The Blood Moon Hoax of John Hagee

I've backed away from blogging for the past few months thanks to an impressive academic workload, but I needed to jump back briefly to comment on an exercise in Vain Imaginings that is being promoted by the Rev. John Hagee: The meaning of four “blood moons” (full lunar eclipses) falling on four Jewish high feast days in the 2014-15 lunar cycle.

For those of you on a tight schedule, good news: This blog will be brief.  It turns out that it’s incredibly easy to debunk Hagee’s now-gone-viral suggestion that these blood moons have anything to do with the Rapture, the Second Coming, war in Israel, or any other End Times event.

1. Scripture Makes Limited References to the Moon Looking Like Blood.

Hagee had previously suggested that the End Times would begin in the 1990s, but that failed projection hasn’t kept him from keeping his prediction franchise going.  His most recent Mammon-grabber of a bestseller is called Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change.  In it, he related a passage from the minor prophet Joel to our current cycle of four blood moons within a one-and-a-half year period.  (Total lunar eclipses are called blood moons thanks to the reddish glow the moon reflects from sunlight’s longest wavelength, red):

Joel 2:28-31 (KJV)

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:

And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.

And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. 

This is the Bible’s primary reference to a moon that looks like blood.  Note that there is no mention of a cycle of four phases in which the moon looks like blood over a 1.5 year period.  Note, too, that there is no mention of the blood moons taking place on High Feast Days of the Hebrews.  I mention these things because they are important to Hagee's book-marketing claims, but appear nowhere in the Scripture text he is promoting.  He would have us interpret this text as if it were referring to events taking place right now, but he is severely ... and biblically ... mistaken.

You see, the Bible tells us exactly when these things took place and were fulfilled.  In Acts chapter 2, the Apostle Peter declared that the very words written above were fulfilled on the day of Pentecost (v. 16) when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles.  That was the coming of the Day of the Lord, and from thence forth, all who called upon the name of the Lord would be saved.

We have a choice: Believe Hagee, because interesting stuff is going on with eclipses and Jewish holidays; or believe Peter that the Scripture Hagee has usurped for his bestseller was in fact fulfilled on the day the Bible declared it fulfilled.

If you side with Hagee, you have a cool, topical Vain Imagining to discuss ... but you will have trouble explaining to the rest of us that the Holy Spirit has not yet come, and that we are still awaiting a day when we can call upon the name of the Lord to be saved.

As my first pastor used to say: “That just don’t play well in my pew.”

2. Prophecies for Israel Should Be Fulfilled in Israel

The above was enough to close the coffin lid on Hagee’s Vain Imagining, but allow me to nail the lid of that coffin shut with a couple other facts: 

• Israel Has 7 High Feast Days, not 4: Hagee makes very little effort to explain why four blood moons and an accompanying solar eclipse occurring on exactly four (but not all seven) feast days declared by Moses from Sinai is a special sign of a world-changing event.  It’s an impressive confluence, indeed; however, no part of the prophecies he pretends to be interpreting mentions a four-sevenths split in the importance of feast days.

• None of the Blood Moons will be seen in Israel: Oddly, the tetrad (a foursome) of blood moons declared by Hagee to be so significant for Israel won’t be visible in Israel.  Well, to be fair, the very last one on September 28, 2015 (the feast of Sukkot) will be visible for a few minutes right before sunrise, should anyone there happen to look up.  Now, I don’t claim to know the mind of God, but I will hazard this insight: If I were giving the chosen people of Israel a sign in the heavens, I wouldn’t put the best views of that sign in New Zealand.

• Tetrads of Blood Moons Have Not Predicted Anything for Israel in the Past: Hagee claims that the modern founding of Israel was predicted by a blood moon foursome.  He also claims that the Spanish expulsion of the Jews was foretold by a blood moon tetrad, as well as the Six Day War for Jerusalem.  He would be wrong in all cases, however.  The tetrad of 1493 took place a year after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, and 15 years after the launch of the Spanish Inquisition.  The tetrad of 1949 took place a year after the founding of modern Israel.  The Six Day War – apparently Hagee’s favorite of the fifteen modern Israeli wars – started a random 44 days after the first lunar eclipse of the tetrad of that time; the other eclipses wandered in over the course of the next fifteen months.  Simple fact: signs predict.  When the alleged signs come after an event, they’re not predicting anything except the past.  By that reasoning, the upcoming tetrad of blood moons foretells something really huge happening back in 2013.

•  A Fractional Solar Eclipse Is Not “Darkness”: Hagee makes a big deal about a March 20, 2015 Jerusalem solar eclipse.  His marketing campaign for his latest book would have you believe that this fulfills Joel’s prediction that the sun will become dark in Jerusalem (and yes, he suddenly, inexplicably cares that this is in Jerusalem now, a milepost that seemed unimportant for lunar eclipses).  Long story short: The March 2015 Jerusalem solar eclipse will block less than 10% of the sun.  This is no full eclipse from Israel’s perspective.  It’s a drive-by.

3. The Moral of My Story Today

I can’t tell you whether Hagee is self-deluded or a conscious deceiver.  I can tell you, however, that what he does detracts from the mission of the Gospel.  Time and again the Scriptures warn us to avoid Vain Imaginings and to beware the tickling of our ears by preachers we gather around ourselves for entertainment rather than challenge and discipleship.  The answers to the question “What’s the harm?” when asked about such flights of fancy as Hagee’s blood moons hoax are these:

1. they take energy from the sharing of the Gospel and refocus Christian effort on acts of astrology and divination;
2. they encourage partial readings of the Scripture in service to personal interpretations that fall on shallow soil, sprout, and die once predicted dates and times come and go;
3. they take time from teachers who must then refute the Gospel-overshadowing theories of charlatans ... time that would be better spent searching the Scriptures or, better still, bringing the Scriptures to life through the fruit of the Spirit and good works laid out for us by God.

My prediction: The last blood moon of the tetrad on September 28, 2015 will come.  Then it will go.  There will be wars and rumors of wars, but the end will not be yet.  Rev. John Hagee will say that he never suggested that the Rapture would happen.  He’ll blame that extrapolation of his words on others.  He will point toward some event that takes place in 2015 and declare it to be a “major change” that the blood moon tetrad predicted.  The change will be an important event for that particular time, but not significant to the history of salvation.  Memory of his claims will fade.  Then it will be gone, forgotten.

Then someone else, or perhaps Hagee himself, will point to a new personal interpretation, a new startling event, an ear-tickling idea that again predicts a time table for the coming of the Lord.  My personal guess (and remember that you heard it here first) will be May 14, 2018 ... exactly 70 years from the founding of modern Israel, which someone will decide is a “generation.”


We’ll all be older then.  But will we be wiser?

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

Will Evangelicals Go To Heaven?

Today, when I googled the question “Will Evangelicals go to heaven?” (with the quotation marks in place), I retrieved only one result, a single page with that question on it.  When I googled the phrase “Will Catholics go to heaven?” I garnered a returned-results increase of over four thousand percent.

Quite a hit difference.

Clearly it was time for a new article addressing the under-asked question above: Can an Evangelical (particularly a U.S. Evangelical, since that's where the movement grew) really be admitted to eternal paradise?

SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to conclude with a tentative and conditional “Yes.”  To reach that conclusion ... which I confess is merely my flawed, human opinion on the matter ... I will tackle three of the best arguments presented against the salvation of Evangelicals.  I’ll let the Naysayer have his Nay-filled Sayings, and then I will propose a counter-argument to reestablish hope that followers of the U.S. Evangelical movement truly can spend eternity with our Lord and Savior.

***

NAYSAYER POINT 1

1. Evangelical religion is rotten at its very foundation.  Its founder George Whitefield successfully urged the Georgia colony to reinstitute slavery so that his own plantation would be profitable, and the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, considered the founding fathers of America to be a “bunch of hypocrites” and “brawlers for liberty” without respect for the king ruling over them.  Surely these men, inaugurators of the U.S. Evangelical movement and of the “first Great Awakening,” were building on a foundation of sand, not the firm foundation of Christ, of whom Paul said: “Those who are free in Christ are free indeed.”  Here, in fact, is an excerpt from a 1751 letter with Whitefield’s own words:

"As for the lawfulness of keeping slaves, I have no doubt, since I hear of some that were bought with Abraham's money, and some that were born in his house.—And I cannot help thinking, that some of those servants mentioned by the Apostles in their epistles, were or had been slaves. It is plain, that the Gibeonites were doomed to perpetual slavery, and though liberty is a sweet thing to such as are born free, yet to those who never knew the sweets of it, slavery perhaps may not be so irksome. However this be, it is plain to a demonstration, that hot countries cannot be cultivated without negroes. What a flourishing country might Georgia have been, had the use of them been permitted years ago? How many white people have been destroyed for want of them, and how many thousands of pounds spent to no purpose at all?”

What did the efforts of this “great awakener” lead to in the U.S.?  The reestablishment of slavery in Georgia due to his arguments in its favor, and ultimately to the Civil War, which killed more Americans than nearly all other U.S. wars combined.  His Evangelical movement is founded upon motives of bondage, profiteering, and death.  No such movement can belong to the God who “defends the cause of the poor” and who is a “stronghold for the oppressed.”

MY RESPONSE TO POINT 1

This argument against the salvation of Evangelicals relies on what is called the Genetic Fallacy, the illogical argument that where a thing comes from defines its current goodness or badness.  A popular example showing how silly the Genetic Fallacy is can be found in the true statement “Volkswagen was established under the Nazis!” and the ridiculous conclusion, “Any American who buys a Volkswagen is pro-Nazi!”

Regardless the origin of the current Evangelical movement—and some of Mr. Naysayer’s arguments are questionable since the anti-American Independence Wesley brothers were also quite anti-slavery—it needs to be remembered that salvation of an individual in Christ is just that: salvation of an individual, not the condemnation of a group and any individual falling under its label.  Many, many groups have dark spots in their past, ranging from the Inquisition’s execution of thousands of Jewish conversos by the Catholics, through the slaughter of Anabaptists by Calvinists in theocratic Holland and Calvinist Switzerland; and from the subjugation and forced baptisms of native peoples by Spanish conquistadors as recorded in their own journals, to the “Sunday Afternoon” (i.e., after church services) lynching of thousands of Southern blacks documented in Dr. James Cones’ The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

My point is this: Yes, many current groups have nefarious origins and questionable pasts.  But we, unlike Whitefield, must take a more universal approach to the truth that one who is free in Christ is free indeed ... regardless of the Evangelical label and its background baggage.  A current Evangelical can be free indeed from the Whitefield past and the founding of historical Evangelicalism.

***

NAYSAYER POINT 2

2. The Evangelical cult clearly demonstrated that it was not a unified part of the Body of Christ.  Prior to the Evangelizing of America, the number of Christian denominations could be counted on both hands; today, there are thousands of U.S. denominations that have sprung up from the divisive nature and strife-focused hearts of congregations with Evangelical origins.  Jesus passionately invoked the Father in John 17 that his followers “may be one, even as You [the Father] and I are one.”  With the birth of the Evangelical movement, that oneness became a distant dream.  In no time, the way to start a new church was to declare one’s parent congregation heretical, stirring up as much strife as possible over particular jots and tittles, and then planting a flag in the plot up the road to declare one’s self a new and all-true church.

Today, one can count over two hundred distinct major Christian denominations in the United States.  On top of that, there are an additional 35,000-plus “nondenominational” groups who refuse to be associated with each other due to any number of imagined distinctions, doctrines, preferences, and fear of apocalyptic ecumenism.  That last point is the most ironic fruit of Evangelical splinterism.  While Christ called for the oneness of His followers, the scattered flocks of the Evangelical schism see unity as a sign of the End Times and the Antichrist, an imagined “One World Church” in which Christ’s unity is declared Satanic.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” the prophet Isaiah wrote.  Evangelicals of today bring those words to life in the worst way possible, by calling unity in Christ evil and by embracing strife and division as if those represented piety.  Evangelicals remain strife-seekers.  Those who would be saved must “come out from among them.”

MY RESPONSE TO POINT 2

While it’s true that having hundreds and even thousands of denominations is certainly not an ideal situation for a group that calls itself the Body of Christ, the comments Mr. Naysayer makes here are more a reflection on the weakness, rather than the heretical nature, of Evangelical faith.  I argue that there is nothing here that would necessarily keep them from an eternity of fellowship with the Lord.  I will concede his point that there are too many denominations.  I will also concede his point that any move toward uniting them again really is seen as a questionable abandonment of one’s principles and even as a supportive move toward a “One World Church” of the End Times (which I concur is a fiction spun by catastrophist eschatologists).

I do not concede, however, that this splinterism is, de facto, evidence of all Evangelicals being outside of Christ.

I propose that the problem comes from a heightened sense of individualism that U.S. Evangelicals derive both from their U.S. culture and from Evangelicalism’s focus on “conversionism” as one of its driving pillars of faith.  “Conversionism” is a term related to a one-time event in which you “accept Jesus Christ” in a moment of emotional surrender.  Recently, it’s become vogue to refer to this experience as being “born again,” and Evangelicals fell into an unfortunate habit of equating this term (mentioned twice in the New Testament) with having reached a goal of salvation, rather than having started a journey along salvation’s path.  Often Evangelicals will ask, “Have you been saved?” or “Have you been born-again?” as if that one emotional experience, important as it is, were the fullness of their Gospel experience.  It’s their view of an event-dependent God, a view that confirms their individual-centered expectation of getting it all from God at once, so that one could now sing “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!” and declare “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior!”

In the fullness of the Gospel message, salvation is not a moment locked in a Christian individual’s personal timeline, rendering Jesus from that point forward as “his” Lord.  It is in its entirety a state:

in our past (“You were saved by faith in God,” Ephesians 2:8)

in our present (“It is the power of God for those of us who are being saved,” 1 Corinthians 1:18)

in our future (“We will be saved through Him from wrath,” Romans 5:9)

and, frankly, on God’s terms, outside of our perception of time itself (“the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world,” Revelation 13:8).

Salvation is a step-outside-of-past/present/future thing.  It was, it is, and it shall be.

It is the rugged individualism of the American ethos, combined with the conversionism affectation of Evangelicalism, that led U.S. churches into a splintering of the Body of Christ to a degree unimaginable in history prior to the first Great Awakening.  I contend that this fracturing is not best addressed by condemning Evangelicals for their habit of forming new churches whenever they’re displeased with some element of their old church.  Instead, it should inspire the rest of us to continue the prayer of Christ.  We must pray they overcome the easy tendency in their individualistic communities to cast off other parts of the Body.  We must show them that they can stop fleeing from the Body in a misguided show of individualistic piety.  We must teach them, the way Paul taught, that being a leg but not an arm does not exclude one from the wholeness of the Body, and that different parts working for common purposes make the Body whole.  It is the heterogeneity, not the homogeneity, of a body’s system that makes it a successful whole.

Once we pray and instruct our Evangelical brethren in this, we will begin to save them from the myth of church unity being evil.

***

NAYSAYER POINT 3

3. The Evangelical masses of the United States have turned Bible worship into a requirement for membership in their groups.  Idolatry of the Bible has become a staple of their belief systems, to the point that their statements of faith often open with a statement about their belief in the Bible, coming before any mention of their belief in God.  This type of book worship was directly condemned by Jesus, who informed the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you find eternal life; but they point to me.”  Evangelicals have elevated the medium of God’s inspired message to the level of godhood, following the faulty syllogism, “The Bible is the Word of God.  Jesus is the Word of God.  Therefore, the Bible is ...”  They fail to realize that never once does Scripture refer to its own written text, in part or in whole, as “the Word of God.”  Only Jesus Himself and the Voice of the Lord receive that title.

Worse, having set the Bible up as the one inviolable written code of God’s Rules for Everyone, Evangelicals then effortlessly change its meaning to fit their current political leanings.  They shift easily, generation to generation.  Before the abolition of slavery, they insisted the Bible declared slavery to be natural and God’s way.  Before universal suffrage in the U.S., their preachers used Scripture to show why women should never be allowed to vote.  After that, they used Scripture to support segregation and combat the intermixing of races in public places.  Later they insisted that the Bible shows that races must never intermarry, per God’s own unchanging mandate.

Ask any Evangelical today whether the Bible says such things, and you’ll get a flabbergasted response, disbelief that anyone would ever accuse Christian Evangelicals of believing such nonsense.  Ignorant of their own immoral history, they continue to cling to the central edict of their immoral forebears: that the Bible be worshipped, wielded politically, and referred to by a title it never claims for itself, "the Word of God."  Make no mistake, they will continue their claims about how their current politics are reflected, absolutely and infallibly, in the words of God’s book.

They do not worship God.  They worship their own opinions, superimposed on a sacred text they hold up as their idol.

MY RESPONSE TO POINT 3

Mr. Naysayer, sir, you go too far in calling Evangelicals “idolaters.”  While I admit that they sometimes approach the Bible the way radical Islamists approach the Qur’an – as a physical relic worth killing over—by no means do all or even a majority of them fall under your sweeping accusation that they hold the book up as an idol.

Also, I think you’re mistaking all of Evangelicalism with its Christian fundamentalist arm.  U.S. fundamentalism is a significant but still fractional segment of the entire U.S. Evangelical movement.

A bit of history: Henry Van Dyke was a Christian scholar of a more liberal bent.  Van Dyke proposed, among other things, that the faith held dear by conservative Calvinists, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Methodists and the like be adjusted to say that all dying infants immediately went to heaven.  That preposterous request was one of the straws that broke the conservative camel’s back and led to the drawing up of Christian “fundamentals,” a decree meant to halt such modernist heresies as Van Dyke’s “all babies go to heaven” idea and the creeping suspicion that maybe the Pope wasn’t really the Antichrist.  These five fundamentalist principles included reference to the “inerrancy” of Scripture as their first and foremost item (just as you alluded to in your argument).  The principles formed the foundation of what is called “fundamentalism” in the U.S. today.  That arm of the Evangelical movement is about a hundred years old.  It is younger than the Evangelical movement by a century and a half, and should not be treated as if it were the same undertaking.  They overlap of course, but they are not identical, and I am not prepared to argue here that all fundamentalists go to heaven.

As to your point of Evangelicals elevating their respect and admiration of the Bible to the level of “worship,” I feel you overstate the case dramatically.  You sound, in fact, very much like one of those Evangelicals you oppose, one who might insist that Catholics “worship Mary,” even though the Roman Catholic Church’s stance against any such thing is quite clear.  Mr. Naysayer, Evangelicals do not worship the Bible.  They may use language that makes one suspect they elevate it too highly (for example, your admittedly valid point about the Bible never calling itself “the Word of God.”)  But I feel such excesses can be dealt with through education rather than through condemnation of the entire movement as a book-worshipping cult.

If I were to educate an Evangelical, I would start by explaining that Biblical inerrancy is not the same thing as Biblical literalism or even Biblical infallibility.  One does not need to throw away the entire Bible simply because Jesus references the mustard seed as the “smallest of all seeds on the Earth” when clearly it literally isn’t.  One does not need to throw away the entire five books of Moses simply because Jesus, when confronted with their literal words about permissible divorce, dismissed their usefulness by saying ... about Scripture inspired by God ... “Moses only permitted that because of the hardness of your heart.  That’s why that bit was in those particular Scriptures.  It’s your fault.”

Further, I would educate my Evangelical friend that inerrancy in teachings, doctrines, principles, and ideas of faith does not mean the same thing as inerrancy in biology, cosmology, physics, genealogies, or mathematics (as in the case of 1 Kings 7:23, which incorrectly calculates the value of Pi to be an even 3.0).

And should my Evangelical friend feel ill at ease because he believes the Bible declares itself to be factually, scientifically, and historically infallible, I would ask him where it makes that claim.  Certainly not in 2 Timothy 3:16, which characterizes Scripture as being profitable and useful for training and equipping a child of God to do good works.  “Profitable and useful” are descriptions of a tool, and a most impressive one, but in no way say “scientific infallibility.”  And certainly not Romans 15:4, which likewise treats the writings of old as instruction tools and texts of encouragement.  2 Peter 3:16 concedes that there are things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand and can be misused, just like in all Scripture; 2 Timothy 2:15 implies that the word needs to be studied thoroughly to divide it rightly and to apply it as a child of God.

And my Evangelical friend is likely, finally, to say: “But 2 Timothy 3:16 states directly that all Scripture was inspired, breathed into, by God.  If there are any mistakes in it, doesn’t that make God fallible or a liar?  Doesn’t it?”

To that I will say, still teaching: “You’re mistaken.  That verse doesn’t say Scripture was breathed by God.  It says all Scripture is breathed by God, is inspired by him, is in the present tense, not was in the past tense.  That clearly shows that the act of inspiration dwells within the reading as much as it does in the writing, in hearing the Scriptures and applying them now.  All Scripture is inspired by God, continuously given by the breath of God.  And God is still breathing, still inspiring the works of righteousness directed by that passage.  It’s that step-outside of past/present/future thing all over again.  It is God ... still speaking.”

CONCLUSION

Mr. Naysayer, I consider you thoroughly rebutted.

Simply because Evangelicalism was of questionable birth does not make its current adherents into reprobates immune to God’s salvation.

Simply because its American adherents are subject to a cultural ethos of rugged individualism does not mean there is no hope for some, the remnant within, who work for the unity of the Body of Christ.

Simply because some of them fall into the Pharisaic trap of worshipping the letter while forgetting the true nature of the Word of God, our Savior Jesus, does not mean they are all idolaters.

If they abide in Christ, they can be saved.  Though a thousand fellow Evangelicals fall to the left, another thousand fall to the right, there is still hope in Christ that will lead to the salvation of particular Evangelicals.

Let us not grieve the Holy Spirit by thinking otherwise.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx a.k.a. YoYo Rez

Wait ... God Hates DOGS?

About a month after the death of Fred Phelps, infamous “God Hates Fags!” activist and founder of the funeral-crashing Westboro Baptist Church, I came across this unique sermon, a sort of eulogy to Phelps.

I’m not familiar with the works or preaching of the minister below, a “Rev. Daley O’Grasper,” but I’m certain he wouldn’t mind the blatant abuse of copyright laws I commit here by quoting his sermon in full.  Surely he wants his message spread to as wide an audience as possible.  As you’ll see, he does a remarkable job of showing Biblically how “God Hates Fags!” is only the beginning, and how applying the same Westboro Baptist Scriptural approach to other areas of the Bible will lead us ever closer to becoming a pure and righteous nation.  His message comes across more strongly if you imagine his voice in a down-home preacher accent. 

On a personal note … I'm not fond of his use of Phelp's term "fags."  But I sure am relieved I only own a cat.

A SERMON BY THE REV. DALEY O’GRASPER

“Beyond Hating Fags”  ~ April 13, 2014

Brother and sisters, a shining light of truth has gone out.  The Reverend Fred A. Phelps, a man fearless in his proclamation of the truth, has finally gone on to glory, and we are left a little emptier in our efforts to beat some godly sense into this godforsaken nation.  More than anyone, Fred knew the Biblical principle that the “kingdom of heaven is born of violence, and the violent must take it by force.”

We have lost a Four-Star General in our Sodomite Wars.

And I know what you feel, brothers and sisters!  I know you are asking, “Reverend O’Grasper, who will lead us now?  Reverend O’Grasper, is all now lost, and must we now quit the field of battle, ceding ground to the Gay Brigades?”

Take heart, my children of God.  For the Reverend Daley O’Grasper knows what must be done.  We will not give up ground!  We will not end the fight!

In fact, we will win new ground.  We will fight an even broader fight.

Fred Phelps, I tell you now, did not go far enough.  Did you hear me?  I’ll say it again.  Fred Phelps did not go far enough with his “God Hates Fags” crusade, for the Bible reveals to us an even graver threat to the sanctity of American families.  There is an anti-Scriptural curse within millions of homes throughout this land, and it has been here in front of our eyes for so long, it must be that we were too blind to see it.

Brothers and sisters … God Hates Dogs.

The Biblical Case

Oh, brothers, I know you’re gasping at that!  Sisters, I know you are clutching your pearls.  But biblical truth will not be kept silent, not while the Reverend Daley O’Grasper still has breath in his lungs!

Protest all you wish, but the simple fact is: the God of the Bible hates dogs even more than He hates “fags.”

Homosexuality is mentioned in 8 books of the Bible.  But dogs?  The canine curse?  They are mentioned negatively in 19 books of the Bible, a full 237% more books than those mentioning homosexuals.

And distinct passages within those books?  Homosexuality is mentioned or implied in 9, yes only 9 different passages, and then only if you stretch it a little.  But dogs?  The four-footed fiends?  They are condemned in 32 distinct passages, 356% more condemnation than what the Lord provided for those homosexuals we so vehemently oppose.

Perhaps you claim I’m playing a cute numbers game … but I tell you, they are God’s numbers, it is no game, and to question them is to question the Almighty himself!

Perhaps you say that the dogs are sometimes only used as a metaphor for the heathen … but I answer you, God selected that metaphor because it was the creature he found most disgusting on the face of the Earth.  For why would He use dogs as a metaphor of His disgust if they did not disgust Him?

Perhaps you think “common sense” should overrule the divine revelation of the inerrant Word of God … but I say to you that your love of cuddly Mr. Muffins the chihuahua or noble Rex the German shepherd is no love at all, but a lie of the devil as he tries to fill our homes with creatures contrary to the righteousness of God.

If you have a household dog … a creature condemned by God himself, interacting with your loved ones … then you have brought utter perversity into your home.

From here on, our message will be this: If we spend a day in our fight against homosexuals in America, we must commit 3 to 4 of the following days in our fight against the far more hated creature of Scripture, the dog.

For God hates dogs, and He hates you if you love them in defiance to His Word.

Scriptural Lessons about Dog Ownership

The Reverend Daley O’ Grasper says unto you: If dogs could talk, they would say bad things about holy people.

“But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast: that ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” (Exodus 11:7)

What you pay to buy or "adopt" the abomination called “dog” is equivalent to what you pay a whore.

“Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God.” (Deut 23:18)

Dogs are equated with sexually aberrant behavior.

2 Sam. 3:8 -- Abner protests that having inappropriate relations with his father's concubine would make him a "dog's head."

Dogs are unworthy as protectors of your children.

God has Gideon reject any warrior who drinks water “like a dog” rather than with their hands, for by that behavior they show themselves to be unfit as God's holy warriors. (Judges 7:5-7)

Dogs are lowly, and to be considered one is insulting.

“And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.” (I Sam. 17:43)  Further, Abishai calls a "dead dog" one who has insulted King David (2 Sam. 16:9).

Dogs eat the fallen bodies of the cursed.

I Kings 14:11; 1 Kings 16:4 -- Those who die cursed are eaten by dogs.  In addition, I Kings 21:19-23 shows that as part of a holy man’s curse, dogs lick up the blood of the condemned (Elijah to Ahab); and dogs eat the condemned one's wife (Jezebel).

Dogs killed the Messiah.

Psalms 22:16 – “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.”  (A prophesy of the Christ!  God saw dogs as so despicable that He casts them in the role of murdering His own Son!)

A dog symbolizes hateful, vicious violence.

2 Kings 8:13 -- One who slays men, dashes children, and rips open pregnant women is a dog.

Heathens are dogs.

Psalm 59:6-8 -- “They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.  Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear? But thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision.”

Dogs are foolish and violent.

Proverbs 26:11, 17 – “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly ... He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.”

Dogs are the pinnacle of sloth and greed.

Isaiah 56:10-11 – “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.  Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter.”

Dogs are vicious deliverers of God's insult and wrath.

Jer. 15:3 – “And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.”

Nothing holy should be given to dogs.

Matt. 7:6 – “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Dogs = Evil workers.

Philippians 3:2 – “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.”

Dog will not run from repetitive acts of sin.

2 Peter 2:22 – “But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”

Dogs are not in heaven -- they are outside the gates with the evildoers.

Rev. 22:14-15 – “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”

Conclusion

This is the creature Americans see as a member of the family.  This is the foul beast that they let play with their children, guard their home.  This is the biblical view of the brute some dare call Man's Best Friend.

Yes, brothers and sisters, the Word of God is hard.  The path of righteousness is not an easy one.  Even here today, I see that half of this very congregation has stood up and stormed out of here, furious to hear the Word of truth so plainly proclaimed.

Every single one of them is a dog lover, and, as such, is an enemy of this great nation and the Word of God.

We must oppose them, my dear remnant.  And we must oppose them 3 to 4 times as much as we have previously opposed homosexuals, as the Word of God makes clear.

Those who left during this sermon … they will be outside the gates of the Heavenly City when final judgment comes.  Only the baying of their rancid, evil pets will accompany the flames that consume them.

For truly, my brothers and sisters … God.  Hates.  Dogs.

And if you can’t see that, you’ll have forever to regret it.

Let us pray …

____________________________________________________________

A final thought from Cosmic Parx:

Did it strike anyone else as kind of ironic that the initials for the Reverend  Daley O’ Grasper would be Rev. D.O’G.?

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

R.I.P. Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptists

It’s been a couple weeks since the death of Fred W. Phelps, founder of the “God Hates Fags” Web site and leader of the funeral-protesting Westboro Baptist Church.  His passing brings to my mind a number of times I’ve been questioned over the past few months about the ONA policy of my East Coast congregation, the United Church of Christ.  “ONA” stands for “open and affirming,” a position of acceptance toward our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered members.

UCC is, in effect, the polar opposite of the Westboros of this world.  We are decidedly NonFred Phelpsian.

“Do you go to that gay church?” a friend recently asked me in my social network world of Second Life (where I’m also an active member of a UCC ministry).  That’s an odd question, since being ONA does not make UCC a “gay church” any more than being handicapped-accessible makes our congregation a “disabilities church.”  Our openness to Latino members doesn’t make us a “Spanish church.”  Our acceptance of elderly members doesn’t make us a “geriatric church.”

We are, quite simply, the Church.

Whose Church?  Christ’s.  No other modifier is needed, although we choose by our name to emphasize that we find our unity in Him, making us a United Church of Christ.

“But what about the fact that the Bible condemns homosexuals eternally to the fires of hell?” some of my friends wonder at me.  And yes, I do consider these people my friends and my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I am pleased they are honest with me about their concerns.

I answer: “That’s not our interpretation of Scripture.  We don’t believe the Bible actually teaches any such thing.”

“But it does!” some of my friends insist.  “It’s right there in black and white!  How can you believe the Bible doesn’t teach that?”

And with that question, I step gently into The Talk.  I only offer The Talk to those who seem genuinely interested in knowing how we at UCC approach Scripture.  I try to initiate The Talk with the humility of spirit I imagine would be found in a 19^th century abolitionist talking gently to a dear friend who insists slavery is approved by Scripture.

I present The Talk here in its entirety.  I’ve written it up as a script with some usage directions, the mental instructions I give myself while I use it and adapt it to the individual to whom I'm ministering.

The Talk isn’t an exercise in Biblical exegesis.  It’s conducted at a much more basic level than that, the core hermeneutics of how the Bible is approached as a work communicating the mind and will of God.  I take this approach not simply to avoid tedious disputes over the ungodliness of eating lobster and wearing mixed fabrics, but to drive home a basic fact: most ONA congregations approach Scripture in exactly the same manner as the vast majority of Evangelicals.

THE TALK

:::::

A Response to Evangelicals about Why the United Church of Christ (and other Christian denominations) Are Open and Affirming for the LGBT Community

:::::

((NOTE: Please feel free to use and modify this as a conversation guide for discussing UCC ONA beliefs with Evangelical friends.  The script is written in a manner that speaks to Biblical literalists, and it reflects the spirit of 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”))

***

Why do we accept and affirm members of the LGBT community?  I would be happy to try to answer that.

As I answer, I ask a favor: Please listen to this entire explanation before responding.  It will require five uninterrupted minutes of your time.  It is the one courtesy I request, since you have sincerely asked for an explanation.

Is that a reasonable request?

((WAIT FOR POSITIVE RESPONSE.  IF AT ANY TIME YOU ARE INTERRUPTED, SAY SOME VERSION OF THE FOLLOWING: “I see you’ve started to comment.  Would you like me to stop the 5-minute explanation you agreed I could give?”))

Okay, then …

Yes, Scripture does have several passages that read as if they condemn all homosexual acts in all circumstances.  And yes, at first glance it would seem as if we of UCC are “ignoring” those passages.  We are not, however, ignoring them.  We are interpreting them for better understanding.  To help you understand what I mean by that, I will use three examples of an identical approach to Scripture – your own.

EXAMPLE 1:

When you read the fifth chapter of Matthew, you see Jesus commanding you to pluck out your right eye or to cut off your right hand if either causes you to sin.  At no point do you consider that to be a literal command, despite the clarity of the words.  Instead, you immediately conclude that the Lord couldn’t possibly mean for you actually to maim or blind yourself.  You say YES, BUT … and you allow yourself an alternate interpretation of that verse.  At this point in my explanation, it isn’t important what you say after the YES, BUT.  What matters is that something in you, something in your mind and in your heart, immediately led you to reconsider any literal application of those words to your own walk in Christ.

Of course you have other words you think and say after YES, BUT.  You might have hunted down a Scripture that forbids self-maiming, and decided you must interpret Jesus’ words in light of that other Scripture.  You might have researched literary forms and decided some statements in Scripture are hyperbole or symbols.  But the fact is, you would never have started hunting for that other verse if you hadn’t had the YES, BUT moment.  You wouldn’t have been troubled enough to research literary forms if you hadn’t had that YES, BUT moment.

Where did that moment come from?  What made you step back from your customary literalism in order to rightly divide the Word of truth?

EXAMPLE 2:

When you read the letters of Paul and discover the literal instructions that women are not to speak in church at all unless they are directly prophesying with their heads covered, and that certainly no woman is to be a church overseer, something within you immediately says YES, BUT and you begin to research and scrutinize and study to justify why you believe that a woman should be allowed to speak in a church or even lead one.  I am inferring you do that, because many Evangelical ministries have female teachers and prayer leaders and have had female pastors.  Likewise, when you read in Scripture that no man may remarry after divorce because that forces his wife to become an adulteress, and that no leader of a church may remain if his own house is not in order, something in you says YES, BUT and similar research and rationalizing begins.  Again, I infer you must think in this way because many Evangelical churches are led by divorced and remarried men.  So it’s clear that at least they, and very likely you, say in the heart YES, BUT and then work toward understanding God’s Scriptures in light of their (and your) own circumstances.

Again, I ask: Where does that YES, BUT moment come from?

EXAMPLE 3:

When you read the second chapter of 1 Peter in Scripture, you discover that Christian slaves who are being unfairly beaten by their masters, their owners, are directed to take those beatings without complaint, because it is their “calling” in Christ (v. 21).  It probably dawns on you that this passage means that every slave who strives to be free of violence and abuse is, in light of the literal nature of these words of 1 Peter 2, in rebellion against God and in violation of that slave’s Christian calling, a rebel just as Satan was a rebel.  Every slave who is Christian … ancient slaves of Rome, American slaves before the Civil War, modern slaves pressed into sex prostitution … is to quietly take his or her abuse as an appropriate role within the kingdom of God.

Right now, if you are a decent human being, your heart and your mind are saying YES, BUT …

CONCLUSION:

In the UCC, we embrace that YES, BUT moment by means of a single phrase: “God is still speaking,”  We even end the sentence like that, with a comma, to show our commitment to the idea.  When you as an Evangelical feel that YES, BUT moment in your heart as you ponder challenging Scripture, we would call it one of those moments when God is still speaking, the voice of the Spirit still within you.

Yes, Scripture records a demand for the silence of women in churches.  Yes, Scripture records a requirement that a church leader be a once-married male.  Yes, Scripture records the Creator as saying “I hate divorce.”  Yes, Scripture records a condemnation of homosexual activity.  Yes, Scripture records a call for self-maiming to escape sin.  Yes, Scripture records a command to accept unjust slave beatings as the slave’s Christian role.

For five of those six, you, as an Evangelical believer, heed your heart when it says YES, BUT. That is because in that heart of yours, God is still speaking,

We as UCC believers and children of God have that same reaction to all six of those six.

All the studied reasoning you have used to shed light on your five YES, BUT moments — considerations of cultural differences, appeals to other Scriptures, scrutiny of original Greek or Hebrew words, appeals to common sense and literary forms — whatever approach you’ve taken for your five areas, we have as well, and for all six areas.  We stand in agreement with you.  We affirm that yours is a sound, valid way to approach Scripture.  We firmly agree that the Spirit of God within you, the wisdom the Spirit puts in your heart when it says YES, BUT, is holy and noble and righteous.

I don’t ask that you come to the same conclusions we do.  But I do ask, with respect and as your sister in Christ, that you recognize that in these matters our approaches to the Bible are not different from yours.  My actual details for my opinions might not hold water for you, but the approach itself is one you embrace in your own life.  I will worship beside a homosexual believer just as readily as you will accept a divorced and remarried female pastor who rejects slavery.  Both of us must face Scriptures that seem to the unschooled eye to oppose our stances.  But in both of our hearts, God is still speaking His YES, BUT and growing us in the ability to rightly divide the word of truth.

Thank you for allow me to share those thoughts without interruption.

And if you're interested to learn more about us, we also have really cool commercials.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

How to Start Your Own Cult

Every year in a Humanities course I teach, I present a unit titled, “How to Start Your Own Cult.”  Naturally, it isn’t designed to encourage real cult-building.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It’s designed to make students immune to the manipulation that can lead to cult-like membership of any kind.

My unit focuses on modes of social discourse, primarily how unscrupulous people with a knack for language, social coercion, and psychological manipulation can subtly pressure us into buying an appliance we don’t need, donating to a cause we don’t care about, or, yes, even turning our free will over to a dynamic cult leader.

Even my naming that school unit the way I do is an example of subtle coercion, piquing the interest of students by sounding like forbidden fruit.  Inevitably, one or more students will ask me: “Are we really allowed to be learning this?  How to make a cult?”

I invariably reply: “Yes.  But you must swear only to use your powers for good.”

BUT WHAT IS A CULT?

That’s a good question.  I won’t answer it to your satisfaction.  That’s because no one can answer it satisfactorily.  The word “cult” has come a long way since its early use as a positive term signifying a religious group with a particular focus.  Within early Catholicism it was almost the equivalent of our current terms “sect” or “denomination.”  In the latter half of the 20^th century, however, the word developed a universally negative connotation in English.  It became vogue to apply the damning term to anyone with whom we disagreed theologically or philosophically.  In under five Google minutes of what I’ll laughingly call research, I managed to find:

• Protestants calling Roman Catholicism a cult
• Calvinists calling the Word of Faith movement a cult
• Evangelicals calling Calvinism a cult
• Republicans calling the Democratic Party a cult
• Democrats calling the Tea Party a cult
• Mean people calling the My Little Pony craze a cult

Don’t like something?  Call it a cult.  By applying that name, the implication is that right thinking people … you know, rational, sober people like you and me … wouldn’t give in to the lies and manipulations of a group that embraces heresy and falsehood.  The leaders of those groups (we tell ourselves) are already too far gone to help, but we can still rescue the unwitting victims, the weak of mind who were tricked into believing the lies thrust upon them through brainwashing or worse.  If we could reach them … break them off from the cult, make them see reason, even deprogram them while keeping them in isolation for a time … we’d be doing them and the world a great service!

And acting a little, um, cult-like ourselves, I guess.

And scattered therein are the elements of my not-very-satisfying definition of a cult, for the purposes of this blog post: It is an organization that knowingly uses mental and social manipulation and coercion to make you dependent on their ideas, their society, their worldview, and their leaders.  I’ll be the first to say that that definition is overly broad, maybe even unfairly so.  But as a starting point, it helps focus us on the path toward a much more interesting question:

If you were a member of a Christian cult, would you even know it?

By learning the steps of cult-building, you have a tool that might open your eyes to manipulation you hadn’t noticed before.

5 STEPS TOWARD BUILDING A CULT

Any decent salesperson can tell you that the key to closing a sale is to lead a prospect to a point where you ask, “What one thing is keeping you from buying this product?” When you get the prospective customer to verbalize that one thing, you sell against that single objection, showing how it isn’t as much a barrier as the customer thought.  Objection answered, the prospect has no other hurdle, and the sale is that much nearer.

Cult leaders are more than decent salespeople.  They’re masters.  The best of them can give you the feeling that an objection has been answered long before you’ve verbalized it.  If I were designing my own cult, here are some of the steps I’d take to add members to my growing cult empire.

CULT BUILDING STEP 1: I’d Create and Define an Enemy

Nothing unites like opposition.  Consider, for example, the rise and fall of the Baha’i religion.  Viewed as a heretical cult in Persia (Iran) of the mid-1800s, the faith suffered over 20,000 martyrdoms in its first decade … and, having the common enemy of Islam as the force uniting them, grew dramatically in the following half-century.  That time of persecution represented their greatest growth spurt; once they came to the United States, growth stayed tepid except for a brief increase in the 1970s, when society itself was cast as the enemy.  Since those days, little has happened.  Without a defined enemy, the faith languishes with a U.S. membership under two hundred thousand.  By way of comparison, that’s fewer people than those who signed petitions last month to have Justin Bieber deported back to Canada.

As an Alpha Cult Leader, my first job would be to clearly identify something that my people can be against.  And I mean vehemently against, something that embodies pure evil.  I can do this by pointing my finger at something that exists – Big Pharma, the Government, Evolutionists, Born Agains, White People – or, failing that, I can invent an enemy who doesn’t exist in any organized manner, but who’ll embody whatever attributes I prefer to oppose – a Secular Humanist Cabal, the Illuminati, a Post-Modernist Agenda, the Liberal Media, Lizard Overlords, The Bush 9/11 Conspiracists.  The point is this: In the absence of any actual persecution, I need to make my first followers feel keenly that they are being oppressed by a force they have no hope of overcoming.  Banding together as victims of the common Enemy is their only option.

CULT BUILDING STEP 2: I’d Declare, “Act Now, Seats Limited!”

Infomercials underwent an interesting development in our lifetime.  Gone (nearly) is the assurance that “Operators are standing by!” and in its place is the advice, “If you get a busy signal, try again!”  The change was a conscious one.  The idea that operators were standing by led, inadvertently, to mental images of vast phone banks peopled by bored operators who were getting very little business.  The replacement phrase, encouragement to keep trying when phones were busy, painted a different picture in the consumer’s mind – active phone banks, many calls, and should you get through … well, hey, you’re one of the lucky few!  You made it!

To make your purchase feel special, marketers set artificial limits.  That limit might be time (“Call within the next 30 minutes for your discount!”), quantities (“Due to high demand, a maximum of 4 items per caller!”), or both (“Jesus is coming within the next 3 years, and only 144,000 will be saved!”)

Yes, that last example jumped from sales to cults.  The Catastrophist Christian Cults of the mid-1800s and later used this sales technique to great effect.  Accepting Christ and their leader wasn’t an open-ended deal.  Time was limited.  At any moment, the Second Coming could occur and those not accepted to the in-group might not be part of the exclusive club that escapes the Enemy’s wrath.  Hey, we don’t take just anyone!  But we might take you.

As an Alpha Cult Leader, I want a similar effect.  Not just anyone gets to wander up to my place of cultifying and grab a seat.  My invitations would have a cap (“We only have ten extra seats tonight”), and I’d require admission credentials (“You’re with Karen?  Good; we prefer to seat those who come with one of our members!”)  I’d imply a time limit (“We had to turn away a couple groups of people last week because they arrived too late.”)  And I’d make use of that enemy I conjured up in step one (“We’ve had a few cases where atheists [or government agents, or PETA activists, or global warming deniers] tried to sneak in here so they could spy and disrupt.  You don’t seem to be one of those sorts.”)

Letting you into our exclusive club doesn’t just make us look special.  It makes you feel special, and that’s the point.  We’re winning you.

CULT BUILDING STEP 3: I’d Play “The Humble Confessor”

Nobody likes perfect people.  Oh, we claim we do, especially here in America.  We love our heroes.  But you know what we like more than that?  We love to see our heroes fall, because it reminds us that nobody’s perfect … and if even the best people aren’t perfect, then there’s an outside shot for the rest of us poor slobs.

As an Alpha Cult Leader, I will not allow you to discover accidentally that I’m imperfect.  Instead, I’ll be the one to tell you.  I will stand up in front of my growing congregation and declare, “Remember, you’re not here for Reverend Yolanda.  You’re not here because Reverend Yolanda has anything special to offer you.  You’re here because there’s something bigger than all of us!  And it’s a good thing, too, because if you knew the weaknesses of Reverend Yolanda, the faults in her heart – how she can sometimes become angry at a moment’s notice in the face of cruel unbelievers; how she sometimes feels too tired to go on and has to turn to the Mighty Power to lift her weak self; how she sometimes doubts and says, Is this marvelous ministry what you want me to do, Oh Power, is it really this wondrous thing you’re calling me to?” … well, if you could see those faults clearly, you’d know that whenever Reverend Yolanda lifts her hands to the sky, it’s so she can get one small, meager use from this sinful body, and that’s to point to the Power Above!”

How honest I sound!  How willing to open my soul!  How inspiring to those who are also weak!

Notice, though, a couple things.  First is the distancing trick of referring to myself in the third person … not saying “I” but instead saying “Reverend Yolanda.”  If you listen closely to your favorite preachers, you’ll hear that technique used a lot.  The trick simultaneously (1) keeps you a little distanced from me, so you remember I’m a touch higher; (2) distances me from the faults I’ve listed for myself, discretely creating the impression I’m above the sins as well; and (3) creates a “second” me who is standing there next to you, as human as you are, and simultaneously admiring me from beside you.

Take a look, too, at the faults I assign myself.  I have a temper (in the face of evil); I get tired (because I do so much for all of you); I doubt (in the face of the marvels the Power does through me).  In effect, I’m saying I’m wonderful to a fault.  You have simultaneous feelings that I’m open about my humanity and frailty, but also that I’m the most amazing person you’ve ever met.  Let’s face it, that’s something that can’t be achieved by confessions like, “When I finish preaching, I do five shots of Grey Goose and find me an orgy to relax.”  There are confessions … and then there are confessions that help grow the cult.  As your Alpha Cult Leader, I am careful to reveal the latter only.

CULT BUILDING STEP 4: I’d Make You Secretly Special

Once you’ve come to my cult meeting a few times … once I’ve made sure you have the sense of how wonderfully human and stunningly above you I am … I will find the perfect moment to get you alone.  I’ll keep you in the crowd, since I want the buzz of the congregation serving as background sound while I speak to you.  You’ll be surprised that I waved you over to the side.  As far as you could tell, I didn’t even know you existed!  But here you are, being called over by the Reverend Yolanda!  For a second you feel panic.  Did you do something wrong?  Is this a bad thing?

“Hey,” I say to you, putting a hand on your shoulder and looking around to be sure no one is overhearing us (a trick that makes you keenly aware that the whole place probably notices I’ve called you aside).  “I have to tell you … I get such a powerful feeling of the Mighty Power when I see you worshipping here.  It’s as if you really have a direct connection to the Mighty Awesomeness.  I envy you.  It took me so many years to find that state in myself, and I can’t tell you how inspiring it is for me to see you clicking with it immediately, as if you have a special calling on your life.  I just felt I had to tell you that.  Thank you for inspiring me.”

Boom.  Did you just hear that?  Did that just happen, here, in front of everyone, you and the Reverend Yolanda sharing a secret … a secret that you inspire her?  That you have a gift?  That you connect to the Mighty Force of the Cult?  Holy moley!  That Reverend Yolanda … she is so insightful!

CULT BUILDING STEP 5: I’d Have You Do Me A Favor

Now that I have you coming to the cult, and I have you admiring the cult leader, and I have you feeling important in the cult, I have one more thing to do to make you feel obliged to us.  I’ll ask you for a favor, preferably something that inconveniences you a little.  Or even a lot.

You might think I have that backwards.  Wouldn’t you feel more indebted to me if I did you a favor, instead of asking you to do me one?  Believe it or not, no.  According to research summarized by Noah J. Goldstein in his book Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, the key to remembering a favor is to be the one to do it, not to be the one to get the benefits.  If I ask you to drive me to a charity event one Sunday, you will remember doing that favor for a lot longer than I’ll remember having received it.

Goldstein tells the story of how Ben Franklin was disliked personally by a member of the Continental Congress.  Franklin solved that problem by asking to borrow a rare volume from the man’s library, and asking that the man put himself out by delivering it personally to Franklin’s home.  Franklin held on to the book for a while, returned it with copious thanks, and the two became fast friends for the rest of their lives.  Franklin knew the trick: If I ask you for a favor, you begin to redefine yourself as the sort of person who’s nice enough to do me a big favor.  You feel better about yourself, you remember doing your favor for a long time, and you begin to see me in a more favorable light as well.  After all, you wouldn’t do favors for just anybody.

As your Alpha Cult Leader, I would wait until you were just beginning to feel comfortable at my cult meetings, and then I would hit you up for a favor.  The favor wouldn’t involve money.  It would involve your time and effort.  Would you be able to pick up three youths who come to our sessions and need a ride weekly?  Or would you be interested in helping out on our Kitchen Cult Yummy Squad?  Or would you lend your building talents to the new addition on the Cult Cave?  I’d pick the favor that best matched your talents, I’d make sure it actually cost you time and effort.  I would be ever in your debt, as you grew to find yourself more and more in my pocket.  After all, you’re the sort of person who does favors for the Alpha Cult Leader.  That’s who you are.  That’s how you see yourself.

ON SECOND THOUGHT …

As I said at the beginning, I obviously don’t want you to go out and start your own cult.  The purpose of thinking in these terms is to train your mind to see the manipulations.  Any one of these steps, when considered in itself, is harmless and healthy.  But when you start seeing clusters of manipulative language and behaviors, it’s time to pause and consider the spirit behind the organization and its leaders.

Just maybe, if you find yourself a member of a Christian Cult, you’ll be able to spot it in time.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx