Ministers or Snake Oil Salesmen?
I’m sorry God, but I think modern preachers are snake oil salesman. I find myself surrounded by religious people, through both my family and my charity work. At the hands of many preachers in recent years, I have experienced the utmost hurt, dismissiveness and hatred. Occasionally I have had the good fortune to receive a lovely gesture from a minister, but it doesn’t happen frequently enough these days to change my generalisation of the profession.
A couple of years ago I was brought onto the committee of a charity that was having trouble with the local church with which they were involved. The minister was making it very clear he wanted to control the expenditure of the money coming through the charity. Legally, there was no link between the charity and the church, yet the church sought to change this structure to gain control of the finances. Being an accountant, my knowledge on business structures brought me to the charity in a bid to combat the church’s underhanded manoeuvres. Despite becoming increasingly hostile, the church minister insisted upon praying at the start of each discussion meeting. It was the craziest thing to witness a man praying for God’s guidance at the outset before speaking the most outrageous falsehoods minutes later. Once, when I’d denied the formality of the meetings, the minister blurted angrily, “We can’t take minutes, we can’t follow an agenda. Are we even allowed to pray?!” It was difficult not to laugh aloud! I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was going to say but I also couldn’t imagine any god actually wanting to hear a prayer said in such heatedness towards another person. Needless to say, that was the final meeting between church and charity. The church insisted the charity shut its doors immediately and the charity moved to a location far from association with the church. I watched as the church publicly declared completely untrue statements to minimise the damage it would cause to their church to have treated a charity so poorly. I’ve since seen this church minister and he has ignored me both times.
Another minister actually forbade me entering to his church, citing police involvement if I dared. I was with my husband and mother at the time and we had not caused any trouble whatsoever. We were all forced to leave rather than join the congregation. The public humiliation of excluding a person entrance to the building for no apparent reason is extremely despicable. This would appear to be the actions of a cult not the “house of God”. I later challenged the ministers on their treatment of me, demanding answers. Had they entered the building to worship and pray after refusing my entry? Had a midweek meeting of the many church ministers discussed my exclusion if I turned up? Of course they had!
A minister related to me failed to acknowledge my difficulty with their family maintaining a relationship with church attendees who had sexually assaulted me as a young teen. The matter had been reported to the police as an historical sexual assault some twenty years after the incident. I received an invitation to attend church festivities although I chose not to go. Imagine how I felt later, when I discovered the two men who’d abused me years ago had also been invited to the same church festivities, and both had attended. How was I to feel? What on earth would I have done if I had attended? Why would a minister seek to place both perpetrators and victim in the same public place at the same time? I admit to wondering what sort of sociopath would consider that appropriate.
A minister of some prominence uses his churches to sell his own artwork and sculptures. They’re even for sale in the lobbies of that chain of churches: Come to my church and buy one of my expensive souvenirs as you leave! I enquired of his daughter as to the price of one of his statues for sale online: four figures! This is the same minister who published a document instructing other ministers of his chain to “Put verse/s into google and search. Spend an hour reading the results and you have all the background you need to start forming your own message on a bible story”. When this minister posts a social media meme, he quotes himself every single time! These are the actions of a narcissist, not a godly man.
I don’t have to write too much about the Frank/Brian Houston debacle at Hillsong and the many abuse victims in the Jehovah’s Witness and Catholic Church. That’s all public record in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
It is disturbing to me that all these people minister Christianity. They are paid to do nothing else except model the Church and Christianity. And look at what they give us! Trashy painted crosses and loud, flashy concerts. That’s if you’re lucky. Otherwise it’s disregard and direct hatred. It’s frightening to think these people have influence over others who believe ministers have god-given authority to instruct them on how they live.
Traditional church seems destined to die a natural death, due to being in the hands of ministers so abusive, superficial and hypocritical over so many years. Oh, don’t get me wrong, entities purporting to be churches will continue. They’ll be “churches” with light shows, celebrity attendees, music concerts, whimsical art sermons, etc. Of course they’ll possess all the marketing tools to look progressive. Or you’ll choose the more traditional looking Catholic or Anglican style to justify modern Christianity. If these are meant to be the “fishers of men”, I definitely don’t want to be caught. There’s just no real substance to any of them; none at all. Modern churches are devoid of ministers who possess compassion, care and humility. I say that after forty-one years of first-hand experience in religious circles.
The bulk of ministers are the snake oil salesman of the modern era, peddling their wares. Whatever they’re selling, I’m not buying. Modern ministers are interested in wealth, power, status, legacy, doctrine preservation and merely cite platitudes. There is absolutely nothing being modelled by any modern Christian preacher that could possibly make me buy into their concept.