When it comes to fundamentalist preachers, there’s nothing like the way they choose to express themselves from the pulpit. What they say, in itself, can be quite surprising. Like the recent fight with Mrs. Benny Hinn, going out of her way to deliver a good rant sermon to the masses and making a fool of herself. In the typical breathless tirade of evangelical theatrics, she told the audience that what they needed was “an enema from the Holy Spirit, right up the butt.” Honestly, that’s what she said and repeated it. She then went on to tell the audience not to be “butt kissers”. Considering that she had probably crossed too many lines, she tried to recover by saying that people like her have that kind of humor, but it was too late and the tape spread around the world, and not in a good way. She then frantically paced until she broke her shoe and told the audience that she didn’t need shoes anyway, they had to put on combat boots for Jesus. I guess this got her out of the shame of breaking her shoes. The end came mercifully when she fell face first on the stage, and everyone started clapping as if this was from God and the perfect ending to a perfect sermon. It was pathetic and the scary part is that not one person in the audience stood up and said “I’m out of here.” They loved it.

The fact is that nothing he said in the “sermon” was useful. Nothing he said was correct and virtually nothing he said was anything other than an attempt to appear inspiring and ended up being utterly foolish. Poor Mr. Hinn was so angry that the video was being played all over the world, he threatened those who showed it, I understand. I do not blame him. What a moment at the breakfast table of the good old days after that must have been!

What is it about fundamentalist preachers who apparently have to lose their minds and common sense in an onslaught of “techniques” that leave most educated people laughing out loud? Do they not realize that they are being laughed at?

When a preacher tells the audience that the reason Bathsheba was called Bathsheba was due to the fact that while King David was watching her from the roof, she was Bathing!

I’m not kidding, I heard it with my own ears and wrote to the man suggesting that if she had been showering, we would have known her as SHOWER-Sheba. The man was just ignorant and I nearly ran off the road laughing. On the other hand, he was pathetic and I often wonder if anyone in his congregation called him out on that little piece of ignorance. Sometimes I wonder more about the audience than the preacher.

What can be said from the pulpit can be incredibly silly or incredibly damaging. Pat Robertson tells us that hurricanes are from God punishing New Orleans or that Ariel Sharon’s coup is from God for ceding part of the West Bank to people who also need a real place to live. His comments are erroneous, ignorant, foolish and dangerous in these pronouncements. It suddenly came to light (most will do that when you defy a particular piece of ignorance and never do when you never question it) when the State of Israel canceled its affiliation with them and one of their pet projects in Israel, but it was too much. late. Good for them to put a price on talking nonsense from the pulpit. I guess the State of Israel was able to discourage Pat’s inspired comments. God, I suppose, was forced to rescind the inspiration from him and give in to the present dilemma.

Time would not account for all the ignorance that comes from the pulpits of untrained, uneducated, uninformed and unaccountable men and women for their presentations. Sanctified ignorance remains ignorance as far as we know.

There were dinosaurs in the ark… bad

The Earth is only 6000 years old…wrong

Our church is the only true church on earth… wrong

Evolution is a doctrine of Satan… wrong

Dancing is a doctrine of Satan… wrong

Whatever you ask in the name of Jesus, you will have… wrong

“I am the true representative of God on earth and I am obliged to say these things…” incorrect

If you title, God will bless you and pour out the windows of heaven on you… bad

God is doing this…wrong

God is doing that…wrong

Jesus thinks this of that…wrong

Jesus thinks that of this… evil

“I know I’m going to go on a long way in this sermon… but you need to hear this…” wrong

“You need to put Church and Bible study and being here first in your life…” wrong

…and so on, in such a way that it would be convenient for most of the preachers of this way of being to join On and On Anonymous!

Perhaps most infuriating and pathetic of all is the WAY many evangelical, TV, and fundamentalist preachers present themselves. What’s with the cadence from hell in the presentation? What about the “eh” “eh” “eh” at the end of every sentence. I realize physiologically that it helps them breathe or they would pass out, and while it may be a “tradition”, it is not useful for educated parishioners. Maybe that’s the problem too.

What about the screams? Always yelling and always giving the appearance that they are angry. Preachers are angry because they think they can’t be preachers without showing their righteous indignation at every single thing on the planet that they decide is bad and needs the iron rod of Jesus to beat it with.

I heard a preacher this morning go into work only to see him pass out and become absolutely speechless trying to scream and speak and breathe at the same time. I don’t think a weak human being was lost in introducing him that he wasn’t hitting the congregation over the head with. Sometimes I sense “it seems to me that you protest too much”. I have learned that much more often than not, simply look at the issues that the preacher repeatedly critiques on and you can get a good clue as to what is troubling his own ignorant soul. Every minister in my personal experience who was known to rail against this or that “sex issue” was struggling with himself. Projection is something that most parishioners of fundamentalist preachers do not understand.

No one can sacrifice the English language like a crazed preacher behind the pulpit. Imagine a meeting at IBM or the Oval Office (well I can there ;), conducted in that tone and style, and you find someone being escorted off the premises looking for a new job.

Sermons are full of meaningless phrases and pronunciations. If I were to write down what was said and read it again, it would sound ridiculous. From “Haaa..eeeeeezus says”, to “days (there is) a time to come…”, a clever and meaningful presentation is lost in a flurry of emotion and drool. HOW you say something for many preachers far outweighs whether what one says is true. Remember, in fact, science by the nature of being science has to be accurate and admit errors. Right now, we have some very embarrassed and angry South Korean scientists who found out and admitted that their recent cleanup projects were bogus. Sorry about that, but good for them.

Preachers not only rarely admit their mistakes, but seem to have a need to perpetuate the mistake. As God is never wrong, they are never wrong either, since they believe they speak and are inspired by this external force called “God”. Just ask yourself how many times have you heard a preacher or church say that he was wrong when he said this or that and you will understand what I mean. Because of this, many fundamentalist sermons are delivered in angry, emotional, threatening, and self-righteous tones. I can only imagine what some of the kids are thinking while watching the show. They will often tell you years later how crazy the church they grew up in was.

Every scientific fact that the church has ever scoffed at as being contradicted by the Bible has eventually had to admit it to be correct. Of course, many don’t, and never will, Praise Jesus for my ignorance because “man’s wisdom is foolishness before God” and “my ways are not YOUR ways… says the Lord”. The preachers hid a lot of ignorance behind those two quotes.

It only took 350 years for the Pope to apologize for almost burning Galileo at the stake for thinking that the earth was not the center of the solar system and that the sun surrounded it. He didn’t apologize for doing it to nameless others. Science has yet to recognize a Biblical allegory as literally true in its actual findings. Eventually, the “facts” that the church promotes in areas where they don’t know what they’re talking about boil down to the actual facts. Even more so now in these days of easy access to the internet for information previously unavailable to the average person.

And so, sometimes we have to ask ourselves, “what are our chillins in Church learning from such preachers?”

For starters, they are learning:

Shouting trumps teaching.

Good grammar doesn’t count in church.

God is a consuming fire if you question the preacher.

Emotions trump good information.

One can be badly programmed for life and not realize it.

The brain and YOUR intelligence and common sense can certainly be checked at the door when you go to your church.

Preachers are never wrong.

YOU are rarely right.

“Jaaaaaaheeeezus” loves the sinner but hates the sin, but it seems like he hates the sinner too.

Mom or Dad never seem to think that what I think the preacher is saying and doing is stupid…something must be wrong with me.

God and Jesus must be delusional madmen if this man or woman is their personal representative on earth for me.

Narcissism must be a spiritual gift.

Take some time and just listen to the words of those who fit these ways of speaking about God. Notice the antics they feel they have to use to convince. If your head says “it must be like this” while your belly says “no, no, no”, go with your belly. He will tell you the truth of what you feel more accurately and you will not feel that something is wrong with you for observing that while he is sincere, this man is really not qualified to teach me who and what God is and what he is. he or she is not doing on good ‘ol planet earth. He will also be able to respond more genuinely to the question his children are asking, whether he knows it or not. “Dad, why is the preacher yelling and why is he talking so weird?”