The Church and Money - An Introduction

This post begins an in-depth critique of American evangelicalism as it displays itself in the present day. But before I dive into such a critique, I believe I must explain where I've been for the last several months. Let me just say that I was tackling a rather different kind of writing assignment, namely, a series of articles on the subject of Peak Oil. For those who are in any way still unfamiliar with this subject, Peak Oil refers to the time at which worldwide oil production will reach a maximum, then enter into terminal decline. It is a topic of intense interest to many, because of the implications and effects that declining oil production will have on the world economy, and because some reputable scientists believe that we have already reached the peak of oil production and are now starting to decline. Those articles have been published in the Fullerton Observer, starting with the July 2007 edition, and can be read online at www.fullertonobserver.com if anyone is interested. Please forgive the typos and grammatical errors in some of the later articles.

I first became aware of Peak Oil in February of this year. As I studied this issue and the related issue of global climate change in more detail, I also thought about the implications for American evangelicalism. I began to believe that changes were coming upon our society which would make many of the problems of the evangelical community irrelevant, since they would be overtaken by the events of distress and possible collapse in the broader society. Thus I thought that even this blog might become irrelevant within the next year or two. Indeed, I was almost ready to abandon it altogether. But certain events over the last two months provoked me and convinced me that I should not do so. First, there is the Republican presidential campaign, and the candidates posturing to try to secure the evangelical vote. There were also the conversations I kept having with co-workers where I was explaining that although I am orthodox and evangelical in my faith, I don't go along with many of the practices of present evangelical churches. There was also the recent shooting incident involving Matthew Murray at a famous Colorado megachurch. And there is a new movie being advertised over four months before its release date, based on a Christian children's story written by a man who has been deceased for over 40 years and whose legacy is still being milked for all it's worth by the religious arm of big secular entertainment companies. Finally, there was the fact that I noticed one day that people are still reading this blog, and are probably wondering, “When is he going to write more?” So I'm back. Now then, let's talk about money.

The intersection of faith and money is a danger zone for Christians, a collision between moldy corruption and pure bread. That intersection, or rather, collision, is a big issue in evangelicalism today, and many evangelicals have become moldy. There are the obvious examples of greed and excess – pictures splashed all over television screens and newspaper front pages, showing pastors promising miracles if we only "giiivvvehuh till it hurrrrtshuh!"; pastors who own dozens of radio and television stations, who just want a little more from us so they can reach the millions of benighted people in Third World countries with the Gospel; pastors with expensive mansions, private jets, summer houses and collections of cars; pastors being led away in orange jumpsuits and leg irons by law enforcement personnel. I already mentioned in an earlier post the troubles that occurred at Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim, California. I could also mention the disgraceful fall of Ted Haggard, and the fact that after he was removed from the pastorate by his church, he tried soliciting donations from strangers so that he and his wife could go to school to obtain degrees in counseling. Those of us who are old enough (I'm not that old) can remember Oral Roberts. Or Reverend Ike (now, I do remember him), and his famous slogan, “You can't lose with the stuff I use!” as he held a fistful of dollars in front of the TV cameras. There was also the head elder of the abusive church I once attended, which I first mentioned in this post: http://thinsoc.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-my-old-church-was-like-part-1.html, who has four Social Security numbers and used to keep thousands of dollars in cash in his home, according to some former members. Indeed, to borrow a phrase from Hebrews 11, time will fail me if I tell of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker, Al Forniss, Paul Crouch, etc.

As has been said, these are the obvious examples of people who view godliness as a means of material gain, and who pose as servants of Christ in order to take money from undiscerning, yet sincere people. Christ directed His apostles that those who preach the Gospel should get their living from the Gospel, and almost from the first, there have been those who have sought to misuse the Lord's words in order to secure an easy life for themselves by posing as servants of the Gospel. These people are also quite obvious in the damage they do, not only to the members of their “flocks”, but also to the Christian witness in the world today. The apostle Paul warns of these people in 1 and 2 Corinthians, and in 1 Timothy, to name a few passages.

But there are other forms of moldy corruption in the Church, corruption caused by the love of money. These forms are not as obvious as some screaming televangelist on a big screen. Yet because they are more insidious, they are far more dangerous. They threaten to render the worship and witness of the Church utterly meaningless. As the writings of Paul help us to understand the danger posed by the flashy false apostle, there are Scriptures which help us to understand the danger of these other forms of corruption. Because the worship of the Church is now at stake, one helpful set of Scriptures is found in Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-48 and John 2:13-22. These Scriptures all describe Jesus Christ entering the Jewish temple, whose chief business was to be the worship and service of God, and how He bodily threw out the moneychangers and those who sold animals for Temple sacrifices.

Why did the Lord get violent here? Because these moneychangers were not present in the Temple for the purpose of worship. Judging from their actions, they probably did not even believe in the God of the Bible. Rather, they had turned the service of the Temple away from the worship of God. That service had, instead, been made into a means of making the moneychangers rich. A study of Jewish history of this period shows how these moneychangers and sellers of animals worked in concert with the Jewish priesthood to disqualify worshipers from using their own animals for Temple sacrifices, forcing worshipers instead to pay exorbitant prices for “kosher” animals – animals approved by the priests and the moneychangers. It was a racket, and it discouraged the true worship of God.

It is the premise of my next few posts that secular moneychangers are now mediating the worship, culture and art of the Church, not for the glory of God, but simply to make a few corporations rich. I will explore the effect these moneychangers are having on actual worship services, as well as their effects on our music. I will discuss the train wreck that Christian literature has now become. I will also mention the constant efforts by the “Christian” media to manufacture stars who have wide-ranging appeal and marketability. I will mention how secular media corporations are moving beyond needing “Christian” subdivisions, and how this will accelerate the Church's slide into irrelevance. I will also mention how what has happened to Christian media is what is also happening in the broader secular culture, namely, a move away from a free culture of limited copyright and relatively free exchange of ideas and information, and a move toward a “permission culture” in which all exchanges of information must be accompanied by payment of royalties to a holder of copyright, which is usually a large multinational corporation. I will point out how of all who should be alarmed at this shift, the Church has been among the last to notice (indeed, we may still be asleep).

But lest anyone think I believe the situation to be hopeless, I will also propose remedies. Stay tuned...

Intermission

Many thanks to JZ in NI (from whom I got the inspiration for the name of my blog) for linking me to his blog. And now for some news: I haven't been able to post for a while, and I apologize for that. What happened is that I was talking to the editor of a local newspaper (extremely local) about the subject of Peak Oil. She suggested that I write a series of articles about the subject. I tend to be a slow writer and am as busy right now as a chihuahua in a washing machine, so this Peak Oil project is taking all of my spare time. As soon as it's done, I will get back to my regular posts. Thanks to those of you who have submitted comments. I hope this blog is helpful.

American Evangelicalism Today

In my previous posts I have described how I became a Christian, and how I was tricked into joining an abusive, cultic church. I have also described how I came to realize what kind of church I was a part of, and my leaving and search for a “healthy church”. To sum up, in visiting many evangelical churches I have discovered many of the same toxic elements that existed in the cultic church I first joined. In addition, there are other toxic elements in modern American evangelicalism which are hard to swallow. Or, rather, they should be hard to swallow if you are trying to find a Biblical Christianity!

Several years ago, Richard Foster, a Quaker writer, authored a book titled, “Money, Sex and Power: The Challenge of a Disciplined Life.” This book discussed the inner life of the Christian and how that inner life could be measured by the Christian's response to the temptations of money, sex and power. I suggest that the present diseased condition of the Church can be measured in terms of these indicators, as well as a few more, which I state below:

Money: The culture and livelihood of people throughout the world is increasingly being controlled by large corporate interests which care for nothing more than their own enrichment at the expense of the masses. Their aim is to sell dumbed-down, watered-down, valueless trash to captive markets at the highest possible price, to gain the largest possible profit. And these corporate interests have taken over the Church.

Lust: I don't just mean sexual lust either, but rather, that craving after a thing which causes a person to do anything to get the thing he lusts after – and to make up every conceivable justification for why he did it, no matter what commandment was broken and no matter who got hurt. An example: the many Christians who get a divorce even though Christ speaks against it, even though spouses and children get hurt in the process.

Power: One of the hardest sins to suffer is the lust for power, the tendency by some people to look on their fellow men and women as potential slaves, as potential property to be owned. This sin is alive and well in the Church, and can be seen in pastors who sue each other for control of a church, or politicians who try to recruit evangelicals as part of their power base in order to get elected to office.

Discernment: The Bible is increasingly devalued among evangelicals, because there are too many parts in the Bible which rebuke the deeds of these evangelicals. So their church meetings become entertainment services in which preachers give positive, “inspirational” sermons from “safe” parts of the Bible. And when people ask, “How can I find out what God's will is?”, they are told to wait for dreams and feelings instead of looking at what the Bible says. This leaves them open to being taken for a ride by con artists – of whom there are now many!

Boundaries: Walk into a lot of churches today and you will be “love-bombed.” That is, a bunch of people will come up to you and hug you – even though you've never seen them before in your life. They will put all kinds of pressure on you to sign on with them, to join their program, to be “one of us.” They will be invasive in their intrusion into your life. If you resist, they will tell you that that's not being nice, and after all, Christianity is all about “being nice.” They have been taught not to respect personal boundaries.

Over the next several posts I will explore these issues in more detail. This is a short list of issues. I am sure that some people could think of more.

Leaving, Part 4 - Not-so-Good Samaritans

Our meetings as a support group all took place at Wilt's house. During our first meeting, we went through introductions again, since a married couple from my old abusive church had recently joined us. When it was my turn to speak, I told about my experience in my former abusive church and some of the things I encountered after I left. I spoke about some of the conclusions I had recently come to regarding churches, and that they were not doing a very good job of winning my trust. “In fact,” I said, “I feel more comfortable giving canned goods to soup kitchens and homeless shelters than I feel about giving money to some pastors, since at least it's harder to embezzle a can of beans!”

This did not sit well with Wilt. He proceeded to lecture me about my bad attitude, beginning by saying, “Young man, I think you have a TRUST problem.” He went on about how so many men in ministry and church leadership were godly and good examples to the flock, speaking in a voice that grew ever louder and more disapproving of what I had said, until finally I stopped him in mid-sentence and told him that I did not appreciate his tone, since I had not come to his house to be lectured.

Now during this same time, the sexual abuses of many Catholic priests was being exposed for the world to see, and a prominent newspaper was running articles about financial abuses committed by the pastors at Melodyland Christian Center, a large church in Southern California. I left Wilt's house scratching my head and thinking, “He doesn't get it. I just don't think he gets it!” Nevertheless, I decided to give our support group another try.

Before our next meeting, I contacted a single woman who had also attended my former abusive church during the same time I was attending. I asked her if she wanted to join us, and she liked the idea. So she came to our next meeting. That meeting was not remarkable in itself, as we simply described more of what it was like to be in our former church, and the similarities between our former church and some of the more radical splinter groups of the Plymouth Brethren (There! I said it!) But after that meeting, I hung out for a while with this single woman in the street outside Wilt's house, since we had not talked to each other for a long time and wanted to catch up on what was happening with each other. As we walked out of Wilt's house, talking together, I noticed a look of disapproval on the faces of Wilt and his wife. I thought nothing of it, however, until our third meeting together.

That third meeting went very much like the second meeting, except that Wilt tried to lecture the single woman who had joined us, and she told him in no uncertain terms that she had been an adult for a while and did not need the lecture. But things got really interesting afterward, when it was time to leave. As I was going out the door, Wilt's wife pulled me aside and privately asked, “You know, you're a good looking man. Why don't you go to a nice Black church and find a nice Black girl to marry? I'm sure it would be easy for you.” Then I understood the disapproving looks on Wilt's face and his wife's face the week before, because I was black and this single woman was white! (By the way, I had no marital designs on her.)

I said, “Since when is race the basis for choosing a church? The Bible says that in Christ, there is not Jew or Greek, barbarian, Scythian, and so on. Moreover, the basis on which I choose a church is agreement with its doctrine and mission – not the color of peoples' skin. Why are you telling me to go to a Black church?” She did not know when to shut up, much less when to apologize, so she kept on about how she had Black friends who disapproved of interracial marriage, and that she was just trying to look out for me. I left that meeting with great displeasure.

Before our next meeting, I wrote a letter to Wilt and to his wife rebuking them for trying to segregate people in the Church, since in Christ God had made one new people. (It's in Colossians, by the way.) I also asked them what they thought would happen if the world at large knew they were trying to prevent interracial marriages in their church. Then I called Wilt on the phone and asked him casually if he had gotten around to reading the books on church abuse that had been suggested by the counseling ministry leader of his church. He admitted that he had not. After I called the ministry leader and told him of some of my frustrations, Wilt finally broke down and read “Churches that Abuse.” Also, I got a written letter of apology from his wife. I thought to myself that perhaps now our church abuse recovery group might at last become helpful. But I was wrong.

We had two more meetings after that. Wilt assigned us topics which each of us could present to the group. I chose to talk about the process of re-entry into church life, suggesting that people with our background should not jump immediately into a full commitment to a church, but instead, that we should take it slow, and find pursuits that we could share in common with others in a church so that trust could be built up in its own time and not rushed. Then I asked the group, “So, what are some pursuits or hobbies or interests that we have?”

Wilt jumped right in and rebuked me severely, saying that the talk I had presented was selfish and self-centered, and that Christ demands an unconditional commitment from us, holding nothing back. There was fire in his voice, I'll tell you! I told him that he was making no sense, and that we were all meeting in his house because we had made a wholehearted unconditional commitment to a cultic, abusive church that had taken us for everything we had. He told me, “Well, Christ accepts your sacrifice.”
I just looked at him. That meeting was the full proof to me that this guy didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about, or how to help victims of church abuse. That was the last meeting I went to with him.

Now, I've described some of the churches I tried after I left my former abusive church, and I've described some of the problems I found in each of them. And believe me, these were not the only churches I tried. My experiences with these churches have led me to certain conclusions regarding churches in the United States, and especially those churches associated with modern evangelicalism in the USA. My goal in all my posts up to now has been to get to this point, namely, a discussion and diagnosis of some of the problems I see with modern evangelicalism in America. Because, you see, the Bible commands us who are Christians that we should not “forsake the assembling of ourselves together,” but that we should meet together regularly as a church. And yet, I haven't been to any church for a couple of months now. Why? Because the Church in the USA is not a safe place in my eyes. Instead, a rather large number of opportunists, power-mongers and just plain jerks have taken over and trashed the place.

And I'm not happy about this.

Not-so-good Samaritans

My next forays into new churches took me to some rather interesting places. One of these places was another large mega-church of the same denomination as the one I mentioned in my last post. This church has a main pastor who does most of the preaching, as well as a large and varied pastoral staff. One of the staff members is a licensed mental health professional who picked up quite a bit of experience in dealing with toxic churches as a result of talking to a number of people who left the cult I was in when it was beginning to break up. Eventually, I got around to talking to him also, after reading “Recovering from Churches that Abuse” by Enroth.

I was really impressed by this man's understanding and willingness to listen (in fact, I still think he's a really great guy). But there was a problem, namely, that as a main staff member at that church, he didn't have a lot of time to do one-on-one counseling. So he suggested starting a support group for survivors of church abuse. And as the group was coming together, he suggested that one of his unpaid volunteer ministry assistants be the leader and facilitator.

The fun started with the man he chose to lead the group, a man whom I'll call Wilt (not his real name, of course). When the staff ministry leader and Wilt hosted a meeting one Sunday afternoon for those interested in starting this support group, Wilt showed up in a three-piece suit, wearing a grave expression on his face, as if to say, “I'm the authority around here.” We all introduced ourselves and told a little of what we wanted from such a group, and the staff ministry leader suggested that we all start our first few meetings by reading “Churches that Abuse.” Then he let Wilt say a few words.

Wilt began by lecturing us on the need to understand sound teaching and proper methods of Bible study. He made it clear that he believed that most people did not know how to study the Bible properly as he believed it should be studied. He believed that we had gotten into a cult because of a lack of sound Bible understanding, and that his instruction and teaching would set us right again. I'm sure that such a view made him feel good, but it completely ignored the following points about abusive religious groups:

1. Many of these abusive groups are fundamental churches whose doctrine seems on the outside to be quite orthodox. It is only as a person begins to invest time and commitment to these churches that they begin to show their more twisted sides. Indoctrination takes time and is often quite smooth and subtle.
2. Many of these abusive groups preach the Bible day in and day out, but with a twist: Scripture is interpreted in such a way that it serves the aim of the group and of its leaders, and not the will of God. Ask a Jehovah's Witness, for instance, how much he's supposed to study during the week.
3. The damage done by cults and abusive churches is not just doctrinal! Picture a family who joins such a church and which has one member – say the husband or wife – who falls out of favor with the leaders of the group. There are numerous cases where the leaders have alienated the entire family against that one member. Marriages are broken, money is extorted from people, members lose their health, some are driven to suicide, and all suffer from surrendering their wills and power to make decisions for themselves, and letting co-dependent “shepherds” run their lives.
4. Recovering from an abusive church/cult experience therefore involves a lot more than just “learning the right way to study the Bible.” It involves things like developing your own social life, learning to make your own decisions, dealing with anger, recovering from financial losses, being reconciled to your family, and in some cases, recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This list is by no means exhaustive.
   

Wilt did not understand any of this, however. In my next post I'll tell about how supportive our “support group” actually was.