You hear a lot about people trying to work on their spirituality, get in touch with their God. Some people seem to want to be as close as possible with the Lord. Not me. My relationship with Jesus Christ is strictly business.

He's my carpenter. Handled the addition we put on the master bedroom. Works fast, polite to the kids, doesn't work weekends. Technically, He's a carpenter/messiah, because of the dying-for-my-sins thing. Saying my sins is kind of weird; it's the accumulated sins of all of humanity, not just my stuff. I'm not ungrateful, but I also don't want to get that thrown back in my face all the time. The last thing I need is Him trying to guilt me into bringing Him lemonade when he's out on the roof.

If it gets too personal with your savior, things can get weird. Out of nowhere, Jesus will start dropping hints about maybe going bowling, getting a bite to eat after church. Next thing you know He's "just dropping in" every Saturday afternoon and inviting me to join His softball team, or go with him to wash the lepers. No thanks.

I have a friend who always talks about how great his relationship with Jesus is. He's always telling Jesus his problems, asking Jesus' advice, washing his feet and stuff. Of course, this guy also didn't notice that Jesus did a half-assed job sanding and sealing his deck last summer. Whenever I point out the places where it's cracked and splintered, he just gives me some crap about how the Lord works in mysterious ways. Mysteriously lazy, maybe.

Once, when I was kicking back, watching the Sonics with Barabbas and the boys, we called up Jesus and invited him over. It was pretty awkward, what with constantly having to explain the rules to him, and how he kept referring to the refs as "pharisees." Near the end of the game, Steve accidentally took His name in vain after Brent Barry missed an easy layup, and even though Jesus forgave him right away, played it off like it was nothing, it got pretty quiet for the last few minutes. After that the game ended, and everybody pretty much cleared out. We haven't called him up since. Don't get me wrong, Jesus is a nice guy. We just don't have that kind of a relationship.