Pastors and Priests

For the last couple of years an influential youth pastor at Hillsong Church in Sydney has had terminal cancer. He wrote a song about it that sold well and he appeared on stage at their church services with an oxygen tube to help him breathe. Guess what happened next? He died ? They prayed for him and he got better? No, not exactly - actually last month he was found to be a porn addict and was faking the whole illness! Tearful confessions all round a la Jimmy Swaggart ( for those too young to know who he was, or too lazy to Google him, he was an American Televangelist who was discovered to have been doing kinky things with sex workers when he wasnt on TV telling everyone about Jesus and getting them to send money to him - theres always money when it comes to Televangelism! - anyway he famously went back onto his TV programme and confessed everything - well not explicitly- with tears streaming down and ruining his makeup) And then there was Jim and Tammy Faye Baker - they had a multimillion dollar Televangelism empire that crashed when Jim went to gaol for massive tax fraud that was uncovered just after he had first been discovered cheating on Tammy Faye.

So what is it with religious leaders and sex? Reminded me of the Pastor of the last church I went to, back in Dunedin in the "80's - the unmarried Sunday School teacher broke down one day and told everyone that this pastor was the father of her two kids,and it was his idea to spread the story around that they had been conceived in Australia when she went there on holiday and fell into sin. Twice! And we later heard that Frank Houston, the pastor of the Auckland Assembly of God Church had been molesting boys like a regular old catholic Priest. So the circle is almost complete because Franks son is Brian the Pastor at Hillsong!

What I always find amazing when these scandals are exposed is how quickly the congregations rush to the defence of the crooks whove been lying to them and ripping them off.Even more amazing perhaps is the way in which they refuse to allow these scandals to count against the reality of their religious experience.You would think they would be shocked that they couldnt tell the difference between the genuine article and these fakes and conmen. I presume they wouldnt want to suggest that if their service is conducted by a fake cancer sufferrer living a lie and addicted to porn its the same as if the service was conducted by say Mother Theresa - yet thats what it is. To put it mathematically:

Fake Cancer Sufferer+Porn Addiction = Mother Theresa + God.

Work that out!