I just read this article in The Los Angeles Times. A religion columnist for the Times questions his faith after the stories he covered deeply affected him: ex-Mormans ostracized by their friends and family for leaving the Church, the Catholic Church molestation and cover-up scandal, exploitation of the desperate by TV evangelists, etc.
Part of what drew me to Christianity were the radical teachings of Jesus — to love your enemy, to protect the vulnerable and to lovingly bring lost sheep back into the fold.
As I reported the story, I wondered how faithful Mormons — many of whom rigorously followother biblical commands such as giving 10% of their income to the church — could miss so badly on one of Jesus’ primary lessons?
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I sought solace in another belief: that a church’s heart is in the pews, not the pulpits. Certainly the people who were reading my stories would recoil and, in the end, recapture God’s house. Instead, I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges, offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the victims, often to their faces.
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TBN [Trinity Broadcasting Network]‘s creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards.
“If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed … you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven,” Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Orange County-based network, once told viewers. Meanwhile, Crouch and his wife, Jan, live like tycoons.
I highly recommend reading it. These are issues that caused a lot of people to lose faith in their religion – or at least faith in members and leaders of their religion. Happily, many have found a home here. I find these sorts of articles way more interesting than those by atheists and the anti-religious. Anyway, read it if you have a chance.
A friend of mine used to have a restaurant run by her family. Paul and Jan Crouch came in several times, loaded down with gold jewelry, buying expensive wine and treating a table full of their close personal friends.They were rude, high maintenance and required a lot of service. At the end of the meal, they left pamphlets from their church on the table instead of a tip every time. After a few times, my friend’s dad went up to their table and told them that the restaurant would be adding a gratuity to the bill. They never came back.
I seem to have traveled the same path as this fellow and arrived at the same conclusions. The question is whether a faith is validated or invalidated by the actions of those who profess to follow it. It’s not enough to say that a faith is right because that faith says that people are wrong. But it is enough to be a pirate and be touched by his noodley appendage.
I hear that Jesus said “By their deeds you will know them”. If a persons actions co-respond with their words, they validate the faith they profess.
@Savethem
Thanks for such a heart-felt comment.
I didnt know Hindus worship willies.
We worship his noodly appendages, but there’s nothing unsavory about that.
In fact the FSM is one giant savory.
RAmen.
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