Whitewash and the Taj Mahal

Once upon a time...a long time ago, there lived a king and queen- and the king loved the queen very much. She was the light of his life. One day sickness struck, and the young queen died. Overcome with grief, the king refused to bury the queen. He claimed that he would build her a temple, a sanctuary, a beautiful place for her to rest for eternity that symbolized his great love for her. And so he began to build. As the temple took shape, the king became obsessed with making it beautiful and perfect for his queen. Month after month, the king grew more and more obsessed with creating the biggest and best and most precious of all sanctuaries. He became so immersed in the project that he forgot his grief and some even say lost sight of why he orginally started to build this temple. One day, the king was inspecting the beautiful pure white building and noticed an old plain wooden box lying in the middle of the floor. Angered by the plainess and ugliness of the box, the king ordered his guards to get rid of it so it could not take away from the beauty of the queen's temple. Following the kings orders, the guards unknowingly threw away the box that held the remains of the queen- the very thing the temple was built to honor. So the king built the most beautfil of resting places for his queen, but when all was said and done, the king had forgotten to preserve the most important thing of all- the queen. The king ended up with an uninhabited sanctuary, a memorial with nothing to remember, a temple with no god. This is the legend of the Taj Mahal.

Kind of sounds like Christianity doesn't it?

We've kicked Jesus out of His temple.

We make beautiful noises, but void of true praise.

We do good deeds and works, but without the motive of love.

We build beautiful altars and churches, but forget to offer true sanctuary to people who need it most.

We read His words, and then use them as weapons against ideas we don't agree with.

We promote an all forgivng, all gracious God, but assign people to hell.

We declare a life changing faith, but remain the same.

We've built a beautiful relgion, but forgotten our God.