If you’re a small church in the West, odds are attendance is at an all time low, tithing is way down, and desperate vicars are looking for ways to attract people into their nonsense. With profits dwindling away, any bit of parlor magic or cheap holy relic is bound to seem like a boon. Of course, it’s important to capitalize on these opportunities while your congregation is still shockingly ignorant and impressionable. Such was the hope for the now defunct “Wax Jesus” in a small church in Wiltshire.

An “image of Jesus” seen in dripped wax by worshippers at a church in Wiltshire has been removed by a cleaner. Created over a four-month period, the wax image was apparently removed by a diligent cleaner last week, although nobody has owned up.

Owned up to what? Doing their fucking job? If cleaners had to keep every stain that looked like someone’s extremely blurry messiah, then no cleaning would ever get done. Remember Christians have been “Waiting for Godot” for over 2000 years, and that’s bound to make anyone restless. They want him to return so badly they’ll start worshiping toast if it looks even faintly like someone in their supernatural pantheon. How do you tell someone in such denial of reality their God is no more real than Santa Claus?

I find the response of the church warden especially revealing:

“I felt really disappointed actually and I wished I’d done more about preserving it,” admitted Mrs. Irwin.

“The Church of England is not very good at this sort of thing and if I’d done something sooner it could have been a bit of a money spinner.”

There you go. Thanks for finally being honest with us! Rather than be upset that their false idol is now gone, the Church regrets that they aren’t as organized and efficient as the other faiths when it comes to exploiting opportunities to scam gullible people out of their hard earned cash. I mean, who wouldn’t want to pay premium monies to stare at a bunch of wax that looks like Cat Stevens?

I will say this for their congregation: most had not been fully convinced of its divinity, and so the loss of Wax Jesus is no big loss to them. I’d say for people who are superstitious and cling to anything that might resemble their hippy messiah, they show a remarkable amount of skepticism when it came to the sighting. It’s a fucking miracle!