PRESS RELEASE. Due to the falloff in devotional activities and increased human preoccupation with material concerns caused by the dot.com crash, Heaven has announced a major downsizing and re-engineering effort. “It is needed to bring supply more in line with demand for our services”, announced Senior Vice President Gabriel, a highly-placed spokesman for God. “Unfortunately, this happens from time to time and there’s little we can do except to cutback, given our historic commitment to free will. We don’t want to force our product on unwilling consumers and now is a good time for us to retrench and re-consider our basic value proposition.”

Marketing executive, Michael, echoed Gabriel’s remarks and said that a re-engineering effort was long overdue. “Heaven has been sliding along on blind faith for at least 6,000 years while Science and Post-modernism have eaten into our core markets “, he said. “We’ve seen a decline in almost all our major product areas; even our premium lines like Nirvana and Valhallah are down from their Bronze Age highs. Guilt, Fear, and Shame just don’t seem to bring ‘em in any more. It’s time for Heaven to regroup and get more competitive, especially in emerging markets like Human Potential, Recovery and 12-step, Chaos Theory, Jungian Archetypes, and so on.”

The theological community was taken aback by the announcement, but leaders urged the public to take the longer view rather than panic and repent too soon. Some liberal theologians speculated that the Christian Coalition obsession with “getting” the Clintons was to blame for taking people’s minds off daily morality and civility. However, this was denied by Jerry Falwell, a prominent evangelical, who said “Since when is it wrong to take a hard line on sin, especially when you can combine it with your political agenda?” He was supported in this by Coalition President, Pat Robertson, who also stated that, “UFO enthusiasts should be stoned to death according to God’s Law for believing in ‘slanty-eyed’ demon aliens.” The Pontiff, John Paul II, was unavailable for comment, but Cardinal Ottavianni, an archconservative Vatican insider, commented, “I smell a Jesuit plot in this”.

In other traditions, His Holiness the Dalai Lama urged restraint and hopeful optimism. “It’s too bad it had to happen now”, he said from his ashram in New Delhi, “but Michael is right; we don’t really know what motivates people to be good when they don’t respond predictably to guilt and fear. They absolutely have to figure this out”. In Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, the spiritual leader of Islamic terrorism disagreed: “What’s so bad about guilt and fear?”, he said.

When asked if re-engineering is really the solution, an Arthur Andersen partner for Ecclesiastical Systems, remarked, ” Deregulation has threatened Heaven’s dominant market position for at least 40 years. Ever since the god-is-dead-thing, significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market have been required. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship, will help Heaven to rethink its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Divine Integration Model (DIM), Andersen will assist Heaven to align its skills, methodologies, knowledge capital and experiences with their spiritual processes and technology in support of an overall strategy within a TQM framework.”

‘Jerry’ in arc.baptist

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