Viewable Online Here
Native son Richard Roberts may soon join the list of religious hypocrites. Roberts is the son of prolific evangelist Oral Roberts. He is also president and CEO of Oral Roberts University.
Three dismissed ORU professors have filed a lawsuit, alleging Roberts and his wife misused ministry and university funds.
The alleged abuses include his daughter’s senior trip, in which the university jet was used to fly to Florida and the Bahamas. The trip cost $29,411 and was billed to the ministry.
The professors also accuse Roberts of ordering university and ministry employees to do his daughters’ homework.
Robert’s transgressions are matched by those of his wife, Lindsay.
She is accused of spending $39,000 of university and ministry funds at a Chico’s clothing store.
She is also accused of racking up $800 monthly phone bills using university-owned cell phones
to exchange hundreds of text messages with underage males late at night.
She probably wasn’t trading pot roast recipes.
Furthermore, she is accused of awarding scholarships to her children’s friends and firing long-time university employees and replacing them with male acquaintances.
This is not appropriate behavior for religious leaders.
No God, religion or good-hearted human can condone stealing money, particularly when the funds are meant to further the word of God.
The fact that Roberts is defending himself and his wife by saying — more or less — God has told him the lawsuit is baseless is disheartening.
Unfortunately, this flagrant hypocrisy — exemplified here by Protestant leaders — occurs in virtually every religion.
From the priests of the Inquisition to the mullahs of the Taliban, religious leaders have long exploited their positions of leadership.
In the process, the guilty often perverted the religion until it suited their agendas. This was the basic premise behind the Crusades.
The clergy called for Christian warriors to fight the Muslim invasion of the Holy Land. Priests throughout Europe told their parishioners they would receive salvation if they fought, regardless of their conduct before or after that crusade.
In an eerie reversal, misguided Muslim leaders are calling for war against Christian infidels using much of the same reasoning. They call it a jihad — or holy war — and claim Allah will grant eternal salvation to those who die in his name fighting his enemies.
First, these sheiks have no authority to declare a jihad, especially on innocent people who have done nothing wrong.
Islam views the killing of innocents as a grave offense and — like other faiths — reserves a special place in the afterlife for those guilty of it.
Unfortunately, the way outsiders perceive Islam often overlooks this fact, instead focusing on the rhetoric of hate-mongering clerics.
The reason such hypocrisy finds a lasting place in many religions is that they often shift allegiance and loyalty from God to a person.
That person, whether he or she is a legitimate religious leader, is a barrier to forming a personal relationship with God.
Worse still, the leader gradually convinces his followers the only way to experience religion is through him.
The follower drifts farther from scripture and the “true” religion and closer toward the leader’s agenda.
This holds true for the legions of mega-church attendees and followers of flamboyant televangelists. On a more dangerous level, it also is an accurate portrayal of those who follow radical clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr and Mullah Mohammed Omar.
With adherence to a man — rather than to a higher power — comes real trouble. God or Allah or Yahweh never commands the faithful to kill.
Clearly, not all religious leaders are misguided. The majority of them are learned, pious and decent individuals who care about their fellow man.
Nevertheless, virtually all instances of religious conflicts and faith-based militancy come from religions that stress the importance of designated leaders, be they priests, imams or rabbis.
I am not aware of Buddhist crusades or Baha’i suicide bombers.
The designated leader systems of the Abrahamic religions have been in place for thousands of years.
By combating the hypocrisy of some of the theological middlemen — and perhaps even removing them completely — adherents of all Abrahamic faiths can gain greater understanding of their relationship with God.
Unfortunately, I don’t see it happening, at least not for another 1,000 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment