Oilmen in Heaven

            There is a joke that Warren Buffett tells of an oilman who died and went to heaven. St. Peter met him at the Pearly Gates and said, “Well, I checked you out, and you meet all the qualifications. But there's one problem. We have some tough zoning laws up here, and we keep all of the oil prospectors over behind that fence. And, as you can see, it is absolutely full. There is no room for you.”

            “Do you mind if I do say four words?” the oilman asked.

            Peter replied, “I see no harm in that.”

            So the prospector cupped his hands and yelled out, “Oil discovered in hell!”

            The gate to the fence was unlocked and all of the oilmen rush out and headed due south.

            Peter told the oilman, “That's a pretty slick trick. Go on in and make yourself at home. You have all of the room in the world.”

            The oilman paused for a moment, and then he told Peter, “No, I think I'll go along with the rest of boys. There might be some truth to that rumor after all.”

            The Bible says that, like the oilman, people have an enormous ability to deceive themselves. As the book of Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9.)