“Thus you will know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:20

In his novel A Painted House, John Grisham describes a pious Sunday school teacher eulogizing a character named Jerry Sisco. He was a mean guy who’d been killed just the night before in a back alley fight after picking on one person too many. In the words of the little boy who’d seen the fight with his friend Dewayne:

"She made Jerry sound like a Christian, an innocent victim. I glanced at Dewayne, who had an eye on me. There was something odd about this. As Baptists, we'd been taught from the cradle that the only way... to heaven was by believing in Jesus and trying to follow his example in living a clean and moral Christian life. And anyone who did not accept Jesus and live a Christian life simply went to hell. That's where Jerry …