When Sharon, John, Serina and Ye Peng left prison, there was little fanfare. All that they had received, at most, was a passing mention in the papers. They then returned to their family, loved ones, and it was a long-awaited rest and restoration for them.
Although they were the right-hand men and women of Kong Hee at that time, and were convicted in a long-drawn out trial and appeals together with him, the church they served with heart, soul and time did not receive them the way Kong Hee was received yesterday.
It was reported this morning that when “the 55-year-old walked up the auditorium at Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre yesterday to speak to the congregation, the crowd cheered.”
In fact, I read that before that, the congregation was specifically asked not to clap, but clap they did, to thunderous effect. Alas, so much adulation, so much respect.
Maybe, that was how things are supposed to be. The order of nature’s line of hierarchy.
You see, Sharon, John, Serina and Ye Peng were the “followers” and Kong Hee was their leader, their shepherd. Therefore, his impact exceeds theirs, and so is his popularity. The adulation is expected, even normal.
One of the long-standing members of 19 years, Alvin Lee, 39, said this: -
“He has always been a leader, a visionary and a shepherd to many of us. I’m basically looking forward to him bringing up our spirituality.
Personally, I’m thankful that the chapter has closed and thankful that the church has stayed intact and the the congregation is still united.”
Now, when Kong Hee took the stage, he looked like Gandalf the white minus the overflowing beard. He appeared to have lost weight and was duly humbled. The flair of yesteryears was gone, or at least not apparent. And I guess he spoke sense this time, displaying earnesty, remorse and hope.
He thanked the church for their support and said: “Having been away since 2017, it feels really surreal to be reunited with my family, especially my parents, siblings, in-laws, and all of you again.”
He added: “I have missed out on a significant part of my son's growing-up years with the long-drawn court trial and incarceration. My absence has also pained my parents deeply. Now that they are already in their 90s, I wish to be a filial son and take care of them, and catch up on all the time we have lost.”
Lesson? Two or three?
In the report (by Theresa Tan and Yuen Sin) Daniel, a 45-year-old engineer, said: -
"Because of that incident (over the misuse of funds), people may now judge Christianity based on City Harvest, which I think is a disservice to what Christians really stand for. To be judged alongside City Harvest and Kong Hee is a tragedy. From what I know, the church is still preaching the prosperity gospel and I don't think that is compatible with Christian values.”
At this juncture, I wonder, what do Christians today really stand for anyway?
If we measure it against the timeless benchmark of the Beatitude, how do we stand up? Here are just three of what I mean.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Poor here doesn’t mean poverty. It has its spiritual overtones. It points to a spirit of dependence and contrition. That is why Spurgeon said: “The way to rise in the kingdom is to sink in ourselves.”
I feel that this is a constant struggle for megachurch leaders, who are at the center of it all, to sink in themselves.
Even if they resist such adulation, it does not stop the adulation because prominence, tangibility and centrality bring about its own daunting temptations. And many have fallen because of it.
They sadly become the creation of their culture, even though they very much want to think that all has been wrought by their charismaric hands.
How about blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted? Do leaders of prominence today even need to mourn to be comforted?
If Kong Hee had not been prosecuted by the secular law, will spiritual discernment even trump the loud cheer of endorsement he regularly gets from the tens of thousands? At its peak, he had close to 30k rooting for whatever he was saying and doing.
You know what is even scarier? That those who remain in his church (last count was 17k), or at least the majority of them, do not even think that he has done anything wrong. There are even camps within the church that believe wholeheartedly that he has suffered for Christ, a martyr for God’s glory.
I guess judge See’s 200-plus ground of decision, based on more than 5 years of evidence, doesn’t even come close in weight, sensibility and truth when it comes to the sweeping emotive wave of charismatic leadership.
Nowadays, the need for mourning is only experinced when you get caught and through solitary confinement, you hopefully mend your ways.
But all that (trust me) risks being completely unravelled and undone in a brief season should the repenting leader still have the unwavering support and praises of the adoring crowd.
Alas, the counsel of pride is never far from such occasion when the self is given an opportunity to explain itself. Self-justification always gets in the way of self-renunciation.
This leads me to my third point, “blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
After what I have written, in a megachurch context, meekness risks becoming a means to an end. And if vice pays homage to virtue, then pride in this case may just pay tribute to meekness. The risks are always there, and we discount or dismissed it at our own peril.
We therefore need independent and discerning check and balances. And my fear for Kong Hee is that his rehabilitation in prison may be undermined, disrupted or confounded outside of prison, and this fear is not unjustified starting with these words by his spokeman: “(Hong Kee’s) role in the City Harvest Church is a spiritual one; he has no executive role.”
For what is a church leadership if it is not essentially a spiritual one? For its administrative arm is nothing without its spiritual head. That is his existential call and purpose.
And the church spokesman may think he is assuring the public authority that Kong Hee has been administratively or executively “de-fanged”, but the reality, if we are not blind to it, is that the church has been waiting for his return. I dare say that all the church events quietly culminate to this moment. The wild, irrepressible cheers undoubtedly attests to it.
Therein lies the danger when a wounded leader returns to an alternate-reality world that instead of supporting his healing and rehabilitation, it unfortunately makes him question whether he should complete (or worse abandon/suspend) the full course of his reform.
Let me thus end with what Gandhi once said when he was asked what would he do if he was given the powers of omnipotence. He replied that he would immediately renounce the powers, all of it.
I believe he would readily renounce it all because he knows that ”we are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful.”
The same principle here applies to our personal healing and reform. It is about brokenness, about being poor in spirit, with a contrite heart, and subjecting ourselves to the refining process of godly grief.
And the last thing we want in our Christian journey of restoration is to give the self an avenue to arise by satisfying its desires for recognition, attention and power. This is the building blocks of the cult of personality, and we are all vulnerable to its insidious effects, in particular, megachurch leaders.
No comments:
Post a Comment