Charles Stanley, Endless Con Man, by Curtis Smale Some people aren’t very smart. I am one of them. Can you imagine, at almost 50 years old, I am finally seeing through some of the the major deceptions of life? Amazing. Humbling. Disappointing. I read this Bible verse in Proverbs yesterday and it said that the hand of the diligent makes rich. So, I’m thinking, hard-working people get rich, they are well-off. This is God’s truth. At the very least, they are financially stable. But, hey, that’s not reality, and that’s not what that verse means. That is what we import to that verse to make it give us what we want. The verse means that when you work hard, you can make some good money. Decent money. A pile of change. Working 40 hours will get you more money than working 20 hours and being lazy. Stuff like that. But Americans read that verse and they think that if they work hard, they will become RICH. No, baby, that ain’t going to happen. Hard workers make bourgeois pay, not proletariat pay. People get financially rich because: 1) they are born into wealth; 2) they inherit it (almost the same thing); 3) they work THEIR ENTIRE LIVES, live frugally and save; 4) they have special skills, looks, or ability; 5) they lie, cheat and steal; 6) they work for the government and they tax you into oblivion (stealing again); 7) they heavily use deception (lying again), or the stock market (special skills deception, ~and~ chance) 8) they marry it. If hard work alone made people “rich” the way Americans think of it, then the Indians and Pakistanis making 17 cents an hour making our shirts would be rich. The people who work on farms in poor countries, working harder than anyone on the planet, would be rich. But they are not. They are poor in every way: unhappy, unhealthy, working 12 to 16 hours a day, financially struggling to feed their families, etc. And their billionaire employers are very happy to pay them 17 cents an hour. And this is very similar to Charles Stanley’s scam. Here is a man who gets more than $200,000 a year that people donate to his ministry. That’s almost 10 times the amount the average American makes. If Charles Stanley was really living for the treasure in Heaven, not on earth, for spiritual values, wouldn’t he live very modestly, so that no one could accuse him of doing it all for the money? Instead, Charles Stanley takes cruises to Alaska, and takes photographic tours to Africa. Where is the humanitarian and philanthropic wing of IN TOUCH MINISTRIES? Stanley writes his books, sold by a secular publisher, a division of Simon and Schuster, on company time. Like local Colorado Springs pastor Matt Heard, of Woodmen Valley Chapel (who has just been fired for unbiblical practices), Stanley continually takes trips around the world. (I confronted Woodmen Valley Chapel several years ago about their pastor not preaching the Gospel for four weeks in a row—appealing to unbelievers who were endlessly “processing” the church’s often Gospel-free message—and financially giving generously. They finally woke up when they saw that he refused to stop using bread with leaven in it for communion, because the fluffy dinner rolls were more scrumptious than a flat piece of dry bread.) Charles Stanley has HIS name on books in tall gold letters. HE is on TV, and people flock to hear HIS “great wisdom.” “My Friend,” “Awesome reality,” and “God’s best for your life” are some of his favorite phrases. But are these just hypnotic phrases that put people to sleep, hoping that any one of these things is true? Charles Stanley is not your “friend.” Friends are rare and precious things. Important, fragile, personal relationships. It’s not some guy on TV or the radio or in a book that you’ve never met. God created the universe. Jesus died for your sins. These ARE awesome realities. But 99.999% of people do not live lives that have any kind of “awesome reality” in them, that have more than the normal beautiful things in life. And, God’s best for your life”? This sounds just like Joel Osteen, one of the world’s greatest con men, who “pastors” (fleeces?) the largest church in America. The man who shows you that your ordinary and sinful human desires are really what God “wanted” for you all along. Funny with these preachers, that God always “wants” things for you. Well, what’s holding Him back? He’s God. If He wants to give you 10 million dollars, He will. “Reality Hits” would not be a New York Times Bestseller that people will pay $26.99 for. So, I go online, and listened to Stanley’s sermons. I watched an hour-long sermon called, “God’s Wisdom for Your Best Life,” or something like that, they are all so similarly titled, all success and consumer-based and emotionally based. (Why does Stanley never have a sermon called, “God’s Judgment on Israel,” or “Giving to the Poor,” or “Most People are Headed for Hell”?) These are important biblical topics according to the Bible. Why? Because everything about Stanley’s ministry is consumer-based and profit-driven. As the old joke goes, Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. And, “If they’re telling you it will make your life wonderful, someone is trying to sell you something.” As a person who’s made some short films and studied filmmaking, cinematography, and set design a little, I can tell you a few things. His church has a very small number of pews in it. Have you ever noticed that? That’s so on TV it always looks full. If he had a huge church with lots of pews, there would be Sundays where the “audience” would look like a baseball stadium with huge empty spaces. But that wouldn’t sell the concept of, “This guy is a great preacher who everyone is always flocking to see.” Also, all of his TV show’s advertising and computer graphics are geared toward women, blacks, hispanics and (most recently) young people interested in computer games. This is crass demographic marketing, not “making the Gospel attractive” as the Bible commands. So, here’s the con. When you give something to someone for free, it is a well-known principle of selling and psychology that they will probably want to reciprocate. So Charles Stanley gives his sermons, that priceless wisdom for success and emotional happiness, for free. In return, he offers his nicely packaged sermons for “$26, or $64, $75, or whatever. When people see that this “wisdom” is from God, and that they have just been given something for free, and that they want to support a person who is supposedly giving them everything they want—out comes the wallet. A mega-multi-million dollar money making ministry is born. Televangelists used to cite the high cost of TV time and technology as the reason they needed so much money. Most people saw this for the con it was. Now, in the Internet age, Stanley must have a paid-off church building and a couple of TV cameras he paid off after a couple day’s donations. Maintaining a website costs next to nothing. Notice that what he does is BUSINESS. He is not doing his ministry and then asking for donations for spreading the truth of God’s Word. No. He gives it away free (as advertising and incentive) and then asks you to BUY a copy on CD for what you can get online for free, for a certain number of weeks. If he really wanted to simply spread the truth of what he was saying, wouldn’t he simply offer ALL of it online for free, archived? Then, ask for donations. THAT I could respect. But Stanley wants the cash machine to keep producing, so he SELLS his sermons! What preacher in all history before the last 50 years SOLD his sermons?! What a scam. Plus, people would rather have things online anyway. Who wants a CD of something they could find online in 30 seconds? I guess there is an appeal to holding a nice-looking physical CD package in your hand. But the biggest problem I have with Stanley is that his ministry is not based on Jesus, grace, and truth. It’s based on success, wisdom and emotional happiness. Of course, these other things are desired and good, but they are not to be the main focus of a Christian spiritual ministry. But, Stanley figured out, these other things are what SELLS. Occasionally, it’s funny in a sick kind of way when you watch Stanley try to sell persecution, pain, poverty and despair as something you should rejoice in and find great joy in. If God gives you joy while you are experiencing these things, it is IN SPITE of these things. Jesus endured the excruciating pain and horror of the cross for the joy that was set before Him. Truth. But suffering on the cross was not a joy! Basically, people need to learn the difference between what is true and what they WANT to be true. That would be what we could legitimately call “maturity.” But Charles Stanley sells you what we ~want~ to be true, not what ~is~ true. Why else would a listener get to the end of each hour-long sermon with the feeling that a bait-and-switch has just occurred? Stanley promised me last night that He would tell me about God’s Plan for My Life. That’s what he said he was going to do. But He didn’t lay out my next career move or my future wife’s name. It all basically came down to: obey God’s commandments and basic guidelines. Wow. Profound. Of course, we should obey God’s commandments. But that is not what Stanley promised. He said he was going to tell you God’s plan for your life. He lied. At the end, to his credit, Stanley told us that we wouldn’t become rich and famous (as he is). We would just humbly be obeying God in obscurity. Right. Now there’s some truth for ya. Stanleys sermons are an endless come on. He promises and then doesn’t deliver. At least if I go see IRON MAN at a movie theater, I know it’s a fantasy, and I pay my $9.25 for the emotional thrill of that fantasy. An honest business transaction. Less than ten bucks for two hours full of high-quality big-screen fun. Look at the faces of the aging affluent white and black people in Stanley’s Atlanta church when they pan the camera out into the audience. Look how dead, frustrated and confused they look. The man up on the red dais, like an Eastern guru, keeps promising them truth and spiritual food, and they are starving to death. Stanley has the basic Gospel and some of what he does is legit. But that isn’t what makes the MONEY. I realized long ago that people were depressed in America because they could not get their “Best Life.” They could not get that heavenly perfect life that secular print advertising and TV commercials promised them—BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST ON EARTH NOW, it only exists in Heaven. Truth is a difficult thing when all us earth-dwellers want impossible fantasies, sinful things, or heavenly things. Acceptance and contentment in our life situation might be a really good thing. Jesus provides forgiveness and salvation, that is true. My friend, the awesome reality is that God’s best for you is in Heaven. Nowhere else. --Curtis Smale
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 18:23:35 +0000
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