This Big Bowling Ball of Sin

Ranters: Stout 50-ish man in black suit and straw hat; slender 40-ish woman in dark tracksuit

Location: 81 bus headed south on Hill

Time: 11 p.m., Thursday

Topics covered: wealth-centered churches, Faustian bargains, life underwater, free will versus determinism, religious beliefs of early Americans, the hallmarks of a good church, the preponderance of fornicators even in churches

Does rant include advice about whom you should and should not fuck with? Yes, Satan.

The Rant:

Man: What gets me is all this noise about the "Prosperity Gospel." That's not a gospel — that's an excuse to do exactly what Jesus said you shouldn't be doing. A nice car ain't a blessing. A big house ain't a blessing. All those people, they dead inside.

Woman: Satan is Prince of Lies and Air. People shouldn't mess with that. He says, "I'll give you all this glory and finance if you worship me." They think it's the American dream. It ain't America's, it's the devil's.

Man: We're at the bottom of the ocean and he gives us this big bowling ball full of sin to hold on to. If we could see what was happening, that we're drowning, we could choose to let go.

Young Man Sitting a Couple Rows Back: Isn't that what makes us different than the animals? Because we have the freedom to choose?

Man: Animals, they got different qualities to them, but they choose. They choose to sit all day and lick themselves.

Woman: Animals ain't got a soul. When I hear about the Native Americans and how they worship a tree and a rock and an animal, I'm thinking, "Don't you know that there's God over this?" Now, if you want a good church—

Man: I don't need a church. We are the church. We are the temple most high.

Woman: A good church holds to the gospels. They choose to and I choose them. A good church knows that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. Not sinners, fornicators, rapists, thieves, kidnappers, extortionists, effeminates, murderers, cursers — not one of them will enter the Kingdom.

Man: Throw out the fornicators, and that's 90 percent right there.

Woman: If they try to throw me out, I know I got a good church.

Man: I shouldn't have said that, about the animals licking. I got a big mouth some time.

Woman: They lick, though.