Introduction
My typical Saturday involves me, my front porch, a line of of cigars and podcasts. But the past few have seen a collection of documentaries made available that have replaced the podcasts temporarily. Honestly none of them were as fun as last years, Welcome to Wrexham, but they have been informative in one way or another. So in no order I have watched Shiny Happy People, The Secrets of Hillsong, and What is a Woman. The later I have thoughts on that I will expand into a full piece later. The former two are similar enough in my conclusion that it can be banged out here.
If you are unaware Shiny Happy People is about Bill Gothard’s Institute for Basic Life Principals, it’s heresy and abuse as viewed through the popularity of the Duggar family and their rise and fall. The Secrets of Hillsong, is about Brian Houston’s Hillsong, it’s heresy and abuse as viewed through popularity of Carl Lentz and his rise and fall. You might begin to notice some similarities. Other common threads are attempts to tie all christians into these movements and paint us a homophobes, rubes, and hypocritically corrupt. So what else is new?
Divergence
The differences are in how Shiny Happy People stays the course and tries to scare the audience with the specter of Christian Nationalism. While Secrets of Hillsong is more about making you feel bad for Carl Lentz and suggest that greasy little thing deserves another chance. For some reason I am seeing more reformed people online praising Happy People and snubbing Hillsong. I find that interesting because if one has more Biblical precedent it would be the one that is aiming at forgiveness. I am still trying to wrap my head around why so many professing christians are so upset about the prospect of Christ ruling government one day, like he promised to do. But I digress.
Another interesting contrast is the number of people in that suffered under these organizations and yet exited them differently. In Happy People not all but good number seemed to have kept their faith. They burned away the legalistic dross and were still practicing Christians. Again, not all, but a healthy number. My surmise is that the tactic of Gothard was not so much conversion as, “born into it.” I hesitate to say anything that might be good about the man and his cult. But he, like any false teacher, had to start with a nugget of truth and then add to it. At a minimum I think there was enough base truth taught that the survivors had it to fall back on and rebuild.
As opposed to the Hillsong documentary, where it seemed like everyone involved just couldn’t wait to use the word deconstruct. A shocking amount were young, sexually active, and confused people who were taken in on an emotional high, used, and then were spat out by an obviously corrupt leadership, and are now bitter. Or to put it another way, young, sexy, talented, ignorant, and pagan to their core. It makes one want to ponder the obvious emotionally manipulative ways of the Pentecostals and question the legitimacy of most of their “churches.”
Net Positive
My takeaway from both is simple. The collapse of both men and organizations is a simple net positive. The parasite was removed, the cancer was excised.
And while I know that Hillsong is still kicking around in a diminished form and is rearing for a comeback; and that IBLP is out there somewhere telling women to wear denim and have curly hair. They have both been exposed and it is harder to justify them. Particularly with Hillsong music, at this point there is just no excuse to keep banging away on their songs. It’s pretty obvious these people were liars, cheats, heretics, and hypocrites and their music is only worthy of the dust bin of history. Now would be a good time to also jettison Bethel and Elevation and perhaps insist the music guy at church learn what a hymn is.
Overall what Christians should take away from these documentaries is not that we are prime targets for scams. Rather that the true church will prevail, it will outlast, it must always be reforming. These documentaries show that you can have these massive institutions fall and we all better off for it. We survived after that little tick Bill Gothard was pulled out. And we will be better off without Hillsong. Theological fads can come and go but the gospel will remain. He must have high fidelity to our core and ignore or better yet, root out heresy no matter how popular it is or how many people will feel hurt. Better are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy. These organizations were kissing enemies to every member. The people they hurt were far more wounded than if someone had just dealt with them early on.
Conclusion
It pains me to say it but Mike (the sage of Christianity Today) Cosper* was on to something when he suggested in the Hillsong Secrets that perhaps we should ignore big numbers and look at the actual results. With Gothard there was always enough there to be creepy and only attractive to a certain kind of very sick person. It was always pretty obvious how weird and cultish these people were. Hillsong though was/is like a weasel. It appeals to a person who longs to be cool, the center of attention, the music guy at your church most likely. And while they had big numbers in people, money, real-estate, fancy wrist watches their ministry was as shallow and pointless as humanly possible. So good by, good riddance, and let’s look into jettisoning Furtic next, possibly before he does us the favor himself taking more people down with him.
*Who was in both because it wasn’t like he was going to miss a chance to emote about institutions collapsing.
Southern Reformed Smoker 