Televangelism or “TV Church,” as I like to call it, has dominated channel flipping since I was a child. Whenever I would visit my grandmother’s house, I could expect that TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) would be present in our viewing at least 80% of the time. Since most of my visits were around holidays, the other 20% consisted of sports. I’ve never sat down to draw up the analagous features of the two, but the presence of ravenous dancing fans who all believe that their side is going to win is mentally stimulating to say the least.

Foregoing any further trips into my personal extended family viewing practices, I flipped across Shawn Boonstra today.

Shawn is the host of a globally broadcast televangelical program called “It is Written.” Can you guess the premise of the show? You got it! With Holy God-Breathed text in-hand, Shawn uses his other hand to walk the ignorant masses across the dangerous intersection of sin and destruction called human existence. And don’t think I’m the one accusing the masses of being ignorant, these are Shawn’s words.

Today’s episode was entitled, “Resisting God.” A full script of this episode can be found at this address:
http://www.itiswritten.com/tvprogram/episode/resisting-god2?pg=all

Mr. Boonstra begins this episode by introducing us to a few power-players of the bible, while favored by God, made mistakes just like you and I, such as: Noah and his addiction to alcohol, Moses and his hot temper which led him to murder, and King David who murdered and was an adulterer.

A highlight amongst these mistake makers was Herod the tetrarch who drunkenly promised the head of John the Baptist to a “pretty dancing girl.” Supposedly, Herod had been influenced by the teaching of John the Baptist and was hard pressed to deliver on his promise. Being a man of his word, he bit the bullet and had John the Baptist beheaded.

Shawn goes on to tell us that reading these passages, one tends to believe that they would never make the kind of mistakes that our bible legends have made. But as Shawn says,

“…the whole point of these stories is that every one of us is prone to making exactly the same kinds of mistakes. You might never be asked to literally serve up someone’s head on a silver platter. But, you might be asked at a board meeting to sacrifice your moral principles for the sake of the bottom line. Or you might be asked to look the other way when you know something wrong is about to take place.”

As the episode moves on, Shawn reveals to us, that no one is born a criminal, or a mass murderer, but if we are not careful, we could all end up that way. He goes on to talk about the Israelites being led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, and while seeing miracles of God all along the way, they were always falling prey to their weak faith. Shawn’s case is further developed by claiming that “the average human being has a very short memory,” and that without complete devotion to God, we too will walk a path of chaos, misery and strife, much like the Israelites who walked around aimlessly in the desert, because they didn’t obey God. Shawn tells us that if only the Israelites would have had strong faith, and obeyed God, that God would have stood by his plan to set them up in “Palestine, in the crossroads of the ancient world, so that every nation on the face of the planet could see for themselves how good a relationship with God can be.” Yeah… my jaw dropped too.

If you check out the script of this episode, you will see that after this, it is your run-of-the-mill, alter call persuassion, that devoting yourself to God, and accepting Jesus into your heart will allow you to not have to walk around the world with your limited knowledge and perception, but will enable you to follow the plan of God, who can see the big picture and is not limited by a feeble human brain.

So basically kids, what Shawn is doing here is a standard for modern Christianity. Breakdown the individual, by persuading them that they are truly not as good as the ideal you are selling, then give them hope in said ideal, that it will take care of their inadequacy and deficiencies. Here’s the process:

1) Prey on the part of the “masses” that may indeed be “ignorant” to the ideas of morality not being an absolute set of “stone tablet” supernatural law, but a set of daily ongoing choices that one establishes based on case-specific criteria.

2) Reinforce the instability of the individual by reminding them of their past, when perhaps the wrong choices were made. Throw a line in there about how their life might be a wreck, so that you get the attention of people who are currently struggling with their humanity.

3) When you have your audience at their weakest point, and questioning the choices they have made, tell them that there is a path, that will free them from having to depend on their “inadequate” decission making process, and that this choice is a personal relationship with a deity that they will never audibly hear from, nor will they ever physically see. Just don’t tell them about that last part.

The thing about all of this, is that there is an overwhelmingly huge mass of people, who are ignorant to these tactics. To prey on them, is perverse. I am making a judgement here, and perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Shawn is an example of the effects of this type of predation. Maybe Shawn is a product of the process he is continuing. Whether this is premeditated swindling or not, Shawn is still at fault for participating in broadcasting this type of charade globally.

There was one more thing that stood out to me from this episode and I wanted to save the best for last. Shawn opens the episode with the following:

“On the landscape of great literature, the Bible really stands apart from the crowd.”

“The fact a Book like this could ever come into existence is nothing short of a miracle, especially when you consider its origin. It was written by more than 40 different authors, ranging from statesmen to fishermen, over a period lasting more than 1,500 years, and still the whole Book is in perfect agreement. Now YOU try to get perfect agreement from 40 different people, especially on the subject of religion, and you’ll understand what a miracle that really is.”

Well Shawn, I would hardly call the bible in perfect agreement. For instance, is murder a commandment trespassing sin, or are we to stone our unruly children to death at the edge of town? This is a small example, and we will cover bible inconsistencies in a future post, but I think the bigger point, is that Shawn fails to enlighten his viewers on the more than 1,500 years that the bible has been translated, re-translated edited and re-edited. He makes it out to seem that God-breathed texts were collected once, more than 1,500 years ago, and have held as a collection ever since, and, well Shawn, if you’ve been to seminary you should know better.

One thing I will say about Mr. Boonstra is that he comes across as very well educated and well spoken. He is a charming fellow who seems like more of a big brother than a preacher. Sadly, whether he knows it or not, he is a deceiver.

Sorry Shawn, you’re not fooling us.
My rating of today’s performance: 1 halo.

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