K.P. Yohannan on American Christianity

K.P. Yohannan hits hard concerning American greed and materialism. This presentation hurts...

Part 1



Part 2

Merry Materialism

During the Christmas holidays, I think Christians have the most difficulty with materialism. American culture has a huge expectation for excess. The expectation suffuses everything that we do as Christians to the point that we often do not even recognize it.

Ostentation and self-gratification exerts enormous clout during the holidays. Good citizens are expected to exchange gifts with people who have no needs, to purchase new baubles for the themselves, to put the stores in the black for the year, to drown their children in a sea of toys, to enshrine the materialistic ethic. Meanwhile, a mere continent or so away, people are struggling to maintain even the barest essentials of life.

Americans take their excess for granted. We lavish gifts on one another and, if we give at all to the third world, we only spend a very small fraction of our total Christmas giving.

How much is enough? Is being comfortable enough? It seems that we continually redefine comfort as our financial reach grows longer. Somehow the guideline of personal comfort takes us every time to the limit of our budgets and leaves us unable to practice the barest minimum of charity for the poor and starving.

Christians battle the iconography of our country. Santa Claus, an icon now largely shaped by Coca Cola depictions and marketing, used to be an emblem of charity and compassion. In his original incarnation as Nicholas of Nicea, the fiery champion of Christianity at the Council of Nicea who slapped the heretic Arius, Saint Nicholas represented someone who poured his life out for the lost and suffering. How distant is that memory of Nicholas?

Did God promise us safety, comfort and material excess when he gave us the ultimate gift in Christ? Quite the contrary, God promised us that the world would revile us, that we be foreigners on earth and that we might be called upon to pay the ultimate cost for our faith; our very lives. In America, we are blessed that the season of persecution is not upon us.

I believe that most Christians vainly imagine that when times get tough that they will rise to the occassion and blossom spiritually by giving their time, money, family and life for the Gospel. If we cannot blossom while the days are still sweet, persecution will only spur our blight.

Here is an opportunity to pour out your life for the lost and to defy a materialistic Christmas....Gospel for Asia.

Self-Indulgence and Profits of Sin

If those who profess Christ do not clean up their own house, unbelievers will continue to drag Christ through the muck. Take for instance, the recent self-indulgences of Eddie Long, pastor of a massive church in Atlanta, Georgia.

• $350,000 luxury car.
• $1.4 million six-bedroom, nine-bath mansion on 20 acres.
• Between 1997 and 2000, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc. provided its founder with at least $3.07 million in salary, benefits and use of property.
• In those same four years, the charity only made $3.1 million in other donations. It’s impossible to tell to whom those funds went as the records aren’t itemized, as required by the IRS. The four-person board responsible for overseeing the charity included both Long and his wife.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has opened a Senate investigation of various complaints levied against gross excess within mega-churches. Those being investigated include Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn and Paula White.

My Uncle Clyde recently sent out a list of the private planes owned by these mega-wealthy pastors (International Pentecostal Church of Christ E-Date):

• Paula White - Hawker-Siddeley "Jet Dragon"
• Jesse Duplantis, Jerry Savelle, Mark Bishop - Each have a Cessna Citation 500 ringing in at $1.25 million each.
• Fred Price, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn - Each have a Grumman Gulfstream II. With a two-man crew and 19 passengers, these cruise at 581 mph with a range of 4,275 miles. Used, they're worth about $4.5 million each.
• Paul Crouch - Bombardier Challenger 604. Carrying a crew of two plus 19 passengers, she cruises at 529 mph with a range of 3,860 miles. She's valued at $16.5 million, not including Paul's "special interior remodeling."
• The late Ken Hagin - Challenger 601valued at $6 million.
• Joyce Meyer - Challenger 600, $4.5 million.
• Kenneth Copeland - Cessna Citation 550 Bravo ($3.4 million), a Grumman Gulfstream II ($4.5 million), a Cessna Golden Eagle, and a Beech E-55, a lesser aircraft and his own airport. Copeland said that God wanted him and Gloria to each have their own Cessna Citation Ten super-jets at $20 million each.

All of these names have resurfaced again-and-again as people who have taken the widows last mite in order to live a life of self-indulgent luxury.

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping (2 Peter 2:1-3).

Citations:
Atlanta Journal
Religion News Blog