I Call Bullshit Ichabod*

I read with half-amusement the following post from The Wittenburg Door blog entitled “Resolutions of the Televangelists 2008.” (For those of you unfamiliar, The Wittenburg Door is a satirical magazine geared toward the “churched” set…kind of like Mad Magazine or Cracked.) My amusement faded as I realized that each one of these morons actually did or said what is referenced in each of the links in these bullet points…see the links…

• Pat Robertson: I will not make delusional predictions for the coming year unless at least one of my previous predictions at least partially came true. I will repeat this resolution to myself three times a day so I don’t forget it.

• Joel Osteen: I resolve to frown at least 15 minutes each day so my smile will look genuine the rest of the time. But I will do it hanging upside down in my gravity boots so that the frown looks like a smile.

• Kenneth Copeland: This year I will speak into existence a world in which Sen. Grassley is a teensy-weensy bumblebee bat, one of the world’s most endangered species. Then I will suck him into the engines of my $20 million Cessna Citation as I fly off to the Fiji islands.

• Benny Hinn: Whenever Jesus Christ appears to me visibly onstage, or when I hear his voice audibly as if he were standing right beside me, I will pinch myself, and then have one of my aides pinch me too. Then I will have another aide pinch that aide. And so on.

• Joyce Meyer: I will upgrade my $23,000 commode** with a bidet, but switch to a lower grade of toilet paper. And each time I lambaste the concept of separation of church and state as being unconstitutional and “a deception from Satan,” I will re-read the Constitution and place a call to the Evil One, just to check my facts.

• Creflo Dollar: I will repeat five times a day, “The decreasing value of U.S. currency this year does not reflect on my personal self-esteem.” But I’ll still keep tryin’ to change my name to Creflo Krugerrand.

• Jan and Paul Crouch: We resolve to simplify our lifestyles away from reflecting the glittering Versailles of the “Sun King” Louis XVI to the more ecologically sensitive regal ostentation of Restoration England under Charles II. We will call this “going green.”

• Hal Lindsey: I resolve to be even more confrontational about radical Islam in order to obscure the failure of my 37 years of end-time predictions and remind people that I still exist. Darn, I miss the Soviet Union!

• Rod Parsley: If I ever say “Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load–for the thirty, forty liberal pastors who filed against our ministry with the Internal Revenue Service” again, just shoot me.

• Randy and Paula White: We resolve to remember to pay for private jets we say we’re going to purchase, instead of coughing up $112,000 in damages for cancelling the deal. And we resolve to place in our bio only those doctorates we actually earned, and to claim only doctorates at schools that actually exist. Oh, and we resolve to make sure there are no pesky lawyers around when we scam an old lady out of her life savings. Amen.

• Bishop Earl Paulk: I will fast from sex scandals the entire year. Instead I will promote my dominionist theology and the belief that Jesus will not return until the whole world has heard about me.

• Richard Roberts: I resolve to cancel my wife’s cell phone contract, skip the annual home remodeling at university expense, return her red Mercedes convertible and white Lexus SUV, and see about the possibility of shredding the document-shredding machine. Oh yeah, and find a way to unplug the Unblinking Eye of Sauron from the ORU Prayer Tower and take it with me.

• John Hagee: I resolve to squeeze my corpulent, jiggling torso into a barrel and roll from San Antonio to the Holy Land to support the State of Israel. Who will join me?

Come on, people, WTF? How has churchiness*** gotten to this point? I mean really…these televangelists didn’t get rich or allowed to make such ridiculous proclamations without thousands of blind sheep enabling them.

You know what this proves to me? People are searching for truth. They need something or someone to follow.

It reminds me of the scene in “The American President” where Michael J. Fox’s character is practically begging the President to speak up for himself because the public is believing all of the lies his nemesis, a Senator, is spouting to the press. The President thinks people will believe what they want to believe. Fox says, “They don’t have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”

The President comes back with, “People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”

There is a lot of truth to that statement, given the fact that all of the televangelist hoopla started 20 years ago, and it’s still going on.

Still. Going. On.

Here’s a concept: let’s start thinking for ourselves instead of falling for every fraud that comes along supposedly in the name of Jesus. Trust yourself that God gave you the faculties to work out your salvation. Stop giving these people your hard-earned money. They don’t need it. Somebody in your own neighborhood surely could use it more…and you just might be the miracle they need to get through the day.

Study the facts. Consider the facts. Make your decision. Go with it.

By the way, the same goes for picking our next President.

Think for yourself, folks! Cut the heretics loose.

*Hebrew for “The glory is departed.”
**a $23,000 marble topped commode?!?
***closely related to truthiness