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ON SLEAZY TELEVANGELISTS AND CHEESY CHRISTIAN MOVIES
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – Why are televangelists so sleazy and Christian movies so cheesy?
This should be a great mystery, but it isn’t really.
The Gospel message needs to be relayed in spirit and in truth. That means, only people who truly believe the Gospel message can relay it without the cheese factor, as it’s not the people doing the relaying, it’s God’s Spirit working through their willing and submissive heart. So no matter how good an actor you are, if you’re not a genuine believer who is genuinely born-again, and if you’re not speaking as the Spirit moves you in real time, you’re going to fail in the sincerity factor. That’s a guarantee and it explains why televangelists are always sleazy and Christian movies are always cheesy.
Remember how people listening to Jesus were in awe at how he spoke with such authority? The people were overwhelmed by the force of his words, since they were used to the lacklustre delivery of the Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes. Their delivery was lacklustre and lacked authority because they didn’t really believe what they were preaching. They just dialed it in and collected their paycheck, the same way as televangelists don’t really believe what they’re preaching and actors in Christian movies don’t really believe what they’re portraying. It’s all just words to them, not the Word.
Years ago, when I was atheist, I played Mary Magdalene in the musical Godspell. The guy who played Jesus was also an atheist (he’s a preacher now). Godspell is based on Matthew’s Gospel, but it takes generous liberties with scripture. To me, at the time, it was all just words that had to be memorized and spoken on cue. It was a script, like any other script. Nothing special.
Did our performance have the cheese factor? You betcha! But Godspell was meant to be cheesy. I mean, the Jesus character is written as a clown. Everything is over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek. The innate cheesiness of the musical served to hide the normal cheesiness of a Christian performance. It was double-cheesy, which made it almost palatable. Also, no-one in our cast was pretending to be a Christian. We were all just pretending to be goofy clownlike characters. That’s how the play was written.
I hate to knock Christian movies because I know that, in most cases, the people who make them and the people who act in them have a sincere desire to spread God’s Word. You can’t fault them for that, I guess. They mean well. But you know what they say about good intentions….
Our God is a living God. His Word is as alive as he is. Remember how Jesus says that when we’re hauled before a judge, we shouldn’t plan our defence in advance? He says we should let God’s Holy Spirit speak through us when the time comes for us to speak. I think that whenever we preach or teach the Word, the same principle applies. We can read scripture aloud any time because it has God’s seal of approval, but reciting some other kind of script, even if it’s based on God’s Word, is not going to have the same impact as the Word spoken by genuine believers who are letting God’s Spirit speak through them in real time.
This is how you avoid the sleaze and the cheese factor – by letting God and Jesus do the talking through you, by God’s Spirit. But televangelists and Christian movie actors fail right out of the gate in that regard, because they push God and Jesus out of the way and hog the stage. Essentially all they’re doing is reading a script. And no matter how clever or well-written the script is, if God and Jesus aren’t speaking through the actors in real time, it won’t have any authority.
Jesus was accused of being a lot of things during his ministry years, but he was never accused of being sleazy or cheesy. Blasphemous, yes, radical, of course, an outlaw, you betcha, but never a phony. People were drawn to him because of the power and authority of his words. Even those who hated him had to grudgingly concede he was sincere in his beliefs.
If televangelists and Christian movies are not delivering the same level of sincerity as Jesus, they’re doing the Kingdom a disservice. It would be better if they didn’t say anything at all and simply disappeared off the stage. Their only saving grace is that God may be able to use them in some way for his purposes, but they’ll still be held responsible for their lukewarm delivery or bald-faced hypocrisy.
When you take on the responsibility of speaking on God’s behalf, you’d better be sure that God sent you and that God’s Holy Spirit is informing you. Otherwise, it’s best to stay silent.
FOLLOWERS OF JUDAS: TELEVANGELISTS AND YOUTUBE PROPHETS
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario, September 21, 2022 – Judas Iscariot was one heck of a preacher. He was excellent at his missionary job, which is why none of the other disciples suspected him of betraying Jesus. At the very end, he was, of course, outright in his betrayal, but earlier on he was as swept up in the Jesus wave as the other followers. He thought he believed in Jesus, he thought he felt the same about the mission as all the other disciples. It was only toward the end of the three years working with Jesus that his beliefs and feelings changed, and he, the arch-deceiver, began to see Jesus as the deceiver. But Judas carefully hid his doubts, as deceivers do, and doubled down on his enthusiasm in case anyone should suspect his plans.
There are many followers of Judas Iscariot in the Christian preacher community, especially on YouTube. I know preachers who are alcoholics, preachers who are on antidepressants, preachers who just consider preaching a way to make a living and to be looked after in retirement. These are all modern-day Judases, but I doubt that any of them would see themselves as such. They come across as ultra-sincere and committed to Jesus. Sometimes they’re so good at preaching their sincerity, they start to believe it themselves. It’s only when they step away from the pulpit that their doubts creep in.
By God’s Spirit, you can discern the Judases among us. They love to preach, because while they’re preaching, they feel real. The common impression is that Judas Iscariot was bad or at best mediocre at what he did. But he was good at preaching, one of the best among the disciples. His stellar performance as a preacher and subsequent presumed commitment to the mission is what led to his being entrusted with the group’s finances. Scripture tells us that he stole from the funds the disciples held in common. “But surely someone who preaches like that can’t be dishonest!?!”
Televangelists and their latest incarnation, the YouTube prophets, are all Judases. I do not apologize for making that generalization, as I have yet to come across any televangelist or anyone who self-promotes on YouTube who is not a Judas Iscariot-level false prophet. If you want to work on and practice your skill of discernment, pick any televangelist or self-promoting prophet on YouTube and see if you can find their Judas streak. As I said, they all have one. Sometimes it’s blatant, but other times it takes a few minutes to find.
There are two things they all have in common, these followers of Judas. The first is that they’re glib preachers, smooth with their words. Paul, by his own confession, stumbled over his, which is one of the reasons why he relied so heavily on his letters to get the message out. God would have had a hand in Paul’s lack of spoken eloquence, just as he has a hand in the surfeit of spoken eloquence of Judas’s followers.
The second thing that Judas preachers all have in common is their focus on money. They’ll preach for free, but they’ll solicit donations, or they’ll preach for a salary. Money will always be part and parcel of preaching the Gospel for them, as it was for Judas. They worship mammon, so preaching the Word is just a means to an end (the end being making money). Genuine followers of Jesus never accept a penny for preaching the Word. They’ll graciously and with gratitude accept any donations that are offered free-willingly, but they’ll never solicit them. That is one of the key ways to discern a follower of Jesus from a follower of Judas. God will permit the tares to grow among the wheat until Judgement Day, so it’s up to us to discern who’s a tare and who’s wheat, lest we, too, be deceived.
I know a few Judas preachers personally, and it’s difficult at times for me to keep quiet about them, but God wants me to let them be. He well knows who they are and he tells me that even the Judases have a role to play in bringing believers to the Kingdom. God uses everyone and everything to draw his people ever closer to him. Jesus knew about Judas, but he let him continue to preach to the end. He let him continue because Judas had a role to play in the redemption process, which he played willingly.
We’re not to expose the Judases among us, but rather to discern who they are and let them be. There’s nothing to be gained in exposing them, nothing to be gained in confronting them, and nothing to be gained in trying to stop them from preaching. They are an earned reward for people who prefer to have their ears tickled with smooth words.
God lets those people be, too.
He doesn’t force himself on anyone.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 