Familiar Face in the News

Benny Hinn is in the news.

Yesterday I read that the IRS raided one of Hinn’s operations and carried out files. No word on the rationale. Of course, the news outlets were electrified. You know the drill “Bad Christian Proves Faith is a Lie; Stupid Trump Voters, Wake up!”.

I saw another interesting article about the kerfuffle. A young man whom Hinn claims to have healed is mad. William Vandenkolk is 25. He is blind. When he was 9, he appeared on stage with Hinn, and was alleged to have received a healing.

The article describes Vandenkolk as “legally blind,” which is a vague term. Back when the Miami Dolphins were actually a good team, one of their best players was legally blind. His name is Manny Fernandez. I don’t recall exactly how it worked. I assume he was able to correct his vision with glasses, to the point where he was able to play. Anyway, “legally blind” and “blind” are not the same thing. The article doesn’t say how well Vandenkolk sees today.

The article is interesting, because Vandenkolk, a hard core Hinn critic, doesn’t say he wasn’t healed. He says that when he appeared onstage with Hinn, “he felt he could see people’s faces clearly in the crowd.”

That sounds pretty miraculous to me. It must have been a huge change from Vandenkolk’s usual condition, because it meant enough to him to motivate him to call it a healing. At the same time, it looks like the change was temporary.

The article puts the world “healed” in quotation marks: “Man ‘healed’ as child by televangelist Benny Hinn speaks out.” What’s the gist? Is the writer saying Vandenkolk wasn’t healed? Vandenkolk’s testimony suggests that he was. If the healing didn’t last, it’s unfortunate, but let’s be real; in the natural course of events, blind people don’t even have brief moments when their vision works. A fleeting miracle is still a miracle, isn’t it?

Is the writer suggesting Vandenkolk is lying? Is he trying to say Vandenkolk himself isn’t sure whether he was healed? The matter should have been explored and explained clearly.

What is Vandenkolk’s beef with Hinn? The temporary nature of his healing? The story doesn’t say that, but it does say Vandenkolk thinks Hinn ripped him off. Hinn’s ministry allegedly raised a lot of money to help Vandenkolk, and Vandenkolk says he never received it.

It would be hard for the government to go after a faith healer whose miracles didn’t work, but it’s not so hard to nail a charity that steals from the people it purports to help.

I don’t like Benny Hinn. He’s a prosperity preacher, and the prosperity gospel is a lie that makes people poor and prevents them from getting closer to God. He teaches Steve Munsey’s ridiculous, ineffective, Biblically illiterate get-rich methods, which serve primarily to enrich preachers. I think Hinn knows he teaches lies. That being said, it’s not impossible for a person to be healed at a Benny Hinn meeting just because Hinn is a disgraceful grifter.

Vandenkolk could have been healed by his own faith or the faith of someone present, other than Hinn. Who knows? I think a real journalist who did not have an axe to grind would have acknowledged the big story here. It’s not news if someone like Hinn takes someone’s money, but it’s very big news if a blind person receives his sight supernaturally, even if it doesn’t last.

If Hinn’s star falls because of this, fine. He is not a good person, and his ministry is toxic. But it will be a net loss if Christianity itself is disgraced through this scandal. How many people have been separated from God by their anger at crooked preachers? Hundreds of millions, at least. If Hinn implodes, we need other ministries to rise and fill the hole. I hope God will raise up sincere, powerful ministers to take the places of people like Hinn and Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes. When God took Pharaoh off the backs of the Jews, he didn’t leave them wandering around on their own. He gave them Moses.

I have no sympathy at all for Hinn. The sooner his poisonous, fraudulent act is put to rest, the better.