The issue with megachurches (Final Part III)

Over the decades, I have grown with my faith and religion. My thoughts about it have changed in response to the changing landscape.

Being a Christian for 31 years, and in the ministry as a pianist, youth and adult cell leader, and even leading in songs and writing plays for the church, I have experienced a fair bit about the spiritual and organised side of religion.

Over the years, I have never stopped reading, learning and understanding this religion of mine.

I have written about it in my blog, questioned the divine about his intervention and non-intervention, empathised with Him on the seemingly intractable responsibility He holds as the universe's divine maestro balancing all things good and evil, and shed tears in prayers and fasting in the past. 

The adventures and misadventures in my religion have been quite a journey.

At most times, I considered myself as a defender of the faith. I used to enjoy mingling with hardcore atheists and cross "theodicy" swords with them over the existence of God.

And here's a secret about dealing with the hardcore atheists...ready? The secret is, to start by asking questions, and never launch off with a mouth-spew of what the Bible says. 

To them, quoting the Bible is a non-starter. They neither believe what you say or what you have to say about what the Bible has to say. The moment you sprout scriptures to them in a pharisaical way, they turn on their switch off mode.

Somehow, our annoying certainty as believers in the face of disjointed reality irks them to the core.

But dealing with the atheists is not the hard part. And over the years, I find less meaning doing so. Not surprisingly, some have become less robust in their so-called sword-fights or verbal exchanges.

However, that does not mean they are more open to the message. On the contrary, they have grown from being dismissive to being apathetic about it.

Of course, there are those who are sincerely touched by the message of Calvary. But there are many others who are genuinely disillusioned.

They are disillusioned for many reasons. For example, I spoken to one or two law interns and they told me that the City Harvest affair was their main "meh" moments - so to speak. 

I guess if I can pin it down to one thing about today's mega-church movement, it would have to be the prosperity, live-it-up aspect of the belief. In other words, it is the promissory side of organised religion that has caused many to walk away in disgust. 

To me, Christianity has become a promise-some belief. I use that word "promise-some" in the same way someone would use words like "wearisome", "troublesome" and "burdensome".

Here's what I mean.

If you look at churches that are growing today in the thousands, they exist only about handful. And they are honey-potting the faith to the max. Their names are familiar to any churchgoer and embracer of the faith.

If you pigeonhole them into neat categories, they come under the following unmistakable charismatic umbrellas: the healing church, the prosperity church, and the signs and wonders church.

They are the fastest growing churches in the religious belt of any country. They are what many would call the culturally relevant churches. More relevantly, they are promises-galore churches that most of the time hook people up on the intravenous drip of outstanding hope and blessed fortune.

Apart from the eternal hope, the one that makes the things of the earth to grow strangely dim, these churches psyche the people up with the earthly trinity of immediate healing, instant prosperity and inviting signs and wonders.

They are more like the great attraction than the Great Commission, and trust me, when you puff it up, they will come, and they will come in droves.

It is like the believers are each given a golden ticket to hold close to their chest, waiting in anticipation (or, as most would like to call it, in faith) for that big win of that promised healing, wealth and wonders.

Of course, some would strike it big with their petitioned divinity; yet others, mostly in the majority, would strike out, and live most of their life in the self-deluded bubble of what I call the "promise-some" hope.

Alas, before Jesus left for Calvary, he reminded us of adversity, trials and temptations. He painted no blue skies, calm waters or serene horizons for us. He in fact told us to count the cost. For life is trouble, as surely as sparks will fly upwards.

But Jesus did not stop there. He ended it in triumph by assuring us that he has overcome, so shall we.

But the culturally relevant churches are sending a different message today; a more finessed/moderated one. In my view, it is a brochured message where we are instantly invited into a holiday of faith once we cross the redemption threshold at the altar.

The people are told that Jesus has already done the heavy lifting for them, and they are therefore called into Eden-lux living, expecting that all their earthly troubles will settle themselves somehow as long as they keep believing, trusting and hoping.

Let me caveat that there is nothing wrong with keeping the belief, trust and hope. But the issue is that these glittering preachers make the faith so one-dimensional, so devoid of or separated from the everyday reality that their congregation have to confront once the soul-rousing sermon ends on Sunday.

Things are often not what they seem, and this is not because they do not have enough faith, trust or hope, or a combination of them. No way Hosea.

The reality is, there is an unnerving disconnect between the promises dished out in these churches and the life the believers live outside of the church.

These preachers are forgetting that we are not energizer bunnies that they conveniently wind up during sermon time so that we may charge out of the church door to a song-and-dance routine for the rest of the week. I therefore feel that there is a reality-distortion field in some of these churches.

Anyway, didn't the wise man of old once said, "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart"? This is not a call to put on sackcloth and sprinkle ashes on one's head. It is a call to confront reality with the Cross before us, moving forward in faith and hope, and not hide behind it in a dreamy state of belief, deluding ourselves with one day striking the big ticket blessings.

In fact, this biting irony seems to escape most who sit on the pew to take in the "hook, line and sinker" of the Sunday sermon. And it is this, you will note that the only confirmed recipients of prosperity are the leading advocates of the health and wealth gospel. They are the ones reaping it in, that is, pressed down, shaken together, and running over on their lap.

If you want the stats, just look at the prosperity preachers from across the Atlantic to the ones nestled cozily up here. They are without a doubt the full and true beneficiaries of the blessed prosperity that they holler about from the comfort of their pulpit.

They preach about material blessings, and they are living in mansions and driving fast cars. They preach about overcoming, and they live in financial victory, very much insulated from money woes because of the retirement wealth they have gathered up for themselves. And they preach about believing big because their God is a big God, and they are definitely living it up with every word that comes forth from their mouth.

So, this brings me back to the disillusionment of atheists in general (and even some believers). The trouble is that they can't really tell these churches apart from the corporate world anymore. We have lost them on the issue of authenticity, that is, the line is blurred between professing that one is in the world but not of the world and living that profession out not just in words but action.

In fact, one of the megachurch pastors of late even compared the running of his church to the running of secular companies. I guess the modus operandi is indistinguishable.

It is mainly about keeping the numbers quota up, dishing out what they want to hear, exciting the masses with carnival-like programs, demonstrating some mysterious awe and wonders here and there, and letting the cash pile up in the church coffer under the control of a handful, or worse, one.

I therefore can't really blame the atheists for their antipathy to the faith, or at least their reservation about it. To some extent, they may just have good reasons to keep organised religion at bay.

Let me end with the words of Malcolm Muggeridge, the famed satirist, who once said:- 

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.” 

And for some organised religion, the drive may just be the same as what Malcolm had described...only the disguise is more sacred. Cheerz.

The tyranny of One thought.

Let me start with a thought. A philosophical thought. A thought so simple, it’s hard to believe how much power it has on us. In fact this thought is the start and end of all our problems. Here goes: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by their opinions about them.” (Epictetus).

Everything is a matter of perception. How we see something affects us more than what that thing actually is. Reality is in fact no scarier than how we think about it.

Men (and women) are controlled not so much by the turmoil around them but by the turmoil within them. I know this is basic self-help 101. But this is the irony. That dismissive phrase, that is, “Isn’t this all basic self-help 101?” is itself no less a thought that has influenced us in more ways than one - that dismissive attitude towards it.

Nothing has escaped our mind to think about things, and to subsequently allow what we think think for us. This post is about the latter phrase - "allowing what we think think for us." This is the main reason why we sleepwalk through our life by allowing one thought to control all other thoughts. That is also why Socrates kept reminding us to live an examined life, always.

But alas, the issue with us is not that we live an unexamined life. The  issue is that we allow one dominant (even oppressive) thought to do the examination for us. In other words, we see the world through the lens of just one thought. We are brainwashed by it. We exercise extreme prejudice in its favour. This is the start of the tyranny of an idea. A start of a predestined end. An end predestined by one thought.

Socrates once defined philosophy as “reflection on propositions emerging from unreflective thought.”

Sometimes, we are given to the delusion that we are actually thinking. But this remains a delusion because we remain slaves to our own unconscious habits. And all unconscious habits, by default, are left to be fortified (or perpetuated) by lack of continual mental scrutiny. It is the “One thought” to rule the others like Sauron’s ring.

So, we go on autopilot mode most of the time. Decisions are already made for us before we even make them, and the delusion that makes us think that we are actually thinking does well to effectively keep us from thinking about our own thinking; that is, to do a Socrates' type of mental spring-cleaning of all and sundry.

We are all too familiar with the seed concept. We know that a thought is a harmless seed. We are actually bombarded by thousands of them everyday. But what escapes us is the fact that a seed doesn’t remain a seed for long. Some dies off no doubt. But others are selected for growth. And those that grow, grow for attention.

Like creepers, they form a mental citadel and sieve through all thoughts that nourish it, and reject all thoughts that don’t. That becomes our default mental position. Soon, we become selective in our thinking, in words and in deeds, without even knowing that we were selective about them. This is the insidious growth of what is known as the confirmation bias.

Let me offer an example, a real life example. Here is his seed of a thought that has grown via constant nourishment, and its recursive hold goes like this:-

“There is a part of me that used to think that I am smarter, better whatever, that nearly made me die.”

Sadly, the author of that quote committed suicide. His name is David Forster Wallace. He was an award winning American novelist, an admired professor and was called “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years.” (Los Angeles Times book).

Wallace suffered from depression for more than 20 years and was on anti-depressant drugs. On 12 September 2008, at 46 years old, he went into his garage, left a two-page note, and hung himself on the patio.

Of course, there is more than meets the eye here. His death may be genetic, environmental, drugs-related, or a combination of all that. I do not want to oversimplify it all. 

But Wallace was also a highly intelligent thinker. He thought his way out of religion and into a form of nihilism that some may call “individualist autonomy” or “metaphysical individualism.” It is more akin to Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, an Above-Human, a Superman, Superhuman.

In the book, All things shining, the authors Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly wrote this about the tragedy of Wallace’s death, and the irony of his quest for perfection by the sheer might of his own brilliant mind:-

“Perhaps the saddest part of Wallace’s story is that the human qualities he aspired to, the capacities of spirit that he revered and coveted, are a mirage. Indeed the entire mode of existence that he castigated himself for not being strong enough to achieve, far from being the saving possibility for our culture, is in fact a human impossibility. Wallace’s inability to achieve it was not a weakness, but the deep and abiding humanness in his spirit.”

Amongst other contributing causes, the quest for and the futility of perfection finally drove Wallace to his grave. And this is the same person who once said this about taking control of your thoughts:-

“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that…learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

The tragedy here is that the same thought (of pursing perfection) that liberated Wallace for a season might well be the same one that took his life in another. He was eventually controlled by the one thought that drove him to see the meaninglessness of it all. I guess it would be  what Wallace would describe as being “totally hosed”.

Now, it can’t be denied that we are constantly being bombarded by thoughts running helter skelter within us. Some may think that their mind is a fortress, surrounded by a moat of metal resistance, and locked in the center by an impregnable forest of cerebral fauna and flora. We stake full control over it. We think we do. 

But that is a delusion of control we all suffer from. Our entrenched bias shuts out most thoughts seeking an audience with us, seeking to change us for good. And in some cases, it is the same bias for the protection of that one (destructive) thought that might just drive a man to kill himself, or commit acts seemingly uncharacteristic of him, because he becomes the summation of that thought he thought he had control over.

Take the exceedingly pious monk Martin Luther for example. He was one devout professor who was completely obsessed with the purity of the spirit, and any hint of personal sin would make him scamper for the claustrophobic refuge of a confessional. This is the thought of tyrannical religious puritanism.

It is said, with a pinch of salt of course, that Martin Luther once kept his confessor for six hours to hear the full recitation of his sins. Things came to such absurdity one day that Luther’s confessor finally rebuked him, “You must get a hold of yourself, Martin. Every time you fart you want to make a confession of your sins…Quit coming to me with these puppy confessions, Luther…Go kill your father or something – then we’ll have a sin to talk about.”

Let me end here with the consoling words of Epictetus, “The robber of free will does not exist.” We are ultimately still in control – to varying degree. And our sphere of influence is in the thoughts that we generate to direct our words and actions, as it is said, “a thought produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.”

So, a little disciplined and focused reflection will reveal why we act the way we do or say the things we say. A little more reflection will reveal the biasness of our deeds and words. And a little deeper we go will smoke out the first thought that was once a seed that had over the years grown into a mental despot within us, calling the shots.

Once that is smoked out, the real battle of the mind begins. It is the greatest battle of our life, and it takes place away from the external world, away from the world of action. It is the world of our mind that will determine our fate in the world out there. And it is our struggle within that ultimately makes or breaks us. Cheerz

Be a Drip Parent for your kids.

A boy came home and told his mother that he got 198 points for PSLE. His mother gave him a dressing down. 

This is what the boy recalled about that day. "In the end, she told me I had to help myself and do my best...We were on our own and had to chart our own destination." 

Today, Mr Mohammad Syafiq Mohammad Suhaini had just completed his sociology degree in NTU and will be starting his master's in sociology at Oxford University. 

After his mother's dressing down, he said: "I was dying to show myself that I could do it. If I don't do it, I will live with the disappointment all my life."

Here comes another inspiration. He came from a broken family. His parents divorced when he was nine. His mother remarried. He drank and smoked in secondary school. He was in Normal (Academic) then. 

But Mr Tan Boon Thai's point of inflection came when Ms Sim Hui Hwang, his Sec 5 English teacher, crossed his wayward path. 

He recalled: "My English was bad and at that point, nobody cared. My mother wasn't around much either. But Ms Sim kept encouraging me. She made me stay back after class and lectured me until the security guard chased us home. She did not just talk to me about English, but about life."

Today, after Ngee Ann Poly, he enrolled into SMU and excelled in information systems and business management. 

And lastly, in comes Mr Joseph Yang. He failed his English in O levels and went to ITE. He said: "All these years, I've tried to gain back what I lost. 

When I was young, I didn't study hard enough. I always did last-minute work and if I didn't understand something, I did nothing about it." 

What changed was when Joseph enlisted in the navy. His six-year stint there transformed his life. He attributed the change to his supervisor. The latter would guide him. 

Joseph said: "I felt so ashamed because I went through proper training in ITE with textbooks, unlike my supervisor in his 50s who had no qualifications. But my supervisor knew everything - he first started out as an apprentice and then learnt bit by bit."

Now, Joseph is an executive engineer with SMRT and a graduate in electronics engineering with honours (highest distinction) (NUS). 

Lesson? One. 

There was an Israelis water engineer by the name of Simcha Blass who noted a strange occurrence one day. 

In a row of trees planted by a fence, one of them was growing taller than the rest. It distinguished itself from the others.

Simcha found that strange because this row of trees was planted at the same time, in the same soil, and exposed to the same climate, rainfall and sunlight. What could account for the accelerated growth?

After some probing, Simcha knew why. There was a leakage in the irrigation pipe at the base of the row of trees. This leakage caused a continual drip of water on just that one tree and that accounted for its growth. 

This was when Simcha invented drip irrigation for higher crop yield. He also became the architect of the amazing Israelis water conservation system in an otherwise hostile, harsh and dry terrain. 

There's a lesson here, in Simcha's story. It's called parenting. It's about being a drip farmer for your kids. 

Each of the student's life above tells of a drip farmer who has made a difference, who has never given up on them.

It tells of a mother who loves, a teacher who cares and a supervisor who guides. It tells of their pivotal influence, that is, a fortuitous "leak" in the lowest point of their lives, and how they grew because of that persistent drip of encouragement, hope and belief. 

Success doesn't happen in a social vacuum. As parents, we do not need to create a memorable day or two in a year by organising a birthday bash for them or take them on expensive holidays once in a while. You don't need a lot of money to make up for lost time. 

You just need to be there for them when it counts most. Drip irrigation made the difference because it was always there as a source of nutrient for that one tree. 

We as parents can do just that by being there for our kids. And by doing so, we are letting them know that they are facing this with their hand in yours, their heart on your watch, and their hope on your back. 

Drip irrigation as a metaphor for parenting works through being consistent, patient and hopeful with the object of our devotion. It works through setting up small points of inflection along the way that push our child's trajectory upwards. 

But have no delusion. Parenting by "drip irrigation" may not turn our kids into top scholars or millionaires later in life. That's never the point.

But it does one thing that matters most well, and that is, our children will grow up to know what unconditional love truly means, and that will form the foundation of their growth in character, contentment and gratitude.

Their growth will all come from within, and when that is fortified, they will be more than ready to face the world out there. Their resilience will show, their hope will persist and their joy will keep them going, all because our love never gave up. 

Alas, the world can be an ugly, harsh and dry place like the Israelis land, but they will have enough glow from within to make an enduring difference in their life, and the lives of others, especially their own children's life. Cheerz.