A Bubba story

You know him, don’t you? That man at church, the one who drives the Mercedes SUV, or maybe one of those pricey new hybrids. He ‘s generous to a fault, always writing the biggest checks for whatever is needed — be it a new building or several scholarships to church camp. He’s the one preacher calls on to lead the congregation in a closing prayer, mostly because his prayers are the shortest ones, which makes everybody love him all the more.

Bubba is a good ol’ boy, who loves to fish, hunt and golf. He’s got a condo in Vail for skiing in the winters and a waterfront place in Naples. He’s worked hard for everything he’s got so nobody begrudges him that, although very few people mention  there are a lot of men who’ve worked just as hard, maybe even harder than Bubba but they don’t have a penny to shine.  Life ain’t fair, we all know that.

Back in the late 1980s Bubba and a bunch of other men hooked up with some fringe group that was going around encouraging all the Christians to stop paying taxes. They used God as a means to rationalize their decision. Said that since tax dollars were being used to fund abortions at them there Planned Parenthood places, they could opt out of giving to the guvernment what the guvernment demands.

Everybody knows the guvernment is corrupt.

Nobody ever went to jail for not paying taxes. You still ain’t clear on how Bubba and his buddies managed to get around that since everybody also knows that the three things a person’s got to do is live, die and pay taxes.

Except for Bubba.

He always finds some way around it.

When Pastor stood up in front of the church and told the congregation that their money wasn’t theirs that it belonged to God and he was just loaning it to them, Bubba slapped his knee and yelled out, “Amen!”

But then when Pastor said, “If you owe taxes pay them. Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Bubba’s brow furrowed.

And you weren’t the least bit surprised a couple of months later when you heard that Pastor was leaving for a new position.

You’d overheard Bubba talking in the fellowship hall with one of the deacons about how Pastor had overstepped his boundaries. How he was sounding more and more like one of them liberal fellows.

“He’s got to go,” Bubba said.

And you knew that whatever Bubba wants, Bubba gets.