with our human imperfections would have lost heart at our potential to enter the Kingdom of heaven?

I know that if I am fortunate enough to get there, I couldn’t wait to have a noggin with Noah, and find out, once and for all, at precisely what stage during the building of the ark he desperately took to the bottle. My guess is that it was the first time the elephants ran to the side of the ship to see the dove flying about with a twig in its beak.