During a conversation around the hookah at a friend’s house tonight, an excellent analogy for man’s life with God came up. No, it’s nothing revolutionary, just a unique metaphor… although perhaps borderline profane. But hey, we’ll roll with the punches.

It all surrounds strip-club culture. Personally, I’ve never been to one and I don’t intend to. But my friend had. He said the the most interesting thing about them (no, not the women—they’re really more depressing than anything else) is the people who are clearly regulars. They’ve become convinced that these women really like them. Although women in the rest of the world may not, these women do. Of course, we know why. It’s because they have money. They come bearing gifts.

It occurred to me that many of us, in some respect, have a tendency to approach God as if we were strippers in some kind of dingy bar. We have difficulty believing that God will bless us simply for being his children. Instead we do a dance to try and keep his favor (and blessing). Ironically, that dance, spiritual as it may seem, is often just as crude as a stripper’s.

In the same way that a stripper has little or no real care for her customers, but only does what she does for the money  they offer, many Christians are dancing not to earn favor at all, but only to earn the dollar bills.

As Christians, we need to remember that although our natural self is about as clean as the men’s room floor of a New Jersey strip club, the blood of Christ has thoroughly cleansed us. There is no song and dance for God’s love and favor. There us just God’s love and favor—and for that we will be grateful and live in his joy and for his glory.