How Fringe Christians’ Competition for Crazy Is Destroying the Nation
Russell Wilson, the star quarterback for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, makes $35 million per year. To earn that level of wealth, Wilson trains tirelessly to maintain his standing as one the premiere quarterbacks in the league. Every time the center snaps the ball to Wilson, the QB faces a bunch of 300-pound defensive linemen who want nothing more than to throw the comparatively diminutive 200-pound Wilson to the ground—or worse. It’s a rough, competitive sport, but Americans exult in competition--even if some folks get hurt.
Obviously, not all competition is of the athletic nature; some is more physically sedate but more metaphysically consequential. And for those in that sedate but significant sacramental competition, the Russell Wilsons and LeBron James-level competitors can rake in even more money than an elite athlete or an A-list movie star. I’m writing here, of course, about megachurch pastors. For example, Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Texas, no longer accepts the $200,000 annual salary his church offers him. Rejecting the salary is a savvy PR move, and he can easily afford to do so since his book royalties net him more than $55 million annually
. But Osteen is among a few super-rich megastars of the megachurch industry. Many aspire to Osteen’s level, but relatively few make it. The few who do get there seem to do so by competing for the faithful believers’ dollars by contending for the crazy prize. For many, it’s a game of one-upmanship. Whether it’s ever zanier theology or constantly kookier conspiracy theories, the path to the summit of mammon mountain is up an indistinct, twisty trail of absurdity, a trail of one’s own choosing, while the once well-worn-but-demanding path of the Cross has grown thick with weeds.
The path to the summit of mammon mountain is up an indistinct, twisty trail of absurdity, a trail of one’s own choosing, while the once well-worn-but-demanding path of the Cross has grown thick with weeds.
So where once we saw church pastors pacing the streets with visions of the Cross drawing them forward and prompting them to feed the hungry and house the homeless, now we see far too many of them posting on cyber venues as they compete for clicks and cash by proclaiming their latest exclusive direct message from God. As of today, June 23, 2021, a Google search for the phrase “God told me” yields more than 64 million hits. And if you check out very many of the “God told me” YouTube videos, you’ll quickly see that the divine revelations are given only to the elect—of which there seems to be millions. Cash-generating God-told-me YouTube “ministries” are popping faster than weeds after a soaking summer rain.
And the things God is telling these “prophets” are often beyond preposterous. These days, most prophecies are about God restoring their new messiah, Donald Trump, to his rightful throne as U.S. President. Ever since the November election, “prophets” have been setting dates for the return. In my day, the prophecies centered around the time of Jesus’ return. Now, that’s passé. The more important return date is that of the new messiah. Date after date from dozens of these Trumpeting prophets have missed the mark, but the divinations persist. And the faithful find no fault in those flawed prognosticators.
Never mind that the prophets of the Bible had a no-error clause in their contracts—with death as the penalty for misrepresenting God, even once. Today’s dime-a-dozen cyber prophets have batting averages that would make most pitchers who have to bat for themselves blush with embarrassment. But these "prophets" get away with their repeated strike outs, so they not only continue swinging and missing, they also up the ante with increasingly nutty—and easily disproven—proclamations.
While the majority of the false prophecies have been about King Trump’s glorious return, some are more wide-ranging and more specific. Perhaps the most prolific YouTube “prophet” is a young man named Troy Black, who has a new “God-told-me” prophecy almost every day. Some of the “prophecies” are sufficiently vague that he can proclaim them to have been correct. But many others are very significant, very specific—and very specifically and significantly wrong. And when I and others point out his errors, his reply is that he’s just an imperfect human.
By that standard, we’re all prophets. Everyone at times guesses what the future holds. Sometimes we get it right. More often, we’re wrong. That’s not prophesying; it’s speculating. But despite the frequent—and often spectacular—errors by Black and these other self-proclaimed “prophets,” hundreds of thousands of Americans—Americans who have the constitutional right to vote and to bear arms—continue to follow and defend them. So the “prophets” continue to profit from their competition for the Bonkers trophy as they concoct more and more outlandish conspiracies. And America inches closer to collective psychosis.