Give me Your Tithes, You Fat Moron

I had an interesting experience last night.

A guy came to our church and preached. He has his own church in another state. He sang some bluesy tunes and got a great response, which makes me wonder why we never have music like that. But the really interesting thing was the sermon.

He spent the majority of the time badmouthing the people at his church, even making fun of them for having big behinds (though he probably weighs 300 pounds). Our congregation went nuts. I don’t think they were thinking clearly. He was funny, and we didn’t show up to worry about his church’s problems, so it’s understandable that people responded to him favorably. But think about it: this man traveled over a thousand miles to go to another church and insult the people who pay his bills! That’s incredible.

He wasn’t reaming out his entire flock. He singled out people who criticized or left the church. Still, they feed his kids, and look at the gratitude he shows them.

He said a lady came up to him and said, “You know what’s wrong with this church?” And he supposedly replied, “You’re IN it.” Am I crazy for thinking that’s not a great story for a pastor to tell? Jesus was generally critical of people in authority but kind to his followers. Did he have it all wrong?

The preacher talked about the Good Samaritan, and he completely misunderstood the story. Here’s how it works. A traveler is robbed and beaten on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A priest and a Levite pass by, on the way to Jerusalem. A Samaritan stops and helps him. You know about this. The significance of this is that people often do evil by neglecting human need while pretending to serve God.

The Levite and the priest could not touch dead bodies without becoming ritually unclean. They were on their way to Jerusalem, which was the location of the Temple. They wanted to please God, and they knew that if they became impure, it would interfere with their work at the Temple. Therefore they chose to avoid touching a man who, for all they knew, was dead. That’s what Perry Stone says, anyhow.

The Samaritan did not worship at Jerusalem; that’s one of the things the Jews hated about Samaritans. He was free to help. And by showing his love for his fellow man, he pleased God more than the others.

That’s not what I heard yesterday. I’m not totally sure what the lesson about the Samaritan’s good deed was, but we were told that the dying man got beaten up because he left Jerusalem. And we were told that our “Jerusalem” was our church. And if we left it for another church, we would be open to attack.

The obvious question is: what if I decide to quit my church and go to yours? I guess it’s an evil place, right?

Another question: assuming my church and your church are both good, are you saying all other churches are evil? Sure sounded like it.

Finally, how can you promote the idea that there is only one good place to worship, when the hero of the parable belonged to a group who refused to worship at the Temple? Is that irony or what?

I just read the parable of the Good Samaritan. Guess what? Nowhere does it condemn the victim for having the nerve to travel. In fact, as any Jew or Christian should know, one of the worst crimes in the ancient Middle East was maltreatment of travelers. Traveling, itself, was not wrong. How else could people do business? Paul traveled. Jesus traveled. Come on.

Sometimes it amazes me how we miss the obvious. This guy came to us and proved he was immature and disloyal, and we didn’t even notice.

This reminds me of the old saw: a dog that will bring a bone will carry one. A person who badmouths other people to you will badmouth you to other people. I wonder what this guy is going to say about my church when he goes to other churches. I don’t think my pastor travels across the country and tells other congregations we’re a bunch of idiots. I can’t see him turning on us like that.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to align yourself with someone who mistreats others. You may think you’re special, and that you’ll get the benefit of that person’s bad behavior, with none of the curses. Wait till the tide shifts! Some day you’ll be on the dirty end of the stick. Ask a woman who dates bad boys, or a man who has dated nasty women who make a living on their backs.

I know a woman who likes to verbally abuse waiters and cashiers and so on. People who can’t fight back. Meanwhile, her favorite way to say goodbye to people is, “Have a blessed day.” This is a vicious individual, but if you listened to her talk about how much she loves God, you might take her for a saint. You can’t listen to the things people say about themselves; people are their own press agents. If you want to know them, you have to consider what they do, especially when they think they’re safe from punishment. Like when they’re a thousand miles away from the people they’re insulting.

Christianity has always been screwed up, just like every other religion. These days it seems like one of our worst faults is our tendency to assume that anyone who has a big church is favored by God. I wonder how the megachurch proponents would explain the success of Scientology or the Mormons. God isn’t the only one who helps people succeed, and what we think is success is often a curse in disguise.

He also lambasted people who start small churches “in hotels.” That borders on despicable. What an offensive thing to say about anointed ministers who are giving up their secular lives and stepping out in faith, starting their careers as well as they can. Not everyone has a church handed to him on a platter, as he did. He said he was given a facility. It was a former funeral parlor. He was complaining about it, but I’m sure there are a dozen ministers in Miami who would cry tears of gratitude if someone gave them a funeral parlor or even a warehouse.

I think this guy means well, but if you’re so loud and self-assured you can’t hear the Holy Spirit, you are bound to say foolish things. I’ve certainly done it.

I get tired of having blind guides paraded in front of me. There are a lot of wonderful people at my church, and they want to do the right thing, but what chance do they have when we give a platform to folks who are just plain wrong? Some of them go home and try to put this craziness into practice! How awful is that? They’re worse off than if they had stayed home smoking weed.

No one from my church reads my blog, and I don’t mention names. I guess some day someone will find out that I’m not totally on board with everything that happens there, and then maybe I’ll get a lecture, or I’ll be told to quit working as a volunteer. What can I do? Right is right. When the enemy misleads people and puts them to work with time-wasting nonsense, someone with a little bit of the Holy Spirit’s clarity needs to say something about it. The story of the Good Samaritan shows that you have to be good to men in order to please God, but it does not say you have to PLEASE men.

I try not to be proud. I try not to be self-righteous. I should think about love at least as much as I think about pleasing God. Maybe I go off the reservation sometimes. It’s hard to say.

I believe modern pentecostal churches are developing a phobia of healthy criticism. We keep bringing in people who slander and deride helpful critics. Critics are the tools of Satan! They’re going to be left behind while we go on to victory! Thing is, I’m going on to victory, and most people in the church are not. God does great things for me all the time, and my biggest frustration is that I am leaving people behind, when I want them to go forward with me. What we’re hearing is the opposite of the truth.

A hatred of criticism is one of the tools Satan uses to build impregnable fortresses of evil. Think of the Communists and the Nazis. What happened under those regimes, if you opened your mouth? You were imprisoned, or you got a bullet in the head. So criticism was very rarely heard, and sick, Satanic regimes flourished. Islam is the same way. The church can go the same route.

Look what happened to the prophets and Jesus. Did Al Qaeda get them? Did Charles Manson get them? No, of course not. Their greatest enemies were people who were totally devoted to serving God. Jesus and the prophets didn’t stand around hugging the high priests and calling them “great man of God.” They were extremely critical. Think about this: they were killed for criticizing! It’s the God’s honest truth.

Think about the things they said. Repent, or God will strip you naked and expose your genitals, and you’ll eat your own babies. Your sons will be castrated and forced to serve other kings. Whitewashed tombs. Prisoners of hell. Generation of vipers. One of the reasons the gospels are hard to read is that they are jam-packed with criticism and correction. Positive thinking? Get real. It’s not in the Bible. Faith is in the Bible, but that’s not the same thing. Faith means believing God. Positive thinking means believing in man.

Obviously, you can’t have an effective church when every malcontent feels like he can stand up during services and offer pointless whining and excessive fault-finding. But that’s not the only thing the positive thinkers want to prevent. They want to cut off helpful, vital criticism, and they try to portray it as grumbling and whining, because if you silence a critic, you can go on doing what you want.

In my own church, I’ve seen many, many problems that could be fixed very easily, but I’ve found that I sometimes get scolded for pointing them out and offering simple, workable solutions. That’s not unity. That’s a crippling disability.

Why does this happen? Bureaucracy. That’s a big word that means “looking out for Number One.” When you point out problems, you’re threatening jobs and reputations and wildly distorted self-images. Each person cares about holding onto his territory and his prestige, even if he isn’t a paid staffer, and if you point out failures, you put those territories at risk.

Yesterday I realized that churches are God’s civil service. What happens in the civil service? People get hired, and then they work out a system that protects them, no matter what they do wrong. Churches are the same way. If you want to see how churches run, go look at the Post Office or the DMV. Merit means nothing. Connections and seniority mean everything. So if you’ve been going to a church for five years, and you wonder why the doors don’t work or the hedges are dead or the worst singers always get to solo, there’s your answer. Man’s craving for power and security outweighs God’s desire for us to improve and excel.

Like government employees, people at churches have no one to answer to. As long as they can get people to donate money, they don’t have to do a good job. They don’t have to sell a good product. They don’t have to offer good services. They can show up late, leave early, overpay themselves, deliver bad (or plagiarized) sermons, and ignore the Holy Spirit, as long as they know how to raise cash. This is how people like Robert Tilton survive. In the real world, they’d last ten minutes. Many of them would be in jail. Now that I think about it, some of them have gone to jail.

I know a guy who is utterly, abysmally incompetent. He holds a high position with a church. When people talk about obstacles to progress at that church, his name comes up over and over. He probably thinks he’s doing great, and that anyone who criticizes him is from the enemy. If he ever gets a real job, he’s in for a rude awakening. He’ll be fired in two days. He’ll be flipping burgers, at best. Jesus told us we could think very highly of ourselves though we were actually blind and naked and poor. This guy is a prime example. Because he is shielded from correction, he is never going to grow up or develop into a capable man.

I live for the times when I’m with other Christians and the Holy Spirit shows up and guides us. Those are the events that really bring me to church. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. Generally, this happens at prayer meetings more than services. I wish that atmosphere and that power would take over the sanctuary. I feel God’s presence much more often when I’m alone than I do in services.

Here’s a strange thing I’ve noticed. Although criticism is strongly discouraged in my church, there is no shortage of people who are willing to criticize me. They’ve done it many times. Am I complaining? No way. I’m very grateful. It’s a blessing. I’ve grown because of it. Sometimes people criticize me out of ignorance or arrogance, or because I inadvertently make them look bad. Who cares? Dogs will bark. But often people who point out my mistakes are right, and their criticism helps me. This stuff is gold. Check Psalm 141. The sad thing is that our bad attitude toward criticism is robbing many other people of the benefits I’ve received. Again, I find myself being blessed, and I find myself moving forward, but I can’t seem to drag many people along with me.

Oddly, sometimes the people who criticize me are the same people who preach the anti-criticism gospel.

I was born an idiot, and it took me a disgracefully long time to get on God’s path. He had to beat me pretty hard to get me there. I would never have found it on my own. I think he needs to give churches a good beating, too. He needs to do us an undeserved favor, reaching in and pulling out the folks who are blocking his will. They’re like placques in the brain of an Alzheimer’s victim, preventing the signals from getting through. Man is supposed to fix the world, and that means that when we screw up, we end up with churches that don’t work. It’s our obligation to correct and strengthen churches, and to pass on godly ways. We haven’t done that, so things are a mess. The only solution is for God to step in like the Salvation Army or a social worker and change our diapers for us. Again. If he does, there will probably be a wave of firings, deaths, and prosecutions. Maybe we should be praying for the problem children to wake up and change, before God does the changing for them.

I wish atheists understood that man is responsible for making the world work. Maybe they’d quit moaning about how suffering and evil prove God doesn’t exist.

From here on out, I will take special notice when a preacher insults the people who feed him. That’s a good lesson.