Days of swine and roses

"My life has meaning because of my personal relationship with God," an acquaintance told me the other day, and I started thinking that his smugness was the complacency of a pig in a sty. The farmer feeds and waters the pigs, and allows them to live in the sty or the barn, and maybe there's mud for them to wallow in. And perhaps there are several other pigs in the herd that also imagine that the farmer favors them -- that they have a special relationship with Mr. Farmer. And so they live in that belief until one day the farmer comes and slaughters them -- that is, he sends someone else to do the slaughtering.