Ostentatious for God

Human beings are pathetically gullible, easily led, prepared to suspend reality in favour of faith that what a charismatic figure proposes represents truth.

What is truly impressive about peoples' willingness to succumb to such beliefs is the truly irrational manner in which faith healers, charismatic religious figures, and televangelists behave; absurdly, bumptiously, greedily. Are these qualities so attractive to huge groups of people because they reflect their own inner psyches, or because they wish to embrace the absurd in defiance of reality?

Paul may have found his purpose on the road to Damascus through his epiphany, but Oral Roberts, the acknowledged father of evangelical televangelists found his in a manner far more typical of his space in time and history as an American in love with motor vehicles. When, as a poor young Pentecostal preacher he bought a green Buick and that was his epiphany, as it "became a symbol to me of what a man could do if he would believe in God."

Belief in God as a prelude to vast, attainable riches. Ask of Him and ye shall receive in great abundance all that ye require and more; be thee of good faith and all shall avail thee. Want a mansion, a classic automobile, jewels, investments; you need but dream it long and hard and bug the hell out of God until he relents just to rid himself of your constant whining. Oral Roberts even invested in God's healing touch.

And he became venerated as a flashy exhibitionist whose right hand was blessed by God. Why, this man, so close to God's heart, could outdistance God's son in the healing profession. Jesus had a man left for dead rise back to life, and Oral Roberts did the same with a stone-dead baby. The fire in his right hand could cure what ailed you. With the proviso that you believed, that you trusted, that your faith was sufficiently strong.

Ah, the ecstasy to be realized in the dismissal of all things profane, and the embrace of the divine. A Divine Spirit who, while in perfect control of the cosmos and of the bee, the starling and the whale, could yet be persuaded to kindly allow believers the objects of their desires. And if those objects belonged to the profane world of dollars and sense, so be it; faith doesn't come cheaply, and such an investment of the mind and the soul requires interest.

Reverend Roberts challenged Satan when he was confronted, foiling his intent to carry him off to that dread underground from whence he would never emerge. God, he knew, was not yet finished with him, God required that he continue to raise millions upon millions of dollars from his devout followers; Oral Roberts's, not God's. His prosperity gospel was a resounding success!

Opening the way for all manner of other luminaries in the field of religious money-grubbing, some of whom were exemplary at extracting funds from their believing flocks, outdoing one another in the level of their mawkish demand for cash to grow their thriving churchly compounds, demonstrating to business leaders how readily people took to being taken. Their little indiscretions, when revealed, stalled them only temporarily.

For they also excelled in humbly supporting themselves through the avails of their ministries. It was simply natural that religious devotees and celebrities of their calibre should be honoured for their selfless dedication to God and His ministries. They deserved to live in adequately-staffed mansions, own fleets of expensive cars, travel on luxurious vacations, for these were men of God whom all turned to for advice.

Including presidents and prime ministers, and nobility and wealthy entrepreneurs carefully patterning their public personas on the successes these ministers of God realized.