Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Courant]

Former United Technologies Corp. chief executive George David and his wife are doing battle in Hartford in a divorce trial that shines light on the couple’s extravagant lifestyle.David and Swedish countess Marie Douglas-David married in 2002. They signed a post-nuptual agreement in 2005 that would give the 36-year-old Douglas-David $43 million when the couple divorces. The 67-year-old businessman wants the court to uphold the agreement.

Douglas-David, a former investment banker for Lazard Asset Management, has claimed intolerable cruelty against the multimillionaire, saying that she quit her job to travel and entertain with her very visible husband, whom she married in 2002. She is claiming that she is now a near-penniless victim, unable to meet her $53,000 a week expenses that include clothing, skin and hair care, travel and flowers. The marriage began to flounder in 2004 with the couple filing for divorce and reconciling several times, and finally separating last year.

Read more here.

[From me]

Give me a break! People are struggling to put meals on the table and she is worried about a facial and flowers! Sad.

What do you think?

[AP]

The price of oil recorded its biggest weekly drop ever, and a gallon of gas finally pulled back from its record high. So is it time to declare the energy bubble popped?

Read about it here.

[From me]

Where is the biggest drop in gas prices?  When crude goes up the price at the pump goes up immediately.  Why don’t thy drop the price now that they had the biggest drop ever?

What do you think?

[CNN]

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor’s living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.  And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn’t come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn’t strong enough.

“I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them,” she said. “I’m angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don’t watch anyone on TV hardly.”

Prosperity preachers say that it isn’t all about money — that God’s blessings extend to health, relationships and being well-off enough to help others.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Would Jesus have traveled today in a Rolls-Royce?  Would He be wearing designer clothes?  Do these so called preachers not see the damage they are doing to the name of God?  Sad…

What do you think?

[From LSJ.com]

A pastor being sued by a former member of his church testified this morning that he was angry that she filed the lawsuit.

“I was being sued by somebody who I didn’t know was my enemy,” David Russell Williams said this morning in testimony in Eaton County Circuit Court.

Judith Dadd, 52, of Lansing is suing Mount Hope Church, based in Delta Township, and Williams. She says she went to the altar during a July 18, 2002 rally for church leaders and was “slain in the Spirit” according to testimony. She fell backward and struck her head on the floor. Dadd claims she still suffers from the effects of the fall, including depression, memory loss and difficulty concentrating.

Read about it here.

[From me]

I guess that is why Benny Hinn has people catching people when he blows on them.

What’s next?

• Lawsuits because people gained too much weight eating Fried Chicken at church fellowships?
• How about suing over a watermelon seed being stuck in a person’s throat following a summer church picnic?
• Maybe someone can sue a church for an ear infection following a baptism?
• What about suing because you didn’t get blessed in keeping with the stock market after tithing?
• Maybe a suit against the pastor for eye strain because he moves too much?
• How about false advertising during communion because when they give the cup it isn’t wine but grape juice?

What other suits might come in the future?

Christians gather around the world each Christmas to sing about “poor baby Jesus” asleep in the manger with no crib for his bed. But the Rev. Creflo Dollar looks inside that manger, and he doesn’t see a poor baby at all.

He sees a baby born into wealth because the kings visiting him gave him gold, frankincense and myrrh. He sees a messiah with so much money that he needed an accountant to track it. He sees a savior who wore clothes so expensive that the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for them. Dollar is part of a growing number of preachers who say that the traditional image of Jesus as a poor, itinerant preacher who “had no place to lay his head” is wrong.

Dollar sees a rich Jesus. Read the story here.

Where did these “preachers” do their studying? Wall Street? Sure Jesus is rich, but He gave up His riches to come to earth and die for our sins. He didn’t die for our portfolio, stocks or bank account.  It sounds to me like the one’s getting rich are the pastors teaching this false doctrine–actually it is heresy!

What do you think?