Something Worse Than the IRS Awaits Greedy Televangelists

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Townhall:

The fourth circle of Hell, as envisioned by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy, is reserved for the avaricious and the profligate. It is where those whose lust for getting and spending knew no bounds in life are punished in the afterlife by being battered endlessly with heavy weights. Notable among the souls damned for their greed, Dante wrote, "were clergymen and popes and cardinals, within whom avarice works its excess."

 

What disgusted the great poet in 14th-century Florence – money-grubbing hucksters masquerading as men of God – is just as disgusting in 21st-century America.

 

Comedian John Oliver is no Dante, but on his HBO program "Last Week Tonight" he recently ripped into the "prosperity gospel" of television preachers like Robert Tilton and Creflo Dollar, who aggressively solicit donations to finance lavish lifestyles. These sleazy televangelists, Oliver said, assure followers that "wealth is a sign of God's favor, and donations will result in wealth coming back to you." They call it "seed faith" — the belief "that donations are seeds that you will one day get to harvest." And the more believers "seed," the more God will reward them with riches and miracles.

 

The conviction that charity returns blessings to the giver has been a pillar of Judeo-Christian teaching for millennia, of course. The Hebrew prophet Malachi urged people to put God to the test by tithing unstintingly. Be generous in giving to the poor, he quotes God as saying, "and see if I do not open the floodgates of heaven for you, and pour down upon you blessing without measure." In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus exhorts his followers: "Do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great. . . . Give, and it will be given to you."

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Beware of those promising false profits.