GOATS

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»When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.«

– The Gospel of Matthew

Everyone was there, waiting for what he had to say. He stood up and walked through the crowd, dividing them into two halves like the carving knife does the turkey. Then he turned to the people to his right, and after a long pause where he seemed to muster each one of them separately, he finally spoke.

»I don’t recognize any of you,« he said.

What followed was a long moment of awkward silence.

»Seriously,« he said, »who are you?«

»We are those who followed you, LORD,« a woman said. She sounded defiant, like the mother of a self-identified genius who’s just been told that her progeny is not smart enough for college.

»That can’t be,« he replied. »Surely I would recognize you if that was true.«

»But it is, LORD!« said a man next to the woman. He was tall and thin, and little wet pearls could be seen shimmering on his forehead. »We gave our lives to you. I myself did it five times! We were active members of our churches. We prayed to you. We prayed for others. Heck, some of those we prayed for even got healed when we prayed for them.« Sounds of approval rose up from around him, Praise-The-LORDs and Amens were muttered reflexively.

»That may be indeed the case,« he said without changing his tone of voice. He looked at them, contemplating. »But still I don’t seem to recognize you. I think you have to leave.«

»Leave?« the first woman cried. Her defiance sounded much more like distress now. »Are you sending us away?«

»Well, as far as I can see, none of you ring a bell with me. All I can see here are people who seem to be pretty full of themselves. So full indeed that there looks to be no room left for anyone else. And that’s kinda the entry ticket around here.«

»But we asked you to forgive our sins, for heaven’s sake! Doesn’t that count for something? I thought that was what this was all about!« another woman cried in confusion. Several people joined in with excited variations of her words.

»As far as I remember, I think I said something about the most important thing being love, the love for what’s right and for one another. Wait, let me check.« He turned around and called over his shoulder: »Dad! Didn’t I say that?« A low rumble came back as an answer. »Yeah, just what I thought,« and, turning around to the crowd again, »he says I said it all right. Also I remember asking you to forgive your enemies before I would be able to forgive you. I think I was pretty clear about that. As it seems though, that never happened.«

»The enemies of the LORD!« a man chanted who, judged by his girth, could likely have been a priest. »False prophets of the last days! They were teaching worldly wisdom, perverting the gospel of our heavenly father! Lies and deception came from their mouths, their tongues forked like a …«

»Snake’s, okay. We get it,« he was interrupted. »Those were not your enemies, man. Those were your brothers. Or were they not human too? Wait, this was the planet where only one intelligent species evolved, right? Not that I’m mixing things up here. No no, I’m sure of it, you were all of the same species. So why didn’t you love them? The only enemy you had were yourselves, and you didn’t even love him. You were just infatuated by him. Or her. I was using the inclusive meaning of the pronoun.«

A woman in the first row was stepping forward, hands on her hips, looking like she definitely wouldn’t have any more of whatever this was. »We clothed the needy!« she shouted. »We fed the hungry! We gave shelter to the homeless!«

»You gave money to charities, girl. That’s not quite the same thing.« He walked up to her. »Let me see your hands woman.« The lady looked around anxiously. She clearly felt suddenly exposed, but she couldn’t refuse now, not when everyone was watching her. Reluctantly she held up her hands.

»Yeah, just what I thought. No blisters, no calluses, no dirt under the fingernails. Is that Maybelline? Looks expensive. Reminds me of a silly song. Well, doesn’t seem like you ever used your hands for much else than pointing fingers and flipping credit cards. Not to brag, but mine have holes in them.«

»But we prayed for the needy!« a man a few rows further back shouted at the top of his lungs, desperation dripping in tears from his cheeks.

»Ah yeah, the needy,« he replied. »But you never stopped to help any of them. You hurried past the homeless in the subway, because she stank of urine and failure and you didn’t want people you didn’t even know to talk about you afterwards. After all, everyone else was walking by too, weren’t they? And you didn’t care for the child who sew your five dollar G-strings ten hours a day seven days a week, because he was twelve thousand miles away in Bangladesh, he was not your problem, and he certainly wasn’t more important than your Black Friday shopping spree. Sure, you prayed ‘Thank you Lord For Your Faithfulness and Grace’ at the dinner table, but you wouldn’t buy the guy with all the plastic bags next to the McDonald’s a sandwich, because who knows, maybe he was faking it. Of course you knew that your whole way of life was keeping millions of people in horrible living conditions, fatal illnesses, child armies, sex slavery and poverty, because there was no alternative, not for them anyway, and apparently not for you. What could you do, right?«

»But hey, you prayed.«

Everyone was there, and everyone was silent.

»Well,« he said, »seems to me you’re all pretty much fucked.«

Thank you for reading, and thank you Peter Rollins for stealing my idea before I had it.

Drafted long ago, rewritten March 2018.

I’m an independent writer, translator and editor. If you think I can help you with something, shoot me an email at chrisloveswords@gmail.com.