Rickrolled Christianity

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I disagree with that because at church I have seen senior citizens give me a run for the money in their computer savvy. One of our elders, in his late 70's, likes to read books on his new iPad, while another uses an Amazon Kindle. A dear lady in her mid 90's was given the nickname "Go Go Grandma" by her grandchildren because of her active lifestyle and mastery of keeping up with even her great-great-grandchildren (they call her "Gigi") via email and social media.

Being a middle-aged dog, I too am still eager to learn new things. A few days ago I finally learned what the internet term "rickrolling" means. (Those 25 and under have my permission to laugh at me.)

Rickrolling is the modern-day equivalent of what used to be called a red herring or going off on a rabbit trail. It's essentially a practical joke. When you click on a link promising you something that arouses your interest, you land on something totally different or off-the-wall, such as Rick Astley's 1987 dance hit "Never Gonna Give You Up", which is how the term got its name. A poorly edited YouTube video will flash "stay tuned, it's coming" to keep you watching, then suddenly it jump-cuts to something off-the-wall (and often vulgar) with the Annoying Orange-like caption "HAAAA-ha! You've been rick-rolled!"

It got me thinking about how we Christians can easily be rickrolled spiritually. We start listening to and be attached to a particular preacher or Bible teacher because he or she seems to be teaching straight from the Bible or is bold and outspoken on cultural issues we deeply care about. The rickrolling then occurs when they begin declaring something off-the-wall theologically that we sense doesn't sound right. We check our Bible, ask other Christian friends about it, call the teacher to account for it, then decide whether or not to stay with that teacher based on their reaction.

But more often than not, we have become so attached to that Bible teacher that we set aside that disturbing rickroll as just a mistake or opinion, don't question it, and continue supporting them. The red flag is ignored and our God-given spirit of discernment is dulled. The next time it happens, we ignore it again, and again, to the point that we no longer question the Bible teacher at all but blindly continue to support him or her because of the assumed authority he or she has.

Before I came to Immanuel First, I attended Celebration Bible Church, a now-defunct independent church that met at the West Covina Senior Citizens Center every Sunday. I started going there because I knew a family that attended the church and the senior pastor helped me through some tough times. CBC was a grace-filled church that systematically taught through the Bible and welcomed people of all colors and walks of life. The senior pastor was a former Bloods gang member in West Covina whose dramatic conversion was featured on the TV program "The 700 Club", and his calling was to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to gang members still caught in the lifestyle. With his assistant pastor, a former Crips gang member and now his best friend, the two were a dramatic testimony to how Jesus breaks down barriers of hate and prejudice.

But in the summer of the year 2000 CBC took a turn for the worse when the senior pastor claimed that while asking God why his little church wasn't growing beyond 15-20 members, he said God told him it was because he wasn't properly teaching them His Word. In supposed obedience to that revelation, the pastor added a "school of membership" for new members to be taught the essentials of the faith, "school of baptism" for converts who wanted to be baptized in the faith, a "school of ministry" for the leadership to be taught biblical theology, and the requirements for membership grew from three to seven as all of the above became essentials. The worship services became bizarre as the pastor was convinced that holding hands up in praise and loud shouts of thanksgiving was the "biblical" way of praising God. The few members CBC had began to drop out saying the church had become too legalistic, and one middle-aged woman accused it of being a cult. Ultimately I left CBC too on New Year's Eve 2000, escaping to Immanuel First the following Sunday after searching the Yellow Pages for local LCMS churches in my area.

I was spiritually rickrolled, and I got out in just the nick of time.

CBC ultimately folded a year later, as the senior pastor added voluntarily commitments such as avoiding TV, movies and eating meat for one week out of every month. That pastor is now in Miami leading a new church plant there, and I was disturbed to see on his church's website he still has an authoritarian, legalistic plan for growing his congregation. While he believes he is sincerely following God's will for his life and has been featured on Christian TV, his legalistic style left me disillusioned and confused.

Just this month other Christians were similarly rickrolled when Family Radio leader Harold Camping's highly publicized prediction of Judgment Day happening on May 21, 2011 failed to come true. For years these believers had listened to the Family Radio network because it broadcast beautiful sacred hymns and classical works along with readings from the King James Bible without commentary. Camping himself used to be orthodox in his theology until 1988, when he left his own church in Alameda, California over being questioned on date-setting Christ's second coming. As he descended into heresy and outright cultism, his listeners most likely also had red flags going off in their heads but ignored them because Family Radio as a whole seemed so wholesome and comforting, and maybe Camping was just wrong on this thing, and that thing, and that other thing... until they were conditioned into believing anything he said because of his assumed authority.

It is so easy for us to become attached to Christian leaders rather than Christ himself because we want someone to tell us what is right and wrong, how to read and interpret the Bible, and essentially how to live our lives in a right way. I see it in the huge followings of Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Dr. Laura and any other pop "Dr." on TV, and I am witnessing the depression and withdrawals many women are now going through since "Oprah" has now ended its 25-year run in syndication. I also see it in the thousands if not millions who follow not only Harold Camping, but Joel Olsteen, Joyce Meier, John Hagee and other "Word of Faith" preachers who promise freedom from pain, guarantee perfect health and wealth, or in Hagee's case bellow out angry judgment against Democrats and liberals of all stripes.

But when we follow a person instead of God's Word and not discern that person's theology, we are allowing ourselves to be spiritually rickrolled. God gave us brains to use, and since "the human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9), we must learn not to blindly follow every feel-good wind or wave of doctrine (James 1:6) and instead use the Bible to vet and check anything from the pulpit that sends up those red flags.

Having been repeatedly rickrolled (or Rich-rolled in my case) spiritually, I naturally have a sense of skepticism and even cynicism about this matter. If it seems I am being too harsh or judgmental, that is not my intent and I apologize. But while rickrolling is a cute joke on YouTube, there is absolutely nothing funny about it when it happens in the walls of a church where people expect to be fed the solid Word of God and are instead getting arsenic-laced chocolate.

The Rapture that Never Happened

The attached billboard says it all. After being plastered on thousands of other billboards around the world eerily proclaiming Judgment Day on May 21, 2011, the doomsday prophecy of Harold Camping, the president and general manager of Oakland-based Family Radio, failed to come true.

Camping claimed that based on information gleaned directly from the Bible, on May 21 there would be cataclysmic earthquakes, dead bodies coming alive from graves flung open, and 200 million people disappearing skyward into heaven to escape five more months of catastrophe culminating in the end of the world on October 21, 2011.

After spending an estimated $100 million to warn the world of its pending doom, its failure, indeed, was awkward.

The day after, Camping appeared at the front door of his residence and told reporters "It has been a really tough weekend." Ya think?

"I'm looking for answers," he added, referring to frequent prayer and consultations with friends, "but now I have nothing else to say. I'll be back to work Monday and will say more then."

But people hoping that Camping would admit that he was wrong and ask forgiveness were sorely disappointed when during a press conference at Family Radio headquarters Monday night, he claimed that May 21 was a "spiritual" Judgment Day rather than a literal one, and he was initially "flabbergasted" that nothing was destroyed because he was focused on a literal judgment. Instead, God has now judged the world "spiritually" and will bring about the end of the world on October 21:

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning. The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."

God completed his judgment and salvation plan on Saturday, so there is no point in warning people about it anymore. Thus, Family Radio will instead play Christian music and programming until the real end on October 21.

As he continued to explain himself before an army of reporters and cameras, his bizarre theology came out of the closet with these rambling remarks:

• God's judgment really began back on May 21, 1988, when He left the church and let Satan take them over. Churches don't really believe the Bible is the literal Word of God because in teaching from it pastors always say "Paul says", "Moses says" or "Peter says" instead of "God says."
• There is no such thing as conscious eternal damnation for the lost, and thus no hell. In His grace and mercy, God spared the world five months of destruction and judgment because that would have brought eternal damnation on the earth. (Camping believes in the unbiblical doctrine of annihilation--that the lost will cease to exist rather than suffer eternally in hell.)
• God's period of judgment was from May 21, 1988 to the same date in 2011.
• September 7, 1994, the last time Camping predicted the end of the world, was actually the beginning of salvation for those who left the church and cried out to God for mercy.
• He declined to offer hope or assistance for the thousands of followers who blew away their life savings buying billboards and going on RV caravans to spread the May 21 message. He said that we're in a recession, and lots of people lost their homes "but they survived. People cope, people cope." Also, the great losses from the recent economic crash was much less than what "the average Family Radio listener" experienced.

With all due respect, these are the confusing and contradicting words of a unrepentant, rambling idiot.

Meanwhile, lawsuits against Family Radio may be coming. An attorney in Media, Pennsylvania is actively offering his services to devastated Camping followers who want to sue the pants off him for losses and damages incurred from his misleading information.

So what happens now? Camping has again been proven to be a false prophet and bona-fide cult leader, but the damage has been done to Christianity in general.

Well, I've made the following observations.

• The Rapture is a legitimate secondary doctrinal issue we can disagree on, but which Camping has twisted and brought into disrepute.The Rapture is an endtimes doctrine held by many evangelical and conservative churches in which believers will be literally caught up from the earth to meet the Lord in heaven before a seven-year-event called the Great Tribulation, followed by Christ's second coming to the earth to set up a literal 1,000-year reign of righteousness from Jerusalem. There are variations to this doctrine, such as "pre-trib", "mid-trib" and "post-trib" Raptures, but no exact or approximate date is ever given or assumed for when the Rapture will happen. While I no longer hold such endtime beliefs as a Lutheran, I still have fellowship and partner with fellow believers who sincerely believe this secondary doctrine and it boils my blood when nutcases like Harold Camping butcher and distort it so that it makes all evangelicals look bad.
• Camping's followers need compassion and mercy in their seeking recovery from his influence. On the message boards at Crosswalk.com a pastor met about 25-30 Family Radio listeners who fell for Camping's rubbish because they grew up in strict fundamentalist churches with authoritarian leadership that told them what to believe and why. These poor folks were never taught how to read the Bible for themselves and check what was being taught. Psychologically they have been conditioned to accept anything Camping says because of his assumed authority, just like how cult members are conditioned and brainwashed. And like anyone else coming out of a cult knowing they were duped, a judgmental "See, I told you so!" approach will not work. A gentle, compassionate and genuinely caring approach has proven to be far more effective. When I left an authoritarian, legalistic independent church in 2000, the unconditional love showed to me by the Immanuel First congregation helped me heal from that influence.
• We ourselves need to be on guard against false teachings, lest we end up just like the Family Radio followers. It's very easy for us who sit under solid biblical teaching to make fun of and dismiss the Family Radio masses as a bunch of brainwashed nutcases who blindly believe what they are taught. But have we ever been persuaded that a certain preacher or Bible teacher is trustworthy because they are bold hellraisers who condemn hot-button issues like gay marriage, abortion, moral relativism and the liberal agenda? John Hagee is such a hellraiser who has gained a large following because of his bellicose and blunt personality, but he is also a Word of Faith preacher who believes the Jews already are saved under a separate covenant with God, that positive confession can heal all diseases, and that persecution of the Jews throughout history (including the Holocaust) was because of their disobedience to God. Like with Harold Camping, we must never let the charisma of a pastor cloud our spirit of discernment. After all, God gave us brains to use.

So much more can be said of what we can learn from this whole debacle, but this will suffice.

In closing, I am humbled that at least two frightened listeners of Family Radio were convinced to switch it off completely and instead tune in to better Christian alternatives and return to the church through my corresponding with them on Crosswalk.com. Never did I ever think that I would help set a lover of God free from a dangerous cult, but I have always been passionate about apologetics, which is part of evangelism and the Great Commission. In addition to the 25-30 others now being counseled by the aforementioned pastor, I hope that this evangelism to former Camping followers is replicated nationwide and worldwide. If even one person comes out of the darkness back into the light, it will be worth it all.