Bill was going to have double by-pass surgery. Good hospital, good doctors, pretty standard procedure. He wasn’t happy about it, but he would do whatever he needed to do to be healthy. He was soon to retire from the fire department of a small city where he was the captain of one of the divisions. Just in his early 50s, he and his wife Sandra looked forward to traveling. He was also the chairman of the deacon body at our church and was a fine Christian man.

          Surgery day. Sandra and her two adult daughters were there. No one was particularly concerned. Bill was a strong and healthy man. We prayed with him before he went in. A few hours later the doctor came out and told us all was well. He was still sleeping but would wake soon and we could see him. I had someone else in a hospital a few miles away, so I said my goodbyes and promised to stop in later once Bill was awake.

          Bill never woke up.

          The machine that handles the functions of the heart and lungs during the time the heart is stopped had malfunctioned. Instead of infusing the blood with oxygen as it ran though it was infusing it with carbon dioxide. Bill was without oxygen to the brain for a number of minutes. He died a week later, never having regained consciousness.

          His widow decided not to sue. There was no point, she felt. Bill was gone. But a week after Bill passed, another man died at the same hospital from the same thing caused by the same machine. The nurse who called Sandra begged her to sue, if for no other reason than to just hold the hospital up to their responsibility. Sandra decided to do this and a long drawn out legal battle ensued.

          This, however, is not a cautionary tale about hospital abuses. Bill’s situation  weighed heavily on our minds when I had my surgery, but that is something else entirely. During Sandra’s early meetings with her lawyer, he told her what kind of questions would be put to her on the stand. The defense would try in every way possible to call into question Bill’s health, saying eventually that he was so sick and weak he was about to die anyway. How much did Bill drink and smoke, what kind of wild sex did he have and with who, what kind of illegal drugs was he on. Sandra was shocked. Bill was a good Christian man. He didn’t drink or smoke or have any bad habits. Yes, the lawyer told her. Her legal team would have a doctor on the stand who would testify to Bill’s fine health and obvious clean living. But the point of the defense’s line of questioning was to put doubt into the jury’s mind and to rattle Sandra in order to get her to say something incriminating. (The defense team did just that and Sandra was a rock.) Sandra looked at her lawyer and said, “I know my Pastor will testify that my Bill was a good, good man! The jury will believe him!” Now, here is the point of this blog edition. The lawyer looked at her and said, no, the worst thing that can be done in a situation like this is to have a minister on the stand. No one believes or trusts them.

          That was over twenty years ago. Sandra won her case. Hospitals throughout Ohio had to change their maintenance standards. Sandra won a settlement, but it wasn’t as large as most thought she should have, but that wasn’t the real goal of the suit. It all worked out.

          However, it was the first time I had run into that attitude about ministers. There was a time when a minister was respected for no other reason other than the “Reverend” at the beginning of his name. It was like that when I started. But things had changed. Not just with ministers, but with any committed Christian. No one believes or trusts them.

          That is kind of harsh. When did this change happen?

          Well, it wasn’t a sudden thing. People the nation over didn’t just wake up one sunny Thursday morning and say, “You know what? I don’t trust my pastor as far as I can throw him.” No, it came along gradually. Little ripples in the pond, mostly, along with the occasional big splash. Some minister who embezzles a little money from the church. Doesn’t affect any other church but does shake up the church that was stolen from. A ripple. A minister has an affair. Doesn’t affect a wide number of churches but it is another ripple. Then the big scandals came along. These are the big splashes. They really disrupt the pond. But all the smaller incidents together cause great damage, too. Meanwhile, the good news that came out of churches has lessened as churches decline. Churches and denominations reject the teaching of the Bible to try and stay in harmony with society and all that it accomplishes is that society despises the lack of spine in those churches and denominations. Now, the pond is in disarray. The waves eat at the shore line. Only in places where there are rocks to block the waves do the waves not break and destroy. Just pockets of dedicated Christians.

          The latest big splash happened last week. Jesse Duplantis, an evangelist out of Louisiana, is asking people to send in $54,000,000 so he can buy a new jet for the ministry. He expects it will happen, too, because he has done this before. Three times before. People have sent in their five and ten dollar contributions to buy these planes so he can fly around and preach his version of the Gospel.

          The media is doing what they can to make him look like a fool. No one believes or trusts them.

         The thing is, of course, he isn’t a fool. He is a huckster. He is using religion to feather his nest. He says he needs this new plane so that he can fly anywhere in the world with only one refueling stop. I think you can make a lot of stops for 54 million dollars. I know nothing about this man. Have never heard him preach. I have very little use for the televangelists. They do way more harm to Christianity than good.

Millions of people out there will dig into their pockets and buy him yet another jet so that his ministry can encircle the globe. His ministry has a location in the United Kingdom and in Australia, so he is international. To prosperous, English speaking countries. He is going to be at a meeting in Edmonton in Canada later this month. Does he really need the new plane? And if he has it, he has to have a crew to fly it. Two pilots and one in-flight crew member as well as a ground crew. If he had the plane he wouldn’t have to ride in some big airliner and mix with the ‘little’ people. He wouldn't have to take his shoes off in the terminal like the rest of us so TSA could check for bombs. If he had the new plane he could fly triumphally into Edmonton this month and people would flock to hear the Word. It boggles the mind.

Does he really need the new plane? No, he does not. He is attracting attention, though. CBS posted a video of him pointing to pictures of the planes his ministry has bought. He points to the first plane and talks about it for a bit, then the second and then the third. The fourth picture is the Starship Enterprise from the TV show Star Trek. He is looking like a fool. Then, he says that if Jesus were here today Jesus wouldn’t be riding a donkey. He would be jetting around the world preaching the Gospel. Now he is making Jesus look like a fool. He is asking his followers to send in them money, just like they did before. He is making them look foolish. Wow.

Are his followers foolish. No, they just want to spread the Word and he is promising to do so for them. Is Jesus a fool? No, Jesus is God. When He was here He could have gone anywhere (without a fueling stop) He wanted to go. He could do the same now, too. Instantly. But, His mission was to Israel to begin Christianity. Maybe He wouldn’t travel around the Holy Land on a donkey, but maybe He would, too. Is Duplantis a fool? No, he is a con-man who wants a fancy new plane to fly to Canada. He doesn’t care if he damages the world’s view of Christianity. He just wants his plane.

The Gospel needs to be spread. The intention was never for one man to do the spreading. We are all involved. We need to share with our neighbor, our friends, our co-workers. We must not depend on the televangelists of the world. People who hold up Christ in such a way that the world jeers His holiness.

Don’t be taken in. I can take a verse here and a verse there and make it say whatever I want. But you cannot find a book in the Bible that holds an entire passage that says that if you believe in Jesus and have enough faith, you can have anything you want. We are Christians. We are not fools.