re:Christian
EPISODE 11: Obscene Osteen
Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 11: “Obscene Osteen.”
In the dictionary of despicability, if there is one—I just checked, and alas there is not—there should be a long entry for a creature that’s offensive and livid-making not only for Christians, but for the world in general. Yes, the televangelist. I can hardly say the word without bile forming in my belly and a strong desire to rant and fucking swear to the heavens coming over me. Jesus.
An evangelist, a preacher, is bad enough in that they are leading a congregation in believing the big lies about God and the Bible and Christianity. But that preacher often drives a domestic car, makes a modest middle-class income, and is worried about interest rates being high when it comes time to renew their mortgage. Televangelists, at least the ones that are good at the truly evil things they do, are not like that. At least one of their sources of income is the pockets of poor people, even seniors on fixed incomes who have to keep it a little chillier than they would like in their bachelor apartments in brutalist concrete towers. These people, and others who are poorer and richer, and believers to a greater or lesser extent, all these people send money to these telegenic fuckers in the false belief that they will receive something in return. The range is wide. Sometimes a cure. Sometimes a “blessing,” whatever that means. I remember one from years ago where what you got for your donation was a “special” prayer cloth. Yes, a fucking rag, so that the mission and more importantly the televangelist’s bank account could continue to thrive. And sometimes the televangelists claim they need their money in order to keep spreading the good news about Jesus, or some other such drivel. God help me.
One of the most offensive ones is a tall, oddly gaunt, thick-haired charlatan named Joel Osteen. O-S-T-E-E-N. I’ve had periods in my life where could watch him at some length (not hours, but minutes), but now I’m down around a few nanoseconds. I’m a very calm person, both inside and out-, but the smarmy platitudes and pleas of this fuckhead always succeed in raising my temperature. In the bad way. He runs the third-largest church in the US, which is saying something, because making the top three in America in attendance capacity at either a televangelist tent or at a football stadium puts you in pretty heady territory.
His church was in the news recently not for stealing, but for killing. A woman entered the church with her 7-year-old son and started firing. She injured at least one person, but then she was shot and killed by security guards at the church, and her son was seriously injured with a gunshot to the head. It turns out she was mentally ill (a schizophrenic) and had a criminal record. Her son is still in hospital. And just a side note to this story that tells you something about the crumbling empire that is the United States. She was not only able to buy an AR-15 rifle—just Google that and you will see that it’s not the kind of puny firearm you hunt rabbits with—but she was quite legitimately allowed into the church service after showing her gun at the door because in Texas they have what is called open carry legislation that dates from September 2021, and applies to handguns, rifles, almost anything. “Free speech,” you know. WTAF, as the kids say.
Osteen’s church, called Lakewood, is located in Houston, Texas, and used to be a professional basketball stadium (the NBA). It can hold almost 17,000 people. Wikipedia says that Osteen’s net worth is $50 million and that Lakewood takes in over $40 million a year in donations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Osteen). That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of gullible people shelling out dollars that many of them can’t afford to shell out. That’s one greedy pastor.
Or, I suppose, smart pastor, handing out bromides and false hope for life after death, and leveraging it into money money money that allows him to live quite comfortably, to say the least. You can see pictures of his $10 million home online, and they remind me of that scene from comedian Bill Maher’s satirical documentary of religion called Religulous. Maher is talking to a priest or someone else in front of the Vatican, and he points back at the luxury of it and sensibly asks the guy if he really thinks this is what Jesus had in mind when he talked about spreading the word of God. (In passing, the net worth of the Vatican is kind of impossible to find online—not that there’s no information, but that there is too much, and a lot of it is untrustworthy—but it’s anywhere from 10 to 50 billion, yes, billion, dollars.)
You got a sense of the shallowness of Osteen in his reaction to the shooting in his church. In a report from the BBC, Osteen’s official statement was quoted: “Our community is devastated by today’s events and grateful for the swift actions of law enforcement. In the face of such darkness, we must hold onto our faith and remember evil will not prevail” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68277166?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA). Well, Joel, those swift actions resulted in an innocent kid being shot in the head. If the government and people of Texas want the big-dick energy of carrying a goddamn gun around with them all the time, maybe they should learn how to aim it too, for fuck sake. “Law enforcement,” he calls it. Any idiot can spot a woman with a gun and then shoot a hail of bullets to take her down. Check the size of your dick and sign up for firearm lessons and target practice.
And, no, Mr. Obscene, evil will certainly prevail. It’s not the devil with the pitchfork that you talk about in the fairytales you preach. He won’t prevail, you’re right, because he doesn’t exist. Evil will prevail, first because that is hard-wired and hard-evolved in the nature of humans. It’s not a good thing, of course, but a certain percentage of us are going to hurt a certain other percentage of us. I wish I could blame your God for it, but he doesn’t exist either.
And second, you are part of the evil that prevails. You feed it. You get it funded. You enjoy the fruits of its continuance. And, yeah, “hold onto our faith,” you say. Sure. Nothing like people straining their faces and their budgets to support a comforting myth. Nothing like sending more money to clean up the blood on the floor of a fucking church.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a full transcript and for how to contact me. I welcome all comments and suggestions. And please join me again on Monday.