No More Charlatans!

Slimy TV preachers (both men and women) who beg for money and then buy jets and gold toilets and subsidize their large families with six-figure incomes and estates … there’s no one to blame but their followers. Are folks really not aware of the oppulent lifestyles of the rich and religious? It boggles my mind when I see them on TV in huge arenas filled to capacity.

Charlatans! And it's not just southern preachers. These megachurches exist in every state!

Are you giving these people your hard-earned money?

Stop and think before you send in that tithe and love offering. Does God really need my money? Or does He really intend to test my faith on a regular basis by whether or not I give my last dime?

I swallowed that dogma for years and chased the feelings of eternal security until my feet were worn to bloody stubs.

Am I now an apostate? Have I forsaken the cross?

No.

I learned that we cannot control God by "giving until it hurts." I've had it with folks praising God on camera and living like the devil when the house lights are turned off.

I've heard a TV preacher even go so far as to say … “Nobody living high on the hog around here!” Oh yeah? Hmmm. If a member of the congregation asked to review their books, would they open them freely? What about the jet parked at the airport? What about the millions spent on “mission” trips? Who benefits, really? Any idea how much that costs? Does a church really need millions every year to keep the electric on? The questions here are endless …

I guess another question is, who wins more souls? The little church with the white steeple down the street, or the gigantic church that covers several city blocks? The big, blustery televangelist or the quiet country preacher? Is one better than the other?

 

 

Seems to me we need to take a lesson from the new pope. Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis this year. Humble, the man cooks for himself, lives in a small apartment, and rides the city bus. It is said he has reigned-in the spending at the Vatican.

The following statement has explained away the sickening excess of some Pentecostal/charismatic ministries. I’ve heard it said numerous times. “God wants His people to have the best.” Um, no. Not at the expense of those who struggle to put food on the table. This could also be said another way. “God wants His Pastors to have the best.” That’s the way many evangelical churches have been run for the past few decades, and it’s time we said… ENOUGH.

Pastors have hopped on the Prosperity Message bandwagon over the years when they saw how much it added to their competitor’s bottom lines. But it’s way out of control. The guilt and shame they hold over your head, as if they're God with a big stick, it has to stop.

 

J. Lee Grady, who wrote Fire in My Bones in the May 2013 Charisma magazine said, “God opposes pride. Pompous religious display, ego-driven greed and Pentecostal popemobiles have no place in a Spirit-filled movement …”

 

He's right.

I think that’s the majority of televangelists these days.

No more bodyguards!

No more $10,000-per-night hotel rooms!
No more private jets!

No more Charlatans!

Rebuilding (Rethinking) The Meaning Of Easter

Yesterday, on Facebook, I wrote about Easter this way:

Remembering those Easters of my sisters and me, complete with scratchy new hats with chin straps, ruffled socks, red-patent leather shoes and matching purses, crinolines and petticoats, spit curls and wave-set, wishing for chocolate bunnies instead of real eggs, white chocolate crosses, white leather New Testaments, and my mother totally worn out by the time we got to church. Good times.

And then, I remembered other Easter seasons that went more like this:

Of course, in later years Good Friday services droned on for six hours (seriously, six hours) while the choir stood the entire service. (No joke.) Our candlelit holy communions were filled with "angels" and "demons" walking the aisles, and a screaming pastor. Or a pastor who made us all stand or sit in complete and utter silence because the "Spirit" was moving. "No going out, no coming in!" And we dare not move. A jam-packed sanctuary of sweaty bodies; standing room only. The place was so hot. All I could think about was having to pee, and sneaking past the gestapo ushers to use the restroom. We were prisoners in our own church.

We passed the grape juice and wafers wishing it were a cold Coke and bite of pizza. We had no real concept of the truth, or at least we couldn't think about it because of the constant manipulation and the big King James Bible he held over our heads. The sobbing and guilt and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yeah. Not good memories of Easter. Not for me. Thank God a million times, thank God that's over. The real meaning of Easter now lives within me ...

It has occurred to me as I sit here on Easter, listening to the epic movie King of Kings on my TV, that church for us was always like that movie. Aways a show. Always an epic production. He was a master showman, a wanna-be movie star, a great actor. A man who had narsisistic view of himself, and a wild fascination for attention and the stage. And we were stupid enough to give him a standing ovation every time he pranced onto the platform at the beginning of the service. I wish we knew then the Charlatan that raged within him.

I don't think I can listen to this movie any longer. As beautiful as the story is, it reminds me too much of sitting in that church, hoping to find the true God, only to experience the oppression of a mad man. Too many times I remember running to my car, and bawling my eyes out.

Once or twice a year he would rent one of these films, King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Ten Commandments, and show them on the big screen that pulled down in front of the baptistery. (The show was free, of course--but there was no popcorn.) And now as I listen to the movie once again, the script haunts me. It sounds as though he wrote it. Or as if he studied these films to learn how preach, how to speak like Charlton Heston or direct like Cecil B. Demille, insuring we "trust and obey," how to use the scriptures in these films to control and manipulate.

Strange how something that should bless me, is creeping me out.

Time to turn off the TV, and read the Easter story for myself.

I pray God bless you on this Christian holiday. Because if you have read this and cannot relate to a word of it ... then He has surely blessed you already.