God is the Same Size Everywhere

I get flak for criticizing denominations to which I don’t belong, but these days I think it’s fairly obvious that I spend a lot more time criticizing my own branch of Christianity. In that respect, I’m a lot like Jesus and John the Baptist. Jesus was probably a Pharisee, and John was the son of a priest, but they said horrendous things about the religious establishment. Does that mean we should look for opportunities to insult religious authorities? Clearly not, but it has long been understood that the right to criticize increases with the target’s proximity to the critic. Messianics tell us that as religious Jews, Jesus and John could get away with criticizing their own kind. I think that principle still applies, as long as you don’t venture into pointless or malicious gossip.

An organization with no critic is like a circuit with no negative feedback. If you feed an amplifier a signal, and there is no way to limit the amplification, you can get positive feedback which causes the amp to go way overboard, ruining its performance. Similarly, when a church has no one to stand up and say no, it will tend to wander into theological minefields and commence to dance.

The prophets were critics. I can’t think of a single Old Testament prophet whom God raised up to tell the Jews they were doing a good job. Yet our modern charismatic churches preach that anyone who says anything “negative” (they don’t use the term “constructive criticism” much) is sowing discord and gossiping and so on. It’s true, some people do gossip in a malicious way. I know someone who calls my pastor “Judas”, and I’ve been told that another local pastor with a radio show calls him a “white plantation owner” because he runs a church which is mostly black. That’s all gossip and slander. But what if you go to John Hagee’s church, and you notice that he teaches that we shouldn’t evangelize the Jews? I know that makes Jews happy, but we’re not Jews! We should be up in arms. And we’re not. Mainly because John Hagee collects tons of money and has a TV show (we believe all rich televangelists are blessed and super-holy), but also because we don’t want “discord.”

Don’t even get me started on the pastors who claim we can command or “release” angels. Even Jesus did not presume to do that. He said he could call out to Jehovah and have a huge number of angels sent to help him; he didn’t say he would command the angels personally. The Bible tells us very clearly that dealing with angels is dangerous. Scripture vilifies those who worship “the host of heaven.” It says some angels fornicated with women and raised up a race of giants. Jesus told us to ask the Father for things; he never told us to ask angels. In fact, an angel offered to serve Jesus and allow him to fix the world’s problems as its ruler. That angel was Satan, and Jesus told him to get lost. The Bible contains no examples of godly people who told angels what to do, yet suddenly some pastors think it’s a good idea.

Essentially, they are telling us to practice voodoo. In voodoo, you try to command the souls of dead people, and you pray to strange “saints.” In reality, these beings are either imaginary or just evil spirits. A spirit who serves God–we call them “angels,” but not all are angels–is not going to listen to an order that comes from outside the chain of command. So if any spirit listens, it has to be a rebel spirit. If you’re a Christian, and you try to tell angels what to do, you are no different from a santero or voodoo priest. This is obvious to anyone who has read the Bible and who has a basic familiarity with spirit worship, yet now this garbage is pouring out of our pulpits.

Charismatic churches have endemic faults, and one such fault is a tendency to create personality cults. We claim to worship God, but in reality, we exalt teachers and pastors and musicians, as though they were somehow more holy than the rest of us. We even pamper them at the expense of our families and the poor. When they do revolting things, we say, “Judge not!”, as though Jesus had issued a blanket prohibition on speaking about other people’s sins. Paul told us to correct people, and he said that if they refused to change, we should denounce them before our entire churches. Was he wrong? If so, who has the authority to take a blue pencil and delete his errors from the New Testament? If such a person exists, I haven’t met him yet.

Every pastor has sins and iniquities, and it’s wrong to shun a man of God merely because he does something wrong. But what if his iniquities endanger his flock, and he has no remorse and no intention to change? If I found out my pastor spent some nights looking at porn or drinking himself silly, I would be concerned about him, but if I knew he didn’t defend his behavior, and that he was working to overcome it, I would still be on his side. But what if he said what he did was okay? What if he fired another pastor who was in exactly the same boat? What if he invested in a strip club? What if he twisted doctrine and claimed he had proof that the things he was doing were not sinful? A guy like that needs to be exposed and removed. End of discussion.

Self-righteous criticism is a sin. Malicious or vengeful criticism is a sin. But exposing a bullheaded person who is leading others into a pit is not sin. It is something we are obligated to do, according to scripture. When a religious leader’s errors get sufficiently grave, and I have to balance loyalty to man against loyalty to God, God is going to have to come first.

I don’t look to cause trouble, but I am never going to let a friend walk into a trap without saying something. If that means I get asked to leave a church, it means absolutely nothing to me. I pay to go to church; they don’t pay me. I serve the church. It doesn’t serve me. I’ll take my power to bless somewhere else, and I’ll still be blessed. Like Jesus said: “Shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them.” He never said, “Hang around and be abused and mocked and taught false doctrine until you die.”

I know a few famous preachers I truly admire and listen to without hesitation. On the other hand, preachers disappoint me all the time. The main things that offend me are ingratitude and arrogance. I don’t like a preacher who feels entitled; as though he’s a rock star. People like this are “stiff necked” in Biblical terms. They are like clay bottles which are already fired and can’t be altered by the potter’s hands.

I know about a preacher who was invited to preach at a major event. Somehow, he got separated from a piece of clothing he wanted to wear on stage. It turned out he always wore this type of clothing. What would you do? I’d wear something else. Seriously, are we superheroes now? Do we have to have costumes?

Volunteers at the event had to find and buy a replacement garment. That shocked me when I heard about it. It’s like something that would happen at a Jennifer Lopez concert. “Make sure all the bottles of Evian in the green room are turned so the caps face southwest.” It reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s famous rule that no one in the White House was allowed to make eye contact with her.

How can this happen? It’s not like this guy was wrong about a minor point of doctrine. He was very obviously way out of line. And he was allowed to preach and receive money! Man, that’s creepy. I don’t want my offerings going to a person like that. I don’t want to hear what he has to say, because “of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”

I’ve seen arrogant preachers. I’ve seen greedy preachers. I’ve seen preachers who were obsessed with naming the utterly ungodly celebrities they knew. I’ve seen many preachers whose messages were defensive propaganda intended to keep people from leaving bad churches and cutting off their tithes. The fact is, many of the people who make it to the stage are not great servants of God. They’re just ambitious and desperate for attention and admiration. We don’t know who the real servants are. At judgment, we’ll find out, and I guarantee you, there will be a lot of big-name clergymen and megachurch pastors who get humiliated, while obscure people who sat in the backs of their churches receive praise. Now that I think about it, maybe we do these clergymen a disservice by failing to speak up when they blow it.

When a church cuts off the right to question and exalts a mere man, it becomes a cult. God is utterly humble; you can say absolutely anything to him if your heart is right. Somehow, we’re supposed to give men more honor and deference than that. Does that make sense to you? The Bible says, “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off.” It says, “Him that hath an high look and a proud heart will I not I suffer.” It says, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” God actually fights the proud. And remember, “grace” means power, not mercy. If you’re humble, God will give you power. Real power. Not just a sweet gig running a megachurch.

Some people teach that Satan broke the church into denominations. The more I think about it, the more I think Jesus did it. He wanted us to be in unity, but he also wanted us to listen to the Holy Spirit. When a church hardens its heart against the Spirit, it becomes part of the natural world, and Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Maybe he reluctantly inspires people to leave and form new, healthy churches.

Maybe the story of the Tower of Babel symbolizes the church. In that story, man used his own limited brainpower to create an astrological observatory intended to give us control over our fate. Man didn’t listen to the Holy Spirit or choose to walk by faith; he chose to bypass God’s plan and do it on his own. In response, God divided man with different languages. Churches that cast out the Holy Spirit work the same way. They think they can improve the universe by doing what seems good to them, and they ignore the Holy Spirit. So maybe God responds by dividing them into new denominations where reform can persist for a while.

We are now being reunified by a common language: the language of tongues. The Tower of Babel story is proceeding in reverse in some charismatic churches. The Holy Spirit, not some central church body run by homosexuals and bureaucrats, is knitting the dry bones back together.

I utterly reject the policy of speaking mindless positivity at all times. I think serious, concentrated prayer is always the first step when a man of God screws up, but after a while, you may have to open your mouth, and you may have to leave. That’s not you being a bad Christian. That’s you getting free of a sick environment and absolving yourself of your share of the collective guilt.

If I ever get in trouble for speaking the truth, so be it. Any church I go to will get more from me than it will give me, so I don’t think I will ever leave a church in bad odor with God, and it’s not like I’ll lose any earthly blessings. I’m not like a person who depends on the church to provide me with a job that far exceeds what my competence merits. Worst case scenario: I get to spend more time doing things for myself and my family. I can serve God and bask in his presence in a cave in the desert. It’s good to go to church, and you should try to put yourself among believers, but my real church is any space I occupy. If ever end up without a church, it will be temporary, and God will go right on taking care of me.

I hope the charismatic churches get it together. Otherwise, we will be the obsolete churches of the 21st century, making rude gestures from the platform while the train pulls out without us.