You Just Don’t Know Who They Are

Something I posted somewhere else:

Thinking about the fatherless today.

It is not politically correct to say it, but we have entire neighborhoods full of fatherless children and adults. Sometimes the fathers and mothers aren’t around, and sometimes they’re present, but their sons and daughters are spiritual and emotional orphans, because the parents have chosen not to give them the help they need.

Prosperity preachers go to these places and promise money from God; something the people think they need very badly. They give out of their poverty, and they become more poor, and the preachers take the money and spend it on jets and hair plugs and vacations on Maui.

God will help you with material needs, but what he wants is to be your father. He wants to repair your heart and show you there is someone you can count on. He will do what your human parents couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

The thieves go in and tarnish his name, making promises God doesn’t keep, because he was never in them to begin with. And instead of learning to trust God, people come to believe he doesn’t care, or even that he hates them.

The people who remain faithful to God are so brainwashed, they will attack you for unmasking the very individuals who steal their money and their faith. They say, “Touch not mine anointed.”

No one is anointed to steal money and destroy faith.

I have a young friend who got in some financial trouble. It was his own fault. But it was not something that couldn’t be fixed.

He got a full college scholarship this year. I was very excited about that. For a long time, I’ve been telling him he needs to get away from his “community,” and I knew this move would change his entire view of the world.

You always hear black leaders shaming people over the things they owe “the community.” They’re not supposed to shop at white businesses. They’re never supposed to move to better areas. They have to vote for Democrats, to keep the handouts flowing. They can’t have a single original thought, because “the community” depends on them.

I told my friend to forget his community. It wasn’t doing anything for him, apart from providing a terrible influence. I said that if he cared about his community, he should leave, get rich, and go back and teach kids on the weekends.

The scholarship looked like a way out. But this thing he did came back to haunt him, just when he needed to be thinking about school.

He went to a family reunion. He talked to relatives about his problem. Everyone was sympathetic. But everyone said they “couldn’t” help. Couldn’t offer a little cash. Couldn’t pawn something of value and let him repay them. Couldn’t get a cash advance on a credit card.

“Couldn’t.”

I know people have money problems, but among them, they should have been able to come up with a small four-figure sum. Don’t tell me none of them have credit cards or homes they can borrow on.

In the end, he had to get help from people who are not even related to him. Now things are much better. He still has some debt to repay, but his life isn’t ruined.

He is fatherless. He has parents, but when he needs help, they come up dry.

In this world, most of us are fatherless. It’s not just the poor. It isn’t just black people. I’ve known a lot of fatherless kids whose parents had money. I was one of them.

Charismatics are trying to get the wrong things out of God. TBN should be called “GSN.” “The God Shopping Network.” You want this blessing? Send this amount as an offering. You want a bigger blessing? We have plenty. Send a bigger offering. Put it on a credit card. If you can’t afford it, don’t worry. God will magically provide the money, because he’s glad you bought some greedy white-trash imbecile a new tire for his Gulfstream jet. That’s what he thinks about all day. “Is there no one who will come forward to buy my prophet one more Mercedes?”

What did your parents fail to give you? What do your friends and relatives fail to give you? Love? Appreciation? Encouragement? Direction? Help in times of need? Maybe a little praise? God knows people have let you down. And it wouldn’t be a problem, if preachers would stop preventing him from helping you.

He wants to come to you and let you feel his love. He wants to heal you of worry and dark expectations. He wants to take away your diseases and the negative traits you have developed in response to the world’s inadequacies. He wants to remove the things that make you sick of yourself. Does he really need a 747 to do that? Paul did more good than all the TV preachers in history. On foot.

If we came to God looking for parenting in the first place, we would not find him so disappointing. We come to him looking for things that are very low on his list of priorities. Things that are inconsequential compared to inner healing and growth. Money has perverted the teaching we receive, and because of our own iniquity, we make ourselves the accomplices and defenders of those who swindle us. We want to believe them.

We should be looking for the right things, and we should be providing them to others. God sets us in new families, with or without blood relation, and we are supposed to fill the needs our biological relations and pre-Christian friends failed to fill. It’s not that hard to provide other people with a little help. Very often, a small sacrifice, even a few words, can relieve a brother or sister of a tremendous amount of suffering. We ought to recognize our new relations and treat them as family.

God is not going to give you a dime for giving money to Kenneth Copeland, so stop waiting for a reward and ask for God to return the money as though it had been stolen. But God does promise a reward for helping the poor. Read Psalm 41. Don’t give stupidly. Don’t enable bums and addicts. But sometimes God will show you someone you should help. It’s not an attack from the devil. It’s one of the things you were put here to do, and God will back you up.

I forgive the people who failed me and the people who deliberately wronged me. I will not look for revenge by carnal means, and I will not carry hate in my heart. But I know they were not my real family, so I will keep my eyes open for their replacements.