Church Review: UCKG - The Ark, the oil, and she who thought she'd seen it all (extended edition).

Ready? Yes.
Prepared for what transpired? Absolutely not.

There is a point in every church service where the pastor can take a beat, ask themselves what they are doing, and try to steer the car back in the direction of something that wouldn't get them burnt as heretics. Doesn't have to be a smooth road, but as Christians, the cross should always be our guiding star.

Today?

Today I discovered what Hillsong would look like on a crystal methamphetamine binge.

A Marilyn Manson concert is more theologically on point, and less heretical than what took place at the Whitlam center this morning.

It started off with a woman on a projected video talking about living with depression for thirty years and then being cured after going to the church. One trip to church and she was cured. Then the first hard no of the morning "antidepressants don't work, stop taking them and join the church".

The pastor comes out and talks a little bit on how addiction, mental illness, and marriage breakdown are signs that people have lost their faith in God and that he was here to save them by healing people for free. God gave this suited up pick up artist seminar drop-out the power to perform miracles and he called them all forward.

"GOD DOESN'T GIVE YOU ILLNESS OR DISEASE TO TEST YOUR FAITH"

I had to stop myself from standing up and yelling "have you even fucking read Job? God's a bit of a dick in that particular book!". I had flashbacks to my first School of Discipleship where there was a heated discussion about God and natural disasters.

In fact... He didn't even do the dirty work himself... He gave permission to the adversary to unleash all manner of hell on that poor bastard and his family. But I digress.

Then came the the talk about how Jesus wants us all to be financially prosperous and all we have to do is have faith.

Umm, hate to burst your bubble, my guy... But Jesus was a socialist and basically advocated for the redistribution of wealth to the oppressed. Unless there's a part of the gospel I'm missing where he drove around in a Mercedes? The gospel according to Ayn?

It was just asking to be opened...

Next came the healings. People were suddenly cured of all their ills and jumped on the spot. People with knee injuries? Fixed. People who couldn't talk for six years? Chatty as a mother at a school pick up run. This guy had the touch.

When it came time for the ark to come out, he prefaced it with a statement about it being a replica. The true ark hasn't been found, so they recreated it from the specifications in the Bible (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and he made a very pointed comment at *someone* regarding discussion on their Facebook page in regards to the authenticity of this artifact that we were about to be graced with.

But on we went. There was a military style procession after a video detailing that victories were won when the ark was sent into battle with an army. Imagery of soldiers drawing swords, and shields at the ready.

Wait, what God are we worshiping here again?

Then it started. If the service had been strange up to this point... Then we were about to take a tumble down the rabbit hole after snorting lines of pure crystal meth. The pastor and someone in the procession knelt before the ark and proceeded to howl almost incoherently about calling god (little g, because big G had likely left this place out of embarrassment early on in this shit show) down to heal everyone.

What? Still not weird enough, you say? Then the altar lights the fuck up and everyone's hands are in the air. Then the exhortation to give up your medications continued louder. "Go to your doctor's next week and ask them to run tests! They'll find nothing! You can't have children? In 2019 you will have a baby!". It's September. Nine months to have a baby. The ark has some fucking work to do.

This is where we had to call it quits.

Ark AND the rapture?

On our way out of dodge however, we were faced with another curious spectacle; a pair of sandals left abandoned by their owner. On its own it would have been innocuous, but after experiencing what had transpired over the last 45-ish minutes, I couldn't help but think the rapture had taken place (again) and I had not been fortunate enough to be one of the chosen to be whisked up to Heaven before the unfolding time of tribulations gets into full swing.

If memory serves we've had more than three dates pass for the rapture and is something someone in advertising should have been aware of. If I had been aware that the rapture was happening during / toward the end of the service, I would have made the effort to stay or gone the extra mile and sent a bag of rice to a houseful of orphans in Uganda. I'm kind of tired of being looked over for this kind of promotion.

What do we do after an experience like this? Go to the nearest Roman Catholic church, duck in through the doors while the Vietnamese service is running, bless yourself with holy water, and go to the blue mountains to decompress after that invocation to Satan.

UCKG rating on the Kool Aid scale out of 5?

5

5 jugs

Cups just won't do.

This was Jim Jones with a light show.

Part 1 - The Idiot Messiah

Over the weekend there was a clip played on Fox News that went viral, as most things to do with Trump and the impeachment hearings have been. This clip is a little different; it plays into a narrative that others have been cautiously tapping into soundbites and rhetoric; this idea that Donald Trump is somehow ordained by God, or “the chosen one”. 

It’s been something he himself has dropped into interviews and press conferences, he was the chosen one to deal with China, even though he walked back any connotation to him being some kind of messiah. The damage was done, the well was poisoned, and the already religiously obsessed conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals had celebrated it with religious fervor.

Rick Perry’s clip (because few people would follow up on what the interview actually was), would affirm the religiously republicans’ beliefs that Trump was some sort of religious figure. Normally anyone would say “listen to the whole interview or find the transcript, what’s been said has been taken out of context”, and normally this would be true. However, when listening to the piece, it’s actually worse than what it comes across as on face value.

"And I said, 'I just need you. I want you to look at this. I want you to read it. I want you to, you know, absorb that you are here at this chosen time because God ordained it.'”

This was followed up with a caution of sorts, in the way that it would be utterly foolish to even imply that Trump was perfect, because that would equate Trump to the second coming of Jesus; and I think even that’s a step too far for even the most radical of the conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals in Trump’s corner:

'Don't get confused here, sir. This is not a reflection that you're perfect, but that God's using you. And he uses all of us that way.'

What followed was Perry’s justification for this by way of listing all of the times that God had used imperfect people in the Bible to pave the way for Jesus’ arrival on earth. King Solomon certainly wasn’t perfect by today’s standards (or standards back then most likely, but criticise a king at your own peril), and the references and comparisons to other rulers littered throughout the Old Testament are rife. If you hadn’t noticed that there is something conspicuously left out is any reference to Trump in the framing of the New Testament, not counting the Romans 13 meta-narrative, that all rulers are ordained by God and there for a reason.

It’s a particularly tricky piece of Paul’s writings because on one hand, we can read from this Paul’s musings during his incarceration under the Romans; but we can also read something that is almost intended to neuter all of the revolutionary aspects of Christ’s ministry. It’s this emphasis on rulers being divinely appointed that undermines the challenge to Caesar’s divinity that was issued by just the existence of Jesus, let alone that he was challenging the temple priests’ rigid adherence to the letter of the law. 

Following this line of thinking is another discussion altogether; what’s important is that there exists a contrast between institutional divinity when held up against Jesus’ mission, and it’s here that there is an echoing of Caesar in the way people are starting to more openly deify Trump.

I don't know whether or not there had even been the idea that Christianity would become the religion of state, let alone that it would become the mode of power from which Rome could govern from in the near two millennia after. 

Looking at the way that 13: 1-7 is written it would suggest that the powers that be had determined that there was the potential for disharmony between the burgeoning religion's adherents and the authority. The rest of chapter falls into line with what we recognise as Christ's teaching by deference to the exhortation to love thy neighbour and do them no harm. 

This leaves a curious state of affairs to the people who would reference the passage of 1-7, but fall short of the obligation to the "neighbour" as it's a piece of text that rings true the bells of Jesus' "socialist" or outward focused leanings, and guides the reader away from ideologies 

"I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that He wanted Donald Trump to become president." 

"That's why he's there and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about."

The above, attributed to Trump’s former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders; also reinforces this narrative and push toward republican voters recognizing that he is somehow chosen to deliver laws and policies that people identifying as Christian care about. At least Huckabee-Sanders has the decency to distinguish between policies that are distinctly anti-Christian and what people of faith really care about. But this does nothing the calm the storm that’s brewing.

Where this becomes dangerous and incredibly irresponsible is when you look at this rhetoric, this use of language intentionally to deify a president, is that there is now a narrative of “good vs evil” in the mix; which subsequently frames the impeachment hearings against Trump as well as the 2020 election campaign as a holy war of sorts.

So what happens if they somehow get the votes to charge the president with the crimes he’s been found to have committed? What happens if they try as a result of legal proceedings to remove him from the Whitehouse? What happens if Trump loses the 2020 election? What happens if he refuses to leave office?

In all of these scenarios we now have the democrats trying to depose God’s chosen leader for America, and there’s nothing that the rabid gun toting Christian-identifying republicans need more than someone trying to remove their idiot messiah, which will likely push them over the edge with their threats to start a second Civil War, this time it will be seen as a holy war by those taking up arms against their fellow citizens.

Does this sound like a conspiracy theory or something you'd see on an episode of Doomsday Preppers? Maybe, but this is where we are. Religious extremism has been allowed to grow so rapidly and so unchecked in the US, and by extension we are seeing the same attitudes rise here in Australia.

What does it mean for a country that spent decades condemning the actions and policies of the Soviet Union, and then Russia after the Berlin Wall came down, only to have people say things like they would rather stand with Russia than stand beside a democrat? People were blacklisted from work for even suspicions of being a communist or soviet sympathiser. Now? Russia is the friend of the republican voter.



Treason has become the rallying call of the hardcore republican.

Hatred has become the religion of a country that is supposedly one that follows Jesus.

I don't need to talk about how police are shooting people of colour for next to no reason with growing frequency, nor do I need to tell you that the border wall policies and separation of children from their parents is the most blatant disregard of humanity. It makes me feel like these people would sooner run in and take a swing at Jesus or spit on Him than offer to carry His cross.

Forget "What Would Jesus Do?"

The new wristband would say "What Would We Do to Jesus?"

I wanted to end this with lyrics from Raymond Watts' project Pig, a song called The Sick that comes across with an apocalyptic sleaze and swagger. Instead, after thinking about for a chunk of the afternoon and whether I would be happy with just taking a cheap swing with the a reference to Jesus' healings and giving those in need the things they can't make any use of: "the blind will walk, the sick will see", it's too obvious.

There is a scene in Charlie Chaplain's film The Great Dictator where he offers this beautiful stream of words, a reassurance to a world in the aftermath of WW2. Sure, he was dressed to resemble Adolf Hitler, but he took to film with a speech that would echo and be relevant now more than it was then. To take the what the Nazis had done and turn it on its head, to take the industrialisation of hatred and implore people to take these things and use them to benefit humanity instead of using them to crush it. Chaplin says:

"I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. 

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!"

Just makes me think, sometimes God is talking to us and we need to listen. I don't know how to explain this as something other than that. Right? A Christian and someone who has studied theology being apprehensive about pointing to something and saying:

"If ever God was talking to us, it's here, through things like this. Drop your pretentiousness and walls around our hardened hearts and take a moment to be vulnerable and listen. Even if you don't believe in God, or hate the idea of religion, there are good men that say beautiful things and we ignore them simply because its easier not to listen. If we don't listen, we end up exactly where we are with history repeating itself."

What do we lose if we listen and humour the idea at the very least?