The Blindness of the Pampered - Why Churchmen Don't Usually Question The Status Quo
One of the big reasons churchmen of all types almost never question the status quo (politics, authority and control issues in churches) is because the status quo as it stands usually benefits them in some way or another. I would imagine that in the highly unlikely event that the status quo required that churchmen (pastors, itinerant church minsters, etc.) go through some kind of mandatory poverty, pain and suffering in order to qualify, you could bet your bottom dollar that they would run to the Scriptures with bells on to study up and prove that view to be totally wrong (which it is). So sometimes benefits can be quite beguiling and blinding.
It's like the itinerant author-speakers who are given $5,000 to come to a church to teach on a Sunday morning and the pastor puts them up in luxury hotel accommodations including a hot tub and chocolates laid out on their pillow. What's not to like? Never mind that the host pastor is a theological nutcase and control freak lunatic who rules the congregation with an iron fist, who is abusing members and ruining marriages. Never mind the fact that this pastor's sole reason for inviting the speaker is to use the speaker's misguided and propped up unbiblical teachings (and new best selling book) on church leadership and pastoral authority in order to convince the congregation to bow down and serve the pastor even more so, all so that the pastor can gain even more submission from his already pathetically fawning congregation.
But the guest speaker doesn't question anything. Nothing. Not only doesn't anything seem out of the ordinary, but he doesn't even have a clue that all the buzzing worker bees who are wildly busy anticipating and taking care of every possible trivial desire of the reigning pastor, is more like the activities surrounding the king of a country, nothing remotely like the ministers we see in the Bible who serve in humility. The itinerant minister doesn't notice anything amiss. Never mind the fact that the clear teaching of the Bible is that the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are the servants of all, nothing along the lines of authorizing clever men to figure out endless ways to be served. Nothing seems out of the ordinary to these ungodly men. Well why should it? This kind of thing is going on in almost every professing Christian church. Now of course if these same "ministers" were being mistreated while being a guest at a church, and were abused, taken advantage of and downtrodden just like the robot workers, their eyes might quickly be opened to there being huge problems in those places.
The widespread existence of this blindness is obviously related to the fact that these visiting teachers are specially privileged and are a celebrated part of the commercialized church system itself and therefore they have no real opposition to (or any qualms with) the status quo. They actually like it exact;y the way it is! And again, why not? This kind of reminds me of a line from a movie I once saw, where a driver is stopped by the movie's main character and through the window is asked how he likes his new Mercedes Benz, and he answers, ”What's not to like?” So it's clearly in the carnal best interest of these men for everything to remain unchanged. With all the money, power, prestige and popularity, who in their right mind would want to give all that up? Well, someone who loves God and His people would! Not surprisingly almost without exception, these ministers have no desire to even discuss the subject.
Authoritarians and celebrities in the church enjoy much ill-gotten privilege and so it is in their so-called carnal “best interest” to keep it that way.
Those who are part of the institutional commercial church system usually have no legitimate reason in their mind to question it. They may think they have many “good reasons” to not look into matters of church politics, control-based leadership and all the resulting abuses, but the people who are abused and downtrodden have personally experienced a boatload of good reasons to diligently look into these matters. And thankfully, some of these people start noticing problems, end up doing some research and eventually wake up to see that the abuses they have been suffering are not really what God wants at all. They come to realize the truth from the Bible, that God wants no such thing for them or from anyone. They see that they have been hoodwinked, not by God of course, but by clever men who twist the Bible for their own ends and personal benefits.
The average itinerant teacher enjoys all the privileges, puffery and “rights” that go along with proponents of control-based leadership and if called on the carpet, most of them will vehemently defend the system and will quickly try to justify it in one way or another. And like almost everyone else who is caught in the authoritarian church control grip, they think we who challenge this ungodly system with sound biblical evidence are "rebellious" and "in gross theological error". We are not. We are correct because we simply teach what the Bible teaches, the basic easy-to-understand truths of Scripture. They do not. It’s that simple. While we teach the simple truth, they teach complicated ways “around the truth” that are not remotely biblical.
Now I don’t want to paint with too broach of a brush here and over-generalize. There are actually some good itinerant ministers in the world. But the ones who are the most celebrated and the most famous tend to (but not always) teach the most false doctrine, the most pastoral submission and tend to be the most problematic. And although I have not mentioned this until now, I don't want to forget to point out that the most pampered person of all in the modern church system is usually the control-based “senior” pastor himself, the cleverly concealed puppet master who is pulling all the strings, while his every desire is taken care of by the very people who have no clue that they are being abused. What a con, what an evil game.
ChristiansFree.com
One of the big reasons churchmen of all types almost never question the status quo (politics, authority and control issues in churches) is because the status quo as it stands usually benefits them in some way or another. I would imagine that in the highly unlikely event that the status quo required that churchmen (pastors, itinerant church minsters, etc.) go through some kind of mandatory poverty, pain and suffering in order to qualify, you could bet your bottom dollar that they would run to the Scriptures with bells on to study up and prove that view to be totally wrong (which it is). So sometimes benefits can be quite beguiling and blinding.
It's like the itinerant author-speakers who are given $5,000 to come to a church to teach on a Sunday morning and the pastor puts them up in luxury hotel accommodations including a hot tub and chocolates laid out on their pillow. What's not to like? Never mind that the host pastor is a theological nutcase and control freak lunatic who rules the congregation with an iron fist, who is abusing members and ruining marriages. Never mind the fact that this pastor's sole reason for inviting the speaker is to use the speaker's misguided and propped up unbiblical teachings (and new best selling book) on church leadership and pastoral authority in order to convince the congregation to bow down and serve the pastor even more so, all so that the pastor can gain even more submission from his already pathetically fawning congregation.
But the guest speaker doesn't question anything. Nothing. Not only doesn't anything seem out of the ordinary, but he doesn't even have a clue that all the buzzing worker bees who are wildly busy anticipating and taking care of every possible trivial desire of the reigning pastor, is more like the activities surrounding the king of a country, nothing remotely like the ministers we see in the Bible who serve in humility. The itinerant minister doesn't notice anything amiss. Never mind the fact that the clear teaching of the Bible is that the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are the servants of all, nothing along the lines of authorizing clever men to figure out endless ways to be served. Nothing seems out of the ordinary to these ungodly men. Well why should it? This kind of thing is going on in almost every professing Christian church. Now of course if these same "ministers" were being mistreated while being a guest at a church, and were abused, taken advantage of and downtrodden just like the robot workers, their eyes might quickly be opened to there being huge problems in those places.
The widespread existence of this blindness is obviously related to the fact that these visiting teachers are specially privileged and are a celebrated part of the commercialized church system itself and therefore they have no real opposition to (or any qualms with) the status quo. They actually like it exact;y the way it is! And again, why not? This kind of reminds me of a line from a movie I once saw, where a driver is stopped by the movie's main character and through the window is asked how he likes his new Mercedes Benz, and he answers, ”What's not to like?” So it's clearly in the carnal best interest of these men for everything to remain unchanged. With all the money, power, prestige and popularity, who in their right mind would want to give all that up? Well, someone who loves God and His people would! Not surprisingly almost without exception, these ministers have no desire to even discuss the subject.
Authoritarians and celebrities in the church enjoy much ill-gotten privilege and so it is in their so-called carnal “best interest” to keep it that way.
Those who are part of the institutional commercial church system usually have no legitimate reason in their mind to question it. They may think they have many “good reasons” to not look into matters of church politics, control-based leadership and all the resulting abuses, but the people who are abused and downtrodden have personally experienced a boatload of good reasons to diligently look into these matters. And thankfully, some of these people start noticing problems, end up doing some research and eventually wake up to see that the abuses they have been suffering are not really what God wants at all. They come to realize the truth from the Bible, that God wants no such thing for them or from anyone. They see that they have been hoodwinked, not by God of course, but by clever men who twist the Bible for their own ends and personal benefits.
The average itinerant teacher enjoys all the privileges, puffery and “rights” that go along with proponents of control-based leadership and if called on the carpet, most of them will vehemently defend the system and will quickly try to justify it in one way or another. And like almost everyone else who is caught in the authoritarian church control grip, they think we who challenge this ungodly system with sound biblical evidence are "rebellious" and "in gross theological error". We are not. We are correct because we simply teach what the Bible teaches, the basic easy-to-understand truths of Scripture. They do not. It’s that simple. While we teach the simple truth, they teach complicated ways “around the truth” that are not remotely biblical.
Now I don’t want to paint with too broach of a brush here and over-generalize. There are actually some good itinerant ministers in the world. But the ones who are the most celebrated and the most famous tend to (but not always) teach the most false doctrine, the most pastoral submission and tend to be the most problematic. And although I have not mentioned this until now, I don't want to forget to point out that the most pampered person of all in the modern church system is usually the control-based “senior” pastor himself, the cleverly concealed puppet master who is pulling all the strings, while his every desire is taken care of by the very people who have no clue that they are being abused. What a con, what an evil game.
ChristiansFree.com