The Bank of God

In 2004 when I had reached an absolute bottom in my life, I sought comfort in the one thing I thought could count on, back to church to find God.  So I went to a church, they happened to be having  a revival.  There were preachers there I had grown up with, Rod Parsley, Creflo Dollar and I was excited to hear them.  The first day, the sermon was about giving to the church and God would bless me.  The next night the sermon was about giving a double tithe to receive double back.  Third night I heard about how if I would give in faith all my needs would be met.  Well I was not in need of money, I was quite capable of working and taking care of myself what I needed was to know the broken heart and soul was loved and could recover from the ordeal that had caused the problem.  I walked out of the church and swore I would never go again, because if all those preachers wanted was money then the God I new was no longer in the church.

The other morning I woke up after falling asleep with the TV on to catch a paid for Church show that happened to be Rod Parsley's church.  And again, the sermon was about giving to the church to get back, this preacher (not Rod Parsley) even went so far to say that if people would give in the next specified amount of time, that God would give them back a 1000 fold return.  Really, 1000 times the investment is a pretty big promise of a mortal man to guarantee an Omnipresent being like God is promising. 

At first this show made me mad, I thought of Jesus and the money changers in front of the temple and how he got mad and destroyed thier tables.  I thought of how the church becoming secular was not a place of worship and fellowship like our anscestors wanted so long ago.  It has become The Bank of God, where people deposit their money based on empty promises by the preachers who would rather live off of the money of the people than to teach about love and compassion.  These religion brokers push greed, hypocrisy and hate.

But instead of being mad, this whole thing just makes me sad.  What about all the people who believe in God who are good honest Christians who are descent to other people.  Their God has made into something he was not.  Then I began to think about our country, Occupy Wall Street, and the correlation between The Corporations and The Church.  In both people are disposable, just faces with no names.  I think when we put "In God we Trust" on our money back in the 50's, a self fulfilling prophecy was started, but the God of money replaced the God of the people.