T.V. Religions

THINGS I SEE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

I was watching T.V. this morning and surfed into a T.V. preacher with a loud voice and an angry demeanor whose message gave me a moment’s pause.

The Gist of his message was:

“Who will prove God with a twenty dollar bill? Who will prove their love for Christ and their appreciation of his sacrifice by making a twenty-dollar donation to keep this ministry spreading the gospel to the world”?

He then went on to tell how, if his ministry does not get the money, millions of little children in South America will burn in hell for eternity and it will be the fault of those listening who did not send in the money.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

What a weak and indolent God he promoted, who would condemn children based on monetary gain of this obvious huckster.

What a powerless God who could not provide the means to being obedient to him aside from the lonely and desperate of the world who sit waiting to buy their way into paradise based on the monthly contribution to Hillbilly Joe, the child molesting preacher, or whoever these guys are.

That, of course, caused the explosion of a thousand ideas for stories in my head. There are so many Hucksters and so little time.

WHAT IS MY PROBLEM WITH RELIGION?
The answer below is the best answer I can give.

THE PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN AND THE POOR MAN

Religion is like a rich man whose lands could not be traversed in one lifetime. He owned all that could be seen and controlled all who lived in those lands except one.

Down the road lived a poor man. The rich man’s father had given the poor man a few acres and some sheep and the poor man lived in his shack and worked hard to survive.

One day the rich man declared a party and sent out word across the lands and invited all of his rich friends to come and love him. After sending many envoys, and servants, the poor man also agreed to come and enjoy the hospitality of the rich man.

Upon his arrival, the rich man called the poor man aside to another room, and when they were alone, he knocked the poor man to the floor and put a gun to his head.

“Love me and serve me or I will kill you”.

Fearing for his life, the poor man declared his love and service to the rich man.

Filled with joy, the rich man called his friends into the room and declared, “See; see how he loves me”? “Am I not great, and have I not gotten glory for myself”?

And as long as he held the gun to the poor man’s head, it would be so.


My problem with western religion is that it is exoteric; it requires something from the outside to exert its power in order to achieve its goals of exaltation and enlightenment and those forces are inevitably fear and violence.
The teachings of Christianity are exoteric while the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are esoteric. He taught that the way to God was through the inside, not from without.
That is why the exotericists of Israel and Rome had to murder him. That is why, when the exotericists of Christianity took control, they had to keep him dead. An esoteric teaching gives no leverage for temporal power.
The Kingdom of god is all well and fine, but it doesn’t get you the money.
That is my problem with T.V. religion. It is a reflection of the souls of those whose concept of god is based on the belief that if they give their money to someone else, then that other person will take them along to heaven and remove the difficulty from their lives. It is a case of those who wish to hear the lie seeking out those who will lie to them.
That is why I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I watch it happening on the airwaves.
In the Biblical book of Jeremiah, the God of Israel said, “Your officials are full of corruption and your Priests are full of bribes, and the people like it that way”.
I’m not concerned about those who are seeking the lie and who find what they seek in religion. It isn’t my place to tell anyone what to believe.
My concern is for those who are seeking truth and who get caught up in the lies.

Jim Bronaugh