The Gospel According to Candlelight

The Gospel According to Candlelight

They call me Billy Beaner. Drifter. Burner. Heretic with a matchstick gospel. I call myself a janitor of dreams, sweeping up what the faithful left behind in pews of polished denial.

By candlelight, I ramble. Not for audience, not for applause. Just to feel the words bleed out honest for once.

“They say world peace comes through love. Unity. Harmony.”
That’s what the bumper sticker told me before it cut me off doing 80 on a Sunday morning.
“They say that, but they don’t live it. They smile and sell Bibles at war.”

I took a humanities course once. Figured it’d teach me to stretch my soul. What I got instead was a room of people debating Nietzsche while ignoring the janitor scrubbing vomit off the lecture hall floor. Humanity 101. We passed.

They talk of salvation like it's wrapped in silk and handed to the clean. But I’ve seen it, matted, wild-eyed, cradling a paper bag and humming “Amazing Grace” in a broken key.

You want wrath? Forget thunder.
God’s wrath is the silence you hear after your last prayer hits the ceiling and slides down like rain on cracked glass.
I’ve felt that silence. I’ve slept in it. I’ve wept inside it.

They said abortion is sin.

I said: Jesus set us free from law.
They called me dangerous.

They said resurrection is proof. I asked: “Of what?”
If bones crawl out of graves whispering your name, would you love more, or cower deeper?
Would you stop killing your neighbor in thought, word, and ballot?

I was born with a throat full of questions and a church that taught me to swallow.

They fed me a Savior wrapped in packaging tape. "Do not tamper," it warned. So I tore it open.

They say I blaspheme. I say they plagiarized God and sold him for ten percent tithe and a self-help book.

The Book of Jessor, oh, I know it’s not canon. Not bound in leather, not sold on Lifeway shelves.
But it lives in alleyways.
It sings in cracked teeth and sunburned skin.
It speaks like this:

Division is holy.
Resurrection is reversal.
Truth hides in shadows.

Once, I wore joy like a badge. Tried kindness. Said “God bless you” to sneering lips. They spat back theology dipped in shame.
Turns out crucifixion doesn’t need nails anymore.
Just a sermon, a spotlight, and a crowd thirsty for a scapegoat.

They speak of Christian purity, but I’ve walked the rot. History’s cathedrals built on slaves’ backs. Desire beaten into closets. Passion pressed into conformity.

Salvation should taste like honey.
Instead, they bottle it in guilt and label it “grace.”

I asked a preacher once if heaven made space for the queer, the angry, the addicts, the doubters.
He looked at me like a dog learning algebra.

I lit a cigarette and left.

They told me the church is the bride of Christ. I saw the bruises.

They said suffering brings glory. I say it brings addiction, resignation, escape in pill bottles and noose dreams.

Truth? Humans lie in God’s name more than in bed.

I read the Bible, not for comfort, but for cracks. I found myself not in miracles, but in the margins. In the sighs between Psalms. In the silence of Job’s empty stare.

The Jesus they sell?
He’s not the carpenter.
He’s the icon.
The product.
The face on a mug next to “I can do all things” taken out of context.

The real one?
He flipped tables.
He wept.
He vanished.

And maybe, just maybe, he never intended a religion. Just a mirror.

Am I the antichrist?

Maybe.

Or maybe I’m just the aftershock of a faith too tired to breathe.

God gave us freedom.
Christians caged it.
I’m just holding the key, and yes, it’s shaped like a Molotov.

So, I ramble. By candlelight.
While cathedrals sleep and choirs rehearse their lies.

I whisper truth into stained glass.
Truth that smells like sweat, weeps like ink, and sings with the grit of gutter-born grace.

Let them say I’m damned.

I’ll keep preaching the Book of Jessor.
Because sometimes, to heal the sacred,
you have to burn the shrine.