Where the Blind Lead the Blind

by Peter Merz

The other day I visited a church that I had attended for maybe about a month when I first moved to the New England area. It was one of those Charismatic churches, with high-spirited, rock praise and worship music. The church didn't have a lot of people there – I mean maybe 50 people tops. When I had attended services there nearly seven years ago the sanctuary had been much fuller with people than that. One thing that sticks out about this church is that it doesn't really look like a church. It looks more like an academy, or a compound, or some private school – but nothing like one would expect a church to look like. There's not even a cross on top of the church anywhere to quietly announce to the people who drive by that this is a church. Before walking into the church I quietly marveled at this recalling an old Steven Curtis Chapman song and whispered, "But the cross cannot be found." I said this more in jest than in any serious judgment upon the church.

After the music faded and the choir took their seats, the pastor took to the pulpit. The sermon was on honor or at least those were the gargantuan words that appeared boldly upon the screen behind the pastor. The pastor went into this dissection of what it meant to honor someone, that honor had to do with giving honor to the person apart from that person's actions. He quoted number five on Moses' "Top Ten Do's and Don'ts for Israelites." The one that goes:

"Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you."

He went on talking about how basically even if your mother or father had committed the actions of a Hitler, or a Mussolini, or even a Saddam Hussein that we should still render them honor for being our parents. He said that we didn't have to agree with their actions in order to give them honor as a person. He didn't actually say, "Even if they committed the actions of a Hitler, or a Mussolini, or even a Saddam Hussein" – but that was pretty close on the mark to what he was trying to convey. He actually said something more along the lines of no matter what your parents actions are we still are obliged to give them honor for the role they played in bringing us into this world, that we did not have to agree with everything they did or even everything they said – but that we should honor them because by doing so we will be blessed by God. He then went on beyond what the commandment actually stated and started going on about how we should giving honor to all people –if for no other reason that they were created in the image of God.

I thought about this line of reasoning silently as he continued with his message. I thought well based upon the Scriptures he is quoting that are a bit of a stretch, but I suppose there is at least some truth to that. The pastor continued with his contrast of honor and respect. He then started extrapolating about the power of our words and how the term "you will eat those words" had to do with saying something negative and then eventually those negative words coming to pass. He talked of how we can speak good words and bad words – that we can either eat good words or bad words – either words of life or words of death. He went declaring that the Church had spoken so many bad words for the last few decades or so and that was to blame for all the ills in society. Abortion, homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, the destruction of the family – it was all the Church's fault for speaking bad or negative words for decades.

I puzzled this out for a few moments. I thought well yes I am sure many Christians have spoken negative words over the past few decades (in reality over the past couple thousand years) but am I to believe that Christians as a whole only spoke negative words over the past few decades and no positive or good words? The pastor's logic started to seem to me to be imbedded in rash generalizations that didn't quite add up. I thought well there is some truth to what he's saying, but I certainly wouldn't go as far as he is taking this. Not by a long-shot.

Next this pastor made some big to-do about how the Gospels are part of the Old Testament – that until Jesus died on the cross and then was raised from the dead that everything written in the Gospels falls under the jurisdiction of the Old Testament – and that it wasn't until the Last Supper that Jesus instituted a New Covenant. As he expounded on this idea suddenly he threw out a curve ball. He was talking about how two of Jesus' disciples (James and John) asked if Jesus wanted them to call fire down from heaven to judge a certain town in Samaria.

"As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? But He turned and rebuked them, and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." And they went on to another village" (Luke 9:51-55).

Then he started explaining how James and John had gotten this idea from an Old Testament story about Elijah the prophet.

"After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel. Now Ahaziah fell through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria, and lay sick; so he sent messengers, telling them, 'Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this sickness.' But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, 'Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say to them, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Now therefore thus says the LORD, You shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.' So Elijah went. The messengers returned to the king, and he said to them, 'Why have you returned?' And they said to him, 'There came a man to meet us, and said to us, 'Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.' He said to them, 'What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?' They answered him, 'He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.' And he said, 'It is Elijah the Tishbite.' Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty men with his fifty. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, 'O man of God, the king says, 'Come down.' But Elijah answered them, 'If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.' Then the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty. Again the king sent the captain of a third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up and came and fell on his knees before Elijah and entreated him, 'O man of God, please let my life, and the life of these fifty servants of yours, be precious in your sight. Behold, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of fifty men with their fifties, but now let my life be precious in your sight.' Then the angel of the LORD said to Elijah, 'Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.' So he arose and went down with him to the king and said to him, 'Thus says the LORD, 'Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron—is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word?—therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.'" (2 Kings 1:-1-16).

 
This pastor then went on to claim that that was how God did things under the Old Testament but he doesn't do that anymore. That we are now under the Grace of God. He then gave proof of this by saying, "Jesus didn't come to the world to judge the world but to save the world – he was paraphrasing John 12:47 when he said this. I started thinking wait one minute. I thought you just said the portions of the Gospel prior to the death and resurrection of Christ were under the jurisdiction of the Old Testament not the New Testament? But Jesus said this before His death and resurrection! How can you reconcile that contradiction? The pastor boldly declared that God never brings judgment on people today because we live in the Age of Grace of the New Testament. That yes God will judge again but that's not until the Day of the Lord and that is only one day!

This is where this pastor's train of thought derailed for me. The book of Acts tells of the events that took place after Christ's death and resurrection and there was a Christian couple named Ananias and Saphira who lied about how much money the got from the sale of their house and claimed to have given all of the money to the apostles when in fact they had kept some of the money for themselves. When the Apostle Peter confronted Ananias he fell dead, when his wife came in later not knowing what had happened to her husband and when the Apostle asked her if she and her husband and really given all of the money from the sale of their house then she, too, fell dead! (Acts 5:1-11). Someone sitting at the end of my pew started speaking up as if reading my mind and asked, "Then how do you explain what happened to Ananias Saphira." The pastor ignored him and continued his message. This man asked several more times still no response from the pastor. However, a black woman sitting one or two pews over responded by saying, "They lied to the Holy Spirit." As if that statement accounted for the apparent contradiction in facts versus what the pastor was teaching.

I started thinking to myself that this cannot be happening. But this pastor was not through on this bizarre journey of reinterpreting the Bible, facts, and even history. He went on about how those who think God ever uses calamity to judge people or to get people to repent are totally wrong and that those people need to repent. He said that calamity and even trials always drive people away from God and never cause them to seek God or get closer to God; and that trials only serve to show us what's already in our hearts.

Now I pondered this in my heart and thought, well not only are there multiple biblical supports for God using calamity and trial to bring about repentance – but the facts of history do not jive without this man is saying. It is well documented that during the days following 9-11 that there were far more people in church weekly than just prior to 9-11. Sure there may be as fraction that might turn hard and bitter against God for trials and calamites but that in no way is the norm. He then went on to claim that God never punishes the righteous with the wicked using the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as proof of that because God had told Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah as long as there were as few as ten righteous who lived within twin cities of great sin (Genesis 16:16-33). He claimed there were more than a thousand righteous in New Orleans!

Well now, I started thinking I am not saying that God necessarily sent a hurricane to punish the people of New Orleans nor am I saying that God sent earthquakes and Tsunamis to punish the Japanese because of their Buddhism. But to say that the righteous never perish with the wicked? Are you telling me that there were no righteous in Jerusalem when the Babylonians conquered the place and killed and captured the Jews living there? What's more in the a letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul discussed a man who was committing "incest" and told the leaders of the church to make this man leave the church and that he had asked that that man be chastened by the adversary so that he might repent. Paul then writes in his second letter to the Corinthians about how that same man had repented and was now a part of the fold of Corinthian believers once more. Even Paul being blinded by a light that dropped him to the ground and left him blind for three days was a form of direct punishment from God?

I began thinking that over however many thousands years of human history humankind has instinctively and more often than not universally gravitated towards God – or at the very minimum their idea or concept of what they thought God or religion was. I thought of island natives who in order to try to appease the angry volcano that threatens their village would try to offer sacrifices to it. Or take any number of people who when life starts getting ugly make vows to God. "God, if you will just get me out of this jam, then I will…." I pondered how many of those fill in the blanks did those wits end prayers were answered and of those that were answered how many who offered those wits end prayers actually followed through with their promises to God?

No matter how many times I tried to do the math, the things this pastor was teaching just did not compute. He was reasoning without a foundation of logic or prevalence. And it seemed except for maybe one or two visitors that the congregation as a whole was completely oblivious to this. The pastor was dishing out his reasoning that defied both the Bible and historical facts and the congregation was eagerly gobbling it up. Part of me half-expected for the Kool-Aid Man to crash through the wall of the sanctuary shouting, "Oh yeah!" Kool-Aid for everyone! This of course did not happen. But had that happened I am pretty sure that most of the congregation would have lined up for Kool-Aid.

Towards the end of the pastor's message he went through some spiel of how anyone who has thought God uses calamity or trials to draw people closer to Him should repent. He then began to redefine repentance. Repentance is not the weeping of heartfelt tears or even brokenness – repentance is just a changing of the way that you think. He claimed that when the John the Baptist baptized repentant sinners that there were no tears, no brokenness just a nice and clean changing of the way that those people thought. I started to question whether I was in a church service or an Amway meeting. Now this pastor was going all Ron Popeil on everyone! Within minutes this pastor had reduced a powerful soul-changing concept like repentance into a clean and painless easily marketable product. He seemed to be offering salvation and discipleship without any cost or sacrifice. The words of that Steven Curtis Chapman song came back to me once again:

"There's a preacher in a nice church
Anchored in the heart of town
People flock to hear his eloquent delivery
He talks of Jesus how he can please us
But the cross cannot be found
Makin' theory out of facts until they're all deceived
And the lost lead the way
And more hearts are led astray

These are the days when the blind lead the blind
And there's one narrow way out of here
So pray that the light of the world will keep your eyes clear
'Cause it's a dangerous place here where the blind lead the blind"
(from "Blind Lead the Blind" by Steven Curtis Chapman")

 
After the closing prayer and dismissal, that black woman who had piped up about that the reason Ananias and Saphira had bought the farm was due to lying to the Holy Spirit come over to my side of the pew and began trying to work damage control for the pastor. She tried to link Ananias and Saphira to blaspheming the Holy Spirit. But that's not what the book of Acts says. It says they lied to the Holy Spirit nothing there about blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I cited numerous other Post Resurrection of Christ examples that did not compute with what the pastor had relayed to the congregation. Examples like one of Herod the Great's sons being struck by God and killed by internal worms, Saul of Tarsus being blinded by a light and left blind for three days, Saul now (the Apostle Paul) afflicting a false prophet named Elymas with blindness for a season, the Apostle Paul stating that if anyone brought a different Gospel to Christians that there was to be a double curse upon them, the writer of Hebrews saying that if we are not chastened by our heavenly Father then we are illegitimate children. I also cited historical examples of how trials and calamity can cause people to turn to God. Time and time again she would keep telling anyone objecting with the message that they needed to get the pastor's other sermons and study them. Never once then should tell anyone to turn to a section of the Bible but kept referring me back to the teachings of her pastor. Finally I asked her how is that after 9-11 that there were more people in church than the days that preceded 9-11? At this she walked off waving her hands in disgust.

I spoke to one of the ushers and he at least listened but he, too kept trying to direct me to obtain and study the pastor's other sermons as if the teachings of this pastor would magically erase the blatant errors and contradictions of the pastor's Sunday sermon. I could help but be reminded by a certain passage in an epistle that the Apostle Paul wrote Timothy:

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).