Watching the Not-So-Mighty Fall (I of V)

The world is a surreal place, these days.

Seriously. Where to begin?

Let's start with this. About ten years ago I got a real schooling on just how much of the Kool-Aid otherwise sensible people can drink. Somewhere between 2006 and 2009 I got front-row seats to watch...

a) A senior pastor (seriously) suggest bridging a $200,000 budget gap with change jars on the television. ("Every time you turn it on, empty your pockets into the jar!") Yeah. Average church attendance? 50-75 souls. Including the babies.

b) An "upstanding Christian man" forge my mortgage documents and submit different ones to TICOR.

c) Another man call a home remodeling project "done and ready for sale" when, upon closer examination, I discovered that the sinks were not yet installed.

Somewhere in the process, my naiveté got brutally stripped away.

Layer by layer.

Oh, each person had their excuses.

The senior pastor literally stripped me (illegally) of my position on the church vestry and slated me for counselling. Apparently my refusal to believe that his budget plans would work constituted obstructionism and lack of faith.

The mortgage broker sat at the table with his boss and with me. Staring at the divergent documents. "I can't explain how that happened!" he exclaimed with amazement.

The home-improvement wannabe explained, "I was going to finish painting the walls before I pushed the sink unit into place."

For me, the consequences varied.

I fled the church with my family. The pastor, so far as I know, continues to rule his roost.

The mortgage broker cracked a few hours after the meeting and confessed. He's lucky he didn't go to jail.

The unfinished condo buried me financially for about four years.

Where am I going with this?

These experiences helped prepare me for the surreal world we now live in.

And how.

Imagine this headline...

But wait. You don't have to imagine. It's real.

I find it easier now to take in surreality on the global scale because I have digested in my own life the same meal in smaller portions. I understand better now how people tell such amazing lies. It's easy. The key to it is this: They lie first and foremost to themselves. And then to the world.

"I need Pilgrim out of the way in order to run this church effectively."

"I didn't steal anything, so forging mortgage documents is OK."

"I can say the project is finished now because I plan to finish it soon."

But back to Dr. Dobson. What's going on in his head? I can almost hear it. A series of thoughts coming in rapid succession.

"I cannot bear the thought of Hillary in office."
"I want a Republican to win the Presidential election."
"How can I endorse Trump, though?"
"Well, he tells me he believes as I do..."

At this point it gets difficult. Like trying to think like a hamster. I cannot pull of the mental gymnastics required to make Trump a good selection in the mind of the man who founded Focus On The Family.

Seriously, Dr. Dobson?

Thankfully, I learned years ago to be careful with my trust -- and that with people that I do know. For those I don't know I am even more cautious.

That's good. Otherwise I'd have been shattered, watching Dobson and 1,000+ other "Evangelical leaders" go to meet with Donald Trump. Apparently the meeting went well, by their reckoning. That headline is an outcome of that meeting.

How did so many good and wise church leaders get fooled?

Well, the answer is easy to arrive at, once you realize that none of the people who attended were godly or wise. Not while attending that meeting, at any rate.

Why do I say that? Simple. It's like a math problem that can be solved only one way. A cross-word puzzle with only one solution. We have to assume they weren't godly or wise. Now return to the question and it's easy to answer.

How did so many church leaders find themselves attending that meeting and/or endorsing Trump? In a few words? Idolatrous love of power. A commitment to the Republican party that clearly supersedes matters of faith. A hatred for Hillary. Sheer spiritual folly.

Those ingredients, in varying proportions, are what's in the Kool-Aid these folk have been drinking.

As I write this blog post, it sounds smug. Self-congratulatory.

For what?

For falling for a pastor/church combo that in hindsight was wretchedly screwed up? Part of the problem was that the pastor was a former senior VP from a massive multi-billion-dollar IT behemoth. I was fooled, in part, by his prior successes in business. Does that remind you of anything?

What else? Do I pat myself on the back for losing a huge pile of family savings on a loan to someone clearly unfit for the task? Good job, Pilgrim?

As for Dobson, should I be proud that I recognize what Dobson does not? That Trump is a boorish, racist, misogynistic and depraved narcissist? No. At least a hundred million people worldwide know that. It just so happens that Dobson is not one of them. Dobson and a thousand other "Christian" leaders.

But at some point one must point out that the emperor has no clothes. Any fool would know that Trump has none -- well, any fool who learned as I did (at that church) that having amassed piles of cash is not tantamount to being an awesome and good person, let alone a good pastor or presidential candidate.

No. This blog is not devoted to self-congratulation but rather to pointing out the surreal. That tons of big-name "Christian" leaders are so morally stunted, it would be a kindness to call them emperors without clothes. The prophet Ezekiel would have described them and their actions in more graphic terms.

I'll say it again. This blog is devoted to digesting the fact that James Dobson, Franklin Graham and a number of other big-name Christians met with Donald Trump and managed to not insult him by pointing out that he's a degenerate soul about to be weighed on the balance and found wanting. It's something Donald needs to be told, however lovingly.

It would be different if Trump went to meet any one of them individually. I'd allow Trump into my home, if he asked. That's Christian love and charity in action. (And audacious hope that Trump can still change for the better.)

But that's not what Trump did. He wants the "Evanglical vote" and so he needs the "Evangelical endorsement". In order to get that endorsement, he called for a meeting with the leaders of the voting block he wants to secure. They should have smelled the rot of his intentions — it reeks from coast to coast. Godly leaders would have stayed home.

But they didn't. These so-called "Christian leaders" responded to Trump's whistle like lemmings cross-bred with homing pigeons. Didn't they realize that even showing up was going to send a message? That Trump was a candidate who reasonable Christians leaders might endorse? But show up they did.

Even attending was huge mistake, but for many of them that wasn't enough. As can be seen from Dobson's assertion, many atttendees jumped into bed with Trump. Ezekiel would have said the same thing in more graphic terms.

So No, I'm not patting myself on the back for spotting the scam.

I'm just trying to figure out...
a) why "Christian leaders" are drinking sewer-flavored Kool-Aid, and
(more importantly)
b) why anyone else would want to drink it with them.

Stay tuned...