“LOOK MOM! ANOTHER SUPER CENTER!”
There is a new building going up in a town a few miles from us. Since our small town consists of a convenience/grocery store, the nearest town is 13 miles away. This is the place we go to the grocery, Wal-Mart, movies, etc. Anything you want to do can practically be found in this small town of about 16,000. Especially “super centers”. There is a Wal-Mart Super Center in this town, and the town 15 miles west of us, and the town 20 miles southeast of us, and in the town 24 miles northeast of us and the town 22 miles north of us, and so on and so on. Our son-in-law is a maintenance supervisor for the Wal-Mart Distribution Center, so our grandchildren don’t know what a “mall” is. The only mall in our “small” town is about 4 or 5 stores and our other son-in-law calls it the “small” instead of the mall because of the ludicrousness of the name “Mall” attached to it. But our grandchildren have one word they know and completely understand – SUPER. Super Size, Super Center, Super Man and so on and so on. They know beyond any doubt what the word “super” represents. A few days ago while on the way to the new Wal-Mart Super Center our daughter passed this new building going up and our 10 year old grandson exclaimed “Look Mom, another super center!” he thought there was a new shopping place being erected. Our daughter had the undaunting task of explaining to him, and the 7 year old and the 4 year old in the car, that this is not another super center – it’s a new “church” being erected. She explained to them that this is one of the reasons why we no longer attend these cathedrals of glass and brick. Because they are what he saw them to be – nothing but Super Centers.
This world has become a world of Super everything. We Super Size our food, Super Size our Stores, Super Size our Cars, Super Size our Homes, and the list goes on and on. Super Size has become a status symbol. If we are Super Sized, then we have something more to offer than the guy next door. It doesn’t matter how much it costs us, money or calories or debt. Doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the SIZE.
How many times have we heard the words of Solomon “out of the mouths of babes shall every truth established”? Well, this 10-year-old babe spoke the truth that day. This building being erected is a monstrosity. It can be no less than several million dollars worth of building. I saw the bell tower sitting on the ground the other day and I was appalled at the size of it. It must have cost every bit of the cost of a small home. Think about that – THE COST OF A SMALL HOME!!!!! Whose home did they take from someone who needed one for that bell tower?!?!? How long can these buildings and establishments that call themselves churches and pillars of the community continue to get by with this?!
No wonder Jesus turned over the tables of the moneychangers!!! They had turned the house of God into a den of thieves! Are the buildings and congregations we call churches any different today? I say they are worse! The pastors and evangelists preach from their mighty pulpits the dangers and sin of debt – yet they strap their congregations with the debt of these erections! The talk shows and radio shows are full of programs about debt consolidations, debt relief, why debt is sin, on and on and yet they owe out the teeth on these buildings! Who’s paying the bills? It’s the poor and needy mostly! Some upper and middle class folks who want status in the community. Some paid by donations from benefactors who want to be forever remembered as “generous”. Mostly though, the bills are paid by the forgotten ones who come every time the doors are opened and give their dollars and feel guilty if they don’t. Mostly it’s the erroneous belief that God will remove their “blessings” if they don’t give. Mostly it’s the pressure tactics of the Pastor, Priest or denomination that teaches the law of tithing as a truth. So where do the poor fit into these cathedrals? God forbid! The poor are completely forgotten. Oh – they are remembered on the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays by everybody. That’s the one time of the year where the regular parishioners can get their guilt relieved and “feel like they are doing something meaningful”. The reality is that they are further humiliating the poor. What the poor want is to be recognized as human beings and receive relief from their circumstance - and loved. To be given to without recompense. But instead, when the poor approach these edifices for any help at all on their rent, utilities, food, transportation, clothing – the basics of life – they usually must fill out a 3 page or more questionnaires about why they need the church’s help; go through hours of financial counseling, leave feeling more humiliated than they did when they went and less than human. Sometimes they leave with a few clothes from somebody’s closet they didn’t want anymore, or couldn’t turn into cash at a yard sale, and Good Will wouldn’t take. A little bit of food that devoid of Thanksgiving and Christmas, was the cheapest thing somebody could buy to donate (something they would never buy or eat for themselves) or something they emptied from their cabinets that nobody wanted. A little – and I say little – help on the utilities, rent, etc. And all this – only after they are found worthy of the support! Not all are found worthy. I know – I’ve been there!!!! God allowed me to experience this side of the church in order to free me from their bondage of lies. Thank God, I’m not there anymore.
Jesus said to give to him who asks. He didn’t qualify the gift! He said to owe no man anything except to love him. Yet the churches today are no more than the Pharisees who have put burdens on men’s backs too heavy to carry and don’t lift a finger to help them when they burden them with the debt on these buildings. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t you love to have a business where all you had to do was preach about 3 hours a week. Keep an office open when available for somebody to talk to you - by appointment only. Pray at a few funerals and marry a few people and you made more than $50,000 a year, had a home provided for you, car allowance provided for you, insurance provided for you, and just pass the plate every time you open the doors (typically 6 hours more or less a week) and people willingly gave their hard earned cash to support your business! Imagine! Well, there’s no imagination in the facts. This is the congregations today that call themselves churches. And they are happy in their state. They are completely blind to the deception of it all. This is the Great Delusion God said he would send – that they would believe the lie. This is the apostasy. Full-blown! Another Super Center!!!!!!
It’s time to wake up the true church. It’s time to speak out against these places like John the Baptist did. Like Jesus, Peter, Paul, John, Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, James and the rest did! Stand up and tell the truth for the truth’s sake. Call a spade a spade like my grandson did. When his mother told him that this building was wrong because the money that should be going to the poor and homeless and needy that Jesus said it should go to, my grandson’s response was that he was going to have a big building he could fill with food, clothing, money, cars, anything anybody needed and all they had to do was come and get it. Out of the mouths of children…………
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