Soft

 I’m afraid to pick my nose in public because someone might snap a picture of me from the wrong angle and accuse me of being part of the Illuminati. The same goes for that yellow gunk at the corner of my eyes. On a bright note, I’ve had strangers hand me quarters and even dollar bills thinking I was homeless and challenged, with snot dripping down my upper lip and greenish-yellow discharge caked around my eyes.

It may seem extreme, but these are the lengths we must go to, I fear, unless someone eagerly looking for something to denounce you for gets the opportunity. In case you’re wondering, I jest, but only about the nose picking and gooey discharge, not the intrepid sleuths going frame by frame through your home movies trying to find something, anything, no matter how minuscule or insignificant. Someone did hand me a dollar once, but I was just looking my homeless self without the gooey bits. I gave them back a ten, and they started looking around for a camera.

Everyone’s looking for something to pin on somebody. One wonders if they would stand up to the same scrutiny. One wonders how they would react to someone digging through their trash, peeking through their windows, and bum-rushing them while trying to get their kids to school.

The Book says that your sin will find you out, not Debbie, the divorcee, who insists you now call her Deborah, even though before she found her calling was perfectly fine with you calling her Deb. Sin is like a degenerative disease of the soul. Eventually, the signs will become apparent.

Just because he won’t let you commandeer or outright hijack his pulpit so you can tell the congregation how you saw in a dream that you were supposed to lead them doesn’t make the pastor the son of the devil. Not every dream is revelatory or from God. Sometimes a dream is just the byproduct of bad burritos, arrogance, entitlement, and self-importance.

The way it works is if someone is supposed to make room for another in their ministry, God tells that person so the transition is seamless and without conflict or heartache. Yes, I know, God would have told them eventually, but sister Deborah has big plans for the little people, and the clock is ticking.

For the most part, the Debbies get what they want. It’s been a battle of attrition trying to castrate the men of God’s house and make them soft and malleable, but they’ve been making headway. Just look at who’s being promoted as the new generation of church leadership, and you’ll understand what the plan was all along.

Anyone that didn’t fall in line was toxic, misogynistic, and anchored in the patriarchy of the past, and the brave new world that the limp-wristed and testosterone deficient want to create has no place for such divisiveness and aggression. We were told that being nice and being godly were interchangeable so often that we started to believe it. Big smiles, big hair, manicured nails, and a slanted gospel became the surefire ingredients to a successful ministry. No one bothered to ask if it was biblical as long as it was successful.

That’s where it went from bad to worse because we measured success based on the world’s definition of it, not God’s. To be deemed successful wasn’t so much about building up men and women of virtue, fearless warriors, wholly committed to God, but about how much cash was stuffed into the coffers every Sunday.

The Pavlovian response of the unprincipled was predictable. If watering down the gospel and making allowances increased the offering at the end of the service and rightly dividing the word decreased it, under the guise of maintaining the work to draw people in, you continue to water down the gospel.

We’ll get to preaching the truth once we have a good foundation. We’ll preach the whole counsel of God once we’ve built ourselves a little nest egg just in case there’s an exodus of parishioners once we start doing it. The mental gymnastics are a wonder to behold, but because the leadership is largely emasculated, they keep putting off preaching the truth until pivoting from wealth, health, prosperity, self-actualization, feeling feelings, and loving yourself would be financial suicide.

That’s why you start with the truth. That’s why you start with the whole counsel of God. That’s why you straighten your back, put some steel in your spine, and ask Debbie to find the nearest exit before things get biblical. The primary concern of any leader worth their salt is never whether or not what they are about to preach will offend someone. Assume it will offend everyone. Their primary concern should be whether or not they are faithful to the leading of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

If you start out assuming that you’ll offend everyone, then you’ll have nothing to fear. If you assume that everyone will walk out of the sanctuary before your sermon is done, then if anyone is left, it will just be a pleasant surprise.

I understand that looking for Illuminati under every rock and behind every hedgerow is fun and all, but maybe take a second to see what’s being taught in most churches and who’s doing the teaching. Then, perhaps, you will understand which the greater danger is. Then again, there’s always someone picking their nose in public that you can snap a photo of.

Occasionally, I feel compelled to write one of these, if only for posterity. I seem to be writing a lot for posterity of late, but it is what it is and can’t be helped. I’m a stickler for clean hands, especially when dealing with the people of God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.