Is YOUR house in Order!

Is Your House in Order - this is the theme of many a Christian funeral, and that was the theme of the funeral last night - Is Your House In Order - The pastor & assist. Pastor kept asking; do you have all your stuff together, together before you unceremoniously drop dead; did you accept Jesus as your saviour 'cause Lord knows if you didn't, well you're going to a "lost eternity" aka HELL. They kept pounding this phrase over and over all night. And then the Pastor insisted in giving oh say about a billion examples of people cut down in their lives, going about miscellenious activities and killed throwing them in for good measure or should I say, theatric impact. I think that this is literally a tactic at scaring up more church members or "saving souls" Scaring people to Jesus, we never hear the good things about Jesus, what he stood for or what he was about, just that you should "accept" him and get busy with fixing your "house" 'cause he's coming back and, well; you got it - Is Your House In Order? And if not you're not with him you're pretty much damned. All I kept thinking about (besides my aching feet standing there) was all those 100s of 1000s of people that came before Jesus, who didn't "know" Jesus, people in far flung parts of the world like say Fiji or The Aztec Indians in South America who couldn't have known about Jesus and think...what about them, have they gone on to a "lost eternity"??? Is your house in order?? After this usually comes the heart-string tugging, guilt laden alter call where the floatsome and jetsome drift like unfettered balloons to the front to be prayed for, comforted, brought into the fold and "find" Jesus, whichever one is in order. Couple this with the accusations of "backsliding" and yeah, you've got one hell of an alter call. The alter call is usually themactically underscored by the pianist, twinkling some mood evoking musical arrangement. Don't get me wrong, I'm no atheist but somehow I don't think that Jesus had this in mind or that he was as narrow minded. But then again, what the hell do I know!