Life is Sweet in the Cheap Seats

I have returned from church, and of course, I have a review.

For a long time, I’ve had a habit of reviewing restaurants on Yelp as soon as I get home, so maybe it should not be a surprise that I do the same thing to what I will, for convenience, call “my” church.

I went to Meadowbrook Church again, and my dad was in tow. Straight away, we had a bad experience with an usher. I asked for two seats on an aisle, because of my dad’s problems. Instead of asking people to move over, he told us we could have one seat. Like we were negotiating. Then he said we could to sit way back in the corner, in seats clearly reserved for ushers. I really looked forward to explaining our presence in those terrible seats, over and over.

I knew what to do. I walked 20 feet and asked another usher, as though I had never talked to the first one. He was thrilled to help. Three seconds later, we were directed to a couple of nice seats.

I know everything about the work ushers do. They’re supposed to help people find seats, moving other people if necessary. The first guy I talked to didn’t know the job, or maybe he just wanted to assert his dominance. Some people look for little bits of authority so they can talk down to other people and say “no” a lot. Don’t know if that was his issue. Anyway, he was dealing with a former deacon and armorbearer, so I was more than ready to beat him at the game.

I was not happy to see that the topic was giving. I know what that generally means, in charismatic churches: “receiving.” As in “receiving unscriptural tithes and offerings.”

Pastor Gilligan didn’t do too badly at first. It was a general spiel about generosity. I have no problem with this. Giving is extremely important. Christians have a real problem with stinginess, and God wants us to give. He blesses people for giving. He promises this: “He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him.”

Notice that the above passage mentions the poor, not Jimmy Swaggart.

Psalm 41 lists the blessings God will give those who look after the poor, but again, no mention of Kenneth Copeland or Joyce Meyer.

If you are capable of sensing the presence of God, you will notice a difference between a service at a charismatic church and a lecture in a rented banquet hall. The air seems sweeter and heavier. Peace hangs over the place. Compared to a church experiencing the presence of God, the rented hall will feel dry and lifeless.

Today, God’s presence was at Middlebrook Church. For a while.

The music team did a great job. People worshiped and sang. They prayed at their seats. God was clearly there, although the sensation was somewhat muted. He remained there through much of Gilligan’s sermon. Then Gilligan started homing in on his ultimate destination: giving money to him. I mean his church. After that, the air dried out, and it was like sitting in a continuing legal education lecture or a Herbalife recruitment seminar.

Gilligan told us a ridiculous story, which I will repeat. A little boy in Africa or some such place brought a fish to a missionary’s door. The missionary asked why he brought it. The boy said it was a tithe. The missionary asked him where the other 9 fish were. The boy said, “They’re in the river, and now I have to go catch them.”

Here are some things to consider:

1. The story isn’t true. I mean, it could be true, but what are the odds? Slim. Preachers make up stories like this all the time. You’ll never see one backed up with video. What was the missionary’s name? What was the kid’s name? What country are we talking about? What kind of fish? What kind of commercial fisherman, even in Africa, catches fish one at a time? Even primitive fishermen use nets, and it’s unusual to catch one fish in a net. If you did, would you quit work and take your only fish to a missionary? I think you would keep fishing, in order to avoid starving.

If the story were true, we would have heard some facts.

2. Lie that it is, it’s not even a good lie, because it doesn’t have the expected punchline, which goes something like, “And then the boy went fishing, 3,000 fish jumped onto the bank, and he sold them and used the money to build his mom a new house.”

Kenneth Copeland tells a lot of lies, and here’s one he used to tell. Missionaries in Africa taught farmers to tithe. When harvest came, the land looked like a checkerboard. The tithers’ farms were green, and the heathens’ farms were brown. This never happened, but it’s better than the fish story. At least it suggests tithing works. The kid with the fish may have drowned.

I just Googled the fish story. It comes from a 1988 book by a man named Hewett. The name of the book is Illustrations Unlimited. It’s a pack of fables and jokes and so on, intended to help preachers who don’t receive fresh material from God. If God doesn’t talk to you, but for some inexplicable reason, you think you should preach anyway, this book is for you.

The book doesn’t say the story is true, and it gives no facts that would authenticate it.

I’ll tell you another inspiring story. Rodney Dangerfield got lost at the beach when he was a kid. He approached a cop and said, “Officer, can you help me find my parents?” The cop said, “I don’t know, kid. There are so many places they could hide.”

What’s the difference between this and the fish story? Not a whole lot. They were both created by professional anecdote writers in order to make money. Neither is true. One nice thing about the beach story is that it has never been used to convince people to give a preacher cash. Rodney Dangerfield has the high moral ground in this case.

If you look up the story, you will see that many, many preachers have posted it online, without attribution. It sort of looks like they copied it word-for-word, which is plagiarism, a subheading of “theft.”

It’s amazing how many tithing miracles happen in Africa. Where we can’t check on them to see if they’re true. I have never seen a preacher say, “Bob in the front row tithed, and yesterday his mule started laying golden eggs, and now we are going to get in buses and ride half a mile to look at it.”

My friend Amanda has been attending church at Middlebrook. When the presence of God departed, I texted her to point it out, and she had already noticed.

When my dad and I left, he started talking about the sermon. If I were to paraphrase, I would say he said it was a load of crap. He said preachers were all about money. He concluded that the whole point of the sermon was to get people to donate. He was either mostly or completely right.

What was I supposed to say to this man who prayed for salvation only 5 weeks ago? “TOUCH NOT MINE ANOINTED AND DO MY PROPHETS NO HARM”? Should I have scolded him for doubting a man who has TV cameras and a big building? A lot of Christians I know would have responded that way. No, MOST. I know, because that’s how they treated me at Trinity Church in Miami and New Dawn Ministries when I criticized the fraudulent prosperity gospel.

I wasn’t going to lie to my dad. The thought never entered my mind. He may have dementia, but he’s not an imbecile. Besides, lies don’t win people to Christ. I say that even though a huge percentage of preachers rely on clumsy, transparent lies as essential tools.

Imagine God, sitting up there smiling, saying, “Steve just told his dad a real whopper, but it’s okay, because it will help him get to heaven. Satan, did you hear that lie? What a servant!”

I told my dad he was absolutely right. I told him about the way I was persecuted when I took on the tithe and offering nonsense. I told him I didn’t go to Meadowbrook Church to listen to Tim Gilligan. I said I went to be among Christians.

Gilligan and the other people who push this stuff don’t realize they offend intelligent people. They only see the people who continue to attend. They don’t see the people who quit immediately and never return. Those people don’t come every Sunday and stand outside waving signs. They’re invisible. If a preacher like Gilligan reaches a membership of 2000, he feels great, but he doesn’t realize he may have driven 20,000 away with a transparent pack of self-serving BS.

Amanda texted me after the service, and she said, “They parsed that together like the SC did in Rowe v wade [sic].”

You couldn’t sum it up better. This is exactly how bad religion works. A preacher with a predetermined conclusion acts like a lawyer trying to win a case. A lawyer will look at statutes and the case law and pick out phrases that help his client, and then he will cobble them together into what is known as an “articulated rule” the court will think it has to follow. Preachers do the same thing with the Bible.

The Bible doesn’t tell Christians to tithe ANYWHERE, and it doesn’t tell them tithing will make them financially prosperous ANYWHERE, so preachers tack together scriptures about pre-Christian Jews and vague promises like, “As you sow, so shall you reap,” and eventually they end up with, “Give Benny Hinn your children’s inheritance so he can buy a bigger yacht, and God will make you rich.”

They also have canned responses available in case you go broke while tithing. In classic gaslighting style, they will help you understand that you did it wrong.

Try this. Give everything you have to Joyce Meyer. Then when you’re old and disabled, call her ministry and ask for it back so you can pay for assisted living. Tell them it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Email them receipts to prove you’re not lying. Send them your medical file. Get back to me and let me know how it goes. Good luck with that.

Try telling them the fish story.

Joyce Meyer claims God gives us heavenly receipts when we give her money, and she says we can call on him to repay us when we’re in need. Let’s see if Joyce Meyer is as honorable as God. Show her your receipts and see if she will help you. Tell her $75,000 per year ought to do it. Try it with any prosperity preacher. They’re like casinos. No refunds.

You want to hear a prediction? I’ll give you one. God is going to bless me for writing this blog entry. He has always blessed me for criticizing the prosperity gospel, and he increased my wealth dramatically after I started doing it, PARTLY AT THE EXPENSE of a person who was a prosperity thrall.

God is the one who told me to criticize the prosperity gospel. It doesn’t make him mad when I do it. It’s obedience. The persecution that follows ought to be a clue.

Jesus criticized the prosperity gospel. Remember the stuff about making long prayers and devouring widows’ houses?

Trinity Church has huge debt, and the head pastor is falling apart. New Dawn is deceased, and its head pastor and his wife are headed for prison (25-year man-min) and death from cancer, respectively. New Dawn’s false “house prophet” has been humiliated and deprived of his title. His brother-in-law who lectured me watched the church crumble and disappear from under his feet. The people who railed against me have all been put to public shame. How much proof do you need?

I am not a good Christian. I may be among the worst. And I have my problems. But I have zero long-term debt, and God heals me all the time.

Tell me who is closer to the right doctrine. If these people are “God’s anointed,” anointing must not be all it’s cracked up to be. They are not doing well at all, and God helps their critics.

God may interfere with your financial progress if you give money to prosperity preachers. Following a false prophet is dangerous. There is symmetry in the supernatural. The Bible says anyone who receives a prophet receives a prophet’s reward. What, then, happens when you receive a false prophet? Check the Old Testament and see. One word: “Babylon.” How about this one: “diaspora.”

So, to sum up, I was not impressed by today’s sermon. It was full of advice that will hurt people, and it ran off the presence of God. I hope next week they’ll come up with something better.

As weak as this church is, I enjoy sitting in the back with no accountability and no yoke on my shoulders. I don’t have to ask myself whether I can leave early or what will happen if I’m late. I come in whenever I feel like it. I sit where I want to sit. I wear what I want to wear. I still haven’t given a dime. No one has asked me to cook, write, direct traffic, take backward classes, go get the pastor’s laundry, stand guard with a pistol, or participate in stage construction jobs that amount to perilous Chinese fire drills without the benefit of worker’s comp.

When I was a volunteer, I had to use crummy parking spaces and walk forever. Now I have my dad’s disabled permit, and no one can tell me where to put the SUV. We park like 75 feet from the door. If the people who run the place don’t like it, they better keep quiet. If I hear one peep, I’ll go to another church! For all they know, I’m giving $2000 per week.

Today someone mentioned “Pastor Appreciation Month.” Oh, boy. We had Pastor Appreciation Day about three times a week at New Dawn. I’m glad they never realized they could jack it up to a month. I’ve already picked out a gift for Pastor Gilligan: nothing. I’m going to get him a great big box of it, without the box. And no one is going to bother me about it. Because I’m not a volunteer, no one has any hooks in me.

I’ve prayed for him to be corrected. Same thing I ask for myself. That’s a pretty good gift. It could happen. Maybe he’s not stubborn. For all I know, he believes the things he teaches. Maybe his mind is not closed. I doubt it, however, because he seems very smart.

I hope something good happens to my dad at this place. It’s possible. On the other hand, maybe it’s temporary. Maybe God showed him Middlebrook so he’ll be amazed when he goes to a church where better things happen.