As told to Werner Peters...
A woman was shopping in a busy mall one day. She was exhausted as she pushed her full shopping cart past the food court, milling with people. The aroma of coffee grabbed her and drew her in. She bought a cup of coffee and a Kit Kat bar, then turned to find a place to rest her weary feet for awhile. The only empty seat she could find was right across from an older gentleman who himself was sipping a cup of coffee.

She asked if he minded that she sat across from him, to which he shook his head. Sitting down, she picked up the Kit Kat bar, (she just loved the combination of chocolate and coffee) and tore the wrapper off, broke off a piece and set the bar back down. To her utter amazement, the man smiled awkwardly, picked up the bar, broke off a piece and ate it. Now she is thinking, “This is odd. Maybe the guy is really hungry and can’t afford his own. I better eat another chunk before he eats it all.” She takes another piece and crams it in her mouth. Almost immediately, as if he is in competition with her, grabs another piece and sticks it in his mouth. “Well,” she thinks, “I’m not going to let him get away with this. Not even a word of thanks. How rude!” And she stuffs the rest of the bar in her mouth and walks away in a huff, not even finishing her cup of coffee.

My vegetable-oil adventure lasted about a year. I had converted a Passat Diesel to actually run on used vegetable oil. Interested people would stop and ask me questions about my experiment with renewable (and recycled) fuel. They would ask me if my exhaust smelled like French Fries. (It did!) A friend of mine (a ministry colleague) heard about the vegetable oil and actually used the filtration process that I used as an illustration in a talk he was giving to his congregation. Before we take communion, we need to ensure that “the dirt is filtered out”, and he used my process of filtering out used vegetable oil through a pair of denim blue jeans as an analogy.

One of the people listening to him that day was a student of journalism at Ryerson. The story piqued her interest and she got my contact information from him, and gave me a call.

“Do you mind if I come over and do an interview with you,” she asked?

I know that it is becoming harder all the time for people to accept the fact that intelligent 20th century people can actually still be “Bible-believers”. Some of the incredulity that I face in our age and society is the fault of the many bad examples that exist in the form of TV evangelists. Faith healers and fund raisers in white suits cry crocodile tears over the poverty of orphans in Haiti while driving Cadillacs to their TV studios and wearing diamond rings on their pinky fingers. It reminds me of the country song, “Would Jesus wear a Rolex on His TV Show?” This cause for unbelief is deserved and justifiable, and if that is all Christianity had, I would be the first to “eat, drink and party, for tomorrow we die.”