La Casa de Dios is considered a mega-church and an average of 22,000 people attend its services weekly. People travel from all over the city, many by "chicken" buses, to attend. Let me be clear that I have nothing against mega-churches themselves. If anything, they have a vast network of resources to help out the community in ways that smaller churches might not be able to. Furthermore, the people I interacted with before the service started were very friendly and watching them worship made me feel very humbled because of their passion. Guatemalans tend to be a very loyal and dedicated population; especially when religion is involved. The church itself was beautiful with awesome lighting, ambiance, and it was a very comfortable place to be.
But while the people were vibrant, the message was very dark and narrow. The pastor mainly focused on the technique of the "prosperity gospel", meaning that he relates dedication to God to financial prosperity. This method of preaching can still be seen in the United States even though it has certainly decreased in the last 30 years or so. The pastor used the parable of the "faith of a mustard seed" to suggest that life cannot get better unless you "just have faith"...and throw $10 in the offering plate. It probably doesn't help that the pastor's nickname is "Cash" (something that was adopted before his ministry started). It is very hard to put into words my frustration without sounding judgmental but perhaps an example will help.
For his sermon, Cash used the story of the women in the gospels who had been "bleeding" for almost her whole life, and after seeing numerous "doctors", she saw Jesus as her final hope. "If I could just touch his robe", the woman thought, "then I would be healed". She does so and in fact is miraculously healed. It is my favorite story in the bible because if she hadn't been healed, she would have been put to death because her illness did not allow her to touch anyone, let alone a rabbi.
Similarly, a woman, full of tears and bent over with some sort of physical disability, approached Cash during the second round of collecting offering, and told him that she could not handle the agony of being disabled anymore. She seemed so desperate as she place a few dollars on the offering plate. Her presence moved me to tears as this reminded me so much of the woman who had been bleeding for many years and whose hope was dwindling.
As Cash approached this woman she told her that she needed to "stop crying", and instead focus on the, "fact that she was going to be healed". This enraged me simply because of how unsympathetic he was being with her. It made me think of how Jesus wept with Lazarus' family as they were grieving his loss. Who was Cash to deny her these very human emotions. Nevertheless, after a few moments Cash began to pray for this women to be healed.
However she was not healed that day. No miracle, no heavenly spirit, not a thing.
Cash seemed to be caught in his own lie. He had just spent the last hour telling his followers that faith the size of a mustard seed could solve all of our problems. However, the truth is that God is not some jester we can call on whenever we feel like it. Therefore in order to remove the blame from himself, he then began to explain how this women just doesn't have enough faith, and that this was the thing keeping her from being healed: never mind the fact that Cash had just mentioned that faith as small as a mustard seed could perform miracles, so then her faith must have been super-tiny.
Jesus never promised us happy and healthy lives. He never promised us prosperity. It is not because Jesus was a party-pooper; it is because he knew that simply being healthy and wealthy never produces joy. Instead, things like community, tolerance, forgiveness, growth, children, ideas, stories, family, and simply relying on other for the good of the whole would bring us a peace and make us more like God. And then, if someone becomes wealthy, everyone is able to enjoy the abundance instead of a select few.
As we left the church, I asked the question, "what do we do with a church like this?". In other words, how do we teach people that following Jesus is more about giving than receiving? I then realized that the religious atmosphere in Jesus' time was almost exactly the same. Devotion to the temple and its priests was the only path to God. If the priests did not find your offering worthy enough, you would become an outcast. Therefore I suppose the answer to my question is to continue studying the behaviors of Jesus and continually pursue a life of love, empathy, and transformation.
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