[tele-evangelism] the old three card trick

A little discussion going on about the Falwell business on various sites.

My position on this - I have exactly the same target as my mentor, the Nazarene Handyman. Countless times worse is the seeming holy-man, who actually draws his pay from mammon, than the openly evil man:

The Moral Majority's influence dropped sharply following sex scandals in the late-1980s involving two other television evangelists, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.

It's not as if we weren't warned:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.

It's the old three card trick:

1 Take a simple scripture such as Matthew Chapters 5 to 7 and add your own unsustainable embellishments which blur the distinction between right and wrong, establishing a link between money and faith and calling the new hotch-potch modern and relevant to the times. In other words - more palatable to a clientele.

2 Publicly indulge in the more sensationalist references, such as miracle cures, which you palpably have not the power to perform, being faithless in yourself in the first place and concentrate on these rather than on pointing people to the readily available texts. Hype it up with constant references to "faith healing".

3 Sit back and allow the the whole damn thing to implode under its own weight, revealing you to be a hollow charlatan and your "faith" to be nothing but empty jingoistic claptrap, based on dubious literary sources. Be found out having sexual liaisons with your "parishioners" and a double effect is achieved:

a the non-believer snorts with sardonic disgust and now has further ammunition to dissuade any would be superstitious "believer";

b the new-believer now doubly rejects the tele-evangelist and his whole cursed mumbo-jumbo and wants nothing more to do with it. Forever. The ex-believer is not only innoculated against hope but is openly antagonistic and useful to the other side.

In the process, all that's been lost are a couple of corrupt tele-evangelists, cheap at the price. What's been gained is the alienation of a whole tele-audience plus the vindication of the humanistic community.

In all of this the original text is selectively quoted, as I'm doing now. The question is which text you quote. Text such as:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

That excerpt from Matthew is in sharp contrast to the Mercedes riding tele-evangelist. You need no intermediary to read this text. Here's a url if you're interested. And here's an example:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

So when you gaze on someone, is it with kindness and a desire to be friends or is it with a view to how that person can help you up the ladder, or with lust or with hate, e.g. in the Middle-East?

There is pure life-philosophy in this text - providing a blueprint how to act.

Even the barely intellectual reasoner can see that, if followed through to its logical conclusion, it would do away with wars, human destitution, despair, avarice, striving for the unattainable and so on and replace it with respect, decency, wholesome laughter, friendship, striving for goals only slightly beyond reach but most of all - it leads to contentment.

There are forces who don't want that to occur under any circumstances.