BYPart 2. Reaching Out & Growing Up – Anticipating the Call
By the following week I realized nobody had contacted me and that the relief I was hoping to find at the “Inter- Denominational Men’s Group” was no longer an option for me to share, grow and heal. How ironic I thought! The Ojai Community Church didn’t feel much like a community to me, it felt more like the Spanish Inquisition! The way they spoke so openly among themselves while evaluating me confirmed that they saw me as an oddball, confused, outsider at best. For some, I was an active agent of the devil strategically sent to undermine their faith in Christ. I found my mind replaying the mantra: “Well how’s that for the ‘Love of Christ’, I walked right into a bunch of bigoted, insecure Bible thumpers!” It was clear they were all terrified by the prospect that not everyone reaches for the Bible to get spiritual strength and commune with God. In fact these Christians could hardly grasp the concept that people from other faiths believe in the same single God they do. It never occurred to them that the overwhelming majority of the world’s populations believe in God, with the only real difference is that they find their inspiration and convictions fuelled via different spiritual traditions! It was so sad and frustrating. I resolved to put the whole thing behind me and went out to dig in my garden.
I had forgotten it all until the following weekend when I responded to a phone call. I was quite surprised to discover that it was my now old friend, the moderator, that I felt had tossed me under the bus the week before. “Oh my!” I thought. Perhaps I was really wrong about this group of Christians. Perhaps they had a change of heart? Maybe they had voted me in after all?
Well my hopes were quickly dashed. The moderator told me that he didn’t think it was right to keep me hanging and felt the obligation to close the conversation, which had started two months earlier. He proceeded to explain that for the entire session of the 2nd meeting the same group of men continued to argue about what my fate should be. Some said I should be invited back to join their fellowship, while others said I should be given the boot! He told me both sides had come prepared with Biblical references to support their respective opinions. Apparently it didn’t take too long for the disagreement to get quite heated. My liaison informed me that everyone took sides and became entrenched regarding what they felt was right. I sincerely appreciated how much more mature the moderator was than the majority of the other members in the group, but he lamented about only having one voice. He told me that he pleaded my case based on the same understanding of Christianity that I always appreciated. It was exactly what the Bible declared we should expect to find at a good church:
” Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles,so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
As my friend informed me that I was not welcome to return, he apologized profusely. He told me several times that he felt it was terribly wrong to not let me join the discussion but he said he was forced to concede to the majority rule. It was his burden to break the news to me and I reassured him that I understood his dilemma quite well.
Christ’s Devotee but NOT a Christian
In expressing my gratitude for his efforts and politely pointed out that what had occurred was the very reason I wasn’t impressed with Christianity. Here we had a case of someone who simply wanted to council with good men, but it was quite clear that wasn’t going to happen if my relationship with Lord Christ was not exactly the way their church declared it had to be! My hope of finding comfort at this church’s Men’s Group had now been officially crushed. This exchange didn’t leave a very good impression on me and lowered my impression of Christianity down another notch or two! Instead of joining a group of thoughtful individuals, I had encountered an enclave of poorly educated immature bigots. They seemed so tormented with their fears about the devil that they became unreasonably suspicions of my motives and in the end appeared to be collectively dysfunctional.
I gently pointed out to my friend the moderator that as much as I appreciated the teaching of Lord Christ, I had observed too much of this type of confusion with Christians. Their inability to resolve something as obvious and simple as allowing me to at least join their fellowship on a probationary basis completely undermined the very reasons why he put the Men’s Group together. Instead of using it as a great vehicle for demonstrating God’s love, through the Disciples of Christ, it all came off looking like a group of adamant, evangelical Christians. These weren’t men; they were fear-full children in men’s bodies. What appeared to have great potential collapsed into a group of terrified individuals so cloistered together they seemed incapable of facing the big world beyond the front doors of their own church! The last thing the moderator said to me was: “It breaks my heart to admit it, but you are absolutely right. It is disgracefully shameful! All I can say at this point is I apologize for what happened. Goodbye.”
Performance Priests for Hire?
I didn’t return to the Ojai Community church for a long time, as there was no reason. It seemed evident that Christianity was entrenched in the dark ages by a convoluted exclusionary perpetuated by the emphasis on fear and suspicion. My experience was most certainly not unique. It’s rather astonishing that so many Christians are incapable of understanding why they face so much negative adversity. They can’t grasp how rejecting all ideas other than the ones they follow with little more than sentimental reasons to do so doesn’t hold up very well in a highly analytical world. It’s sad that main stream Christianity tends to jettison any concept of God that doesn’t match its own sometimes confusing teaching regarding His nature and what our relationship is with Him. Hello? Approaching everyone as a potential agent of the Devil isn’t a very good Public Relations campaign!
It’s hard to comprehend that Tim and Tammy Fay Baker were real people and not the dastardly villains in a Batman Comic book. Their indulgent lifestyles were financed from the funds collected by gullible people who could not distinguish between the behavior of a real holy man and these very controversial individuals. The law eventually caught up with the Bakers exploitive schemes but the field is still wide open for Christians to be exploited. There are still many individuals who make a very good living selling costly religious sentiments to well-intended naïve believers. Benny Hinn, Larry Lee, Kenneth Copeland, Robert Tilton, and Creflo Dollar are just a few of the faith healers and prosperity preachers that continue to take advantage of the unfulfilled religious sentiments of a hurting and poorly informed public.
It may appear that spiritual fraud only happens in the South where whiskey is still made under the glow of moonshine, but you would be quite wrong! It’s everywhere. The evangelic circus revival tent has been to Ojai more than once. When the collection plate starts to get too light, some local churches bond together into a coalition to hire “Performance Priests” to come to Ojai to promote their well rehearsed “Cured by the Grace of Jesus Miracle Healing Event.” These gatherings are often promoted on KDAR-Christian Radio, with the same vigor and upbeat tone that used to get people to purchase tickets for Circus Vargas!
The audio spots had the mood of a carnival huckster calling all doubting souls to step right up and purchase their tickets for a chance to see a bearded lady! They promised the listener that if they rolled their infirmed grandmothers in wheelchairs down to the revival tent, Nation Wide Minister Miracle Mike would zap them with the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus and all would be well! They reassured the desperate listener that once the demoniac agents were expunged, Grandma would spontaneously jump out of her wheel chair and dance the Foxtrot with the same vigor she had at age 29! p>
Disgracing the Purity of Lord Christ
What I saw when I attended these well-rehearsed productions was extremely sad and embarrassing to the reputation of Lord Christ. It was hard to find anything virtuous about those who promoted Lord Christ as a wish fulfilling order supplier in a “Jesus Does Vaudeville” type of environment. I later attempted to talk to those ministers who promoted this event. I pleaded that they should not sensationalize the teaching of Christ using false, deceptive and grossly misleading promises for the purpose of expanding their congregations. I asked: “What happens to the faith of the individual when Grandma goes home after the elixir of group hypnosis wears off and she then collapses onto the floor?”
Some of these ministers were so fervently over the edge of reality it was virtually impossible to even speak with them coherently. The few I was able to reason with eventually agreed that the tactics used by high energy performance ministers leveraged claiming to “Heal” the faithful was not their preferred way to minister to others. They conceded that they became bewildered by the advertised potential payoff; increasing the size of the congregation and the tithing that would follow.
I found this quite disgraceful and very offensive to the reputation of Lord Christ. My days of giving the Christians the benefit of the doubt were rapidly waning. Christians making a mockery of Lord Christ was simply something I could not condone or comprehend. It also seemed that the exclusive nature of Christianity was very divisive because it eradicates the possibility that others may have a deep relationship with God through a different faith. My journey eventually led me to the Hare Krishna movement because it offered a more respectful appreciation for the spirit and teachings of Lord Christ.
(To be continued…)
Mayesvara dasa (ACBSP)
AKA: William Roberts MBA/MIS, CCP
Director: American Vedic Association
Proprietor: Jagannatha Enterprises
687 West Villanova Road
Ojai, California 93023
(805) 640-0405 mdjagdasa @ gmail.com