A LOOK AT THE CRITICS
If you're sick of the negative people who populate the blogosphere, then why not have a peek at some of the tactics they employ. After all, the wise Sun Tzu advised us to know our enemies. Understanding people's motives and inherent biases goes a long way in explaining why they criticize. I've put the critics into separate categories. Not because most human beings are that neatly categorized, but because in my studies of the critics, they are not as complex as most humans, and they do fit neatly into the following categories.
RABID SECULARISTS:
These people automatically assume they're smarter than any religious person just because they're secular. Check out Bill Maher's movie Religulous if you need a demonstration of the arrogant attitude embodied by this sector of society. In a veiled "search for truth," Maher holds up the extremist, the buffoon, and the imbecile as examples of all "religious" people. After successfully setting up his Straw Man, Maher then heroically knocks him down with a litany of philosophical questions that sends his secular fan-club rollicking with approval, and everyone gets to go home with the smug, self-satisfaction that they're so much smarter than those superstitious religious types.
Actually, most of us asked the same questions Maher posed and had them answered after graduating from Sunday School. Apparently Maher never graduated. He's still fighting a battle with the ill-taught simpletons that so offended him in his youth. Anyways, the philosophical roots that guide the secularist's thinking reaches back to the so-called Enlightenment and before. Kind of ironic that a person who recites ideas that are hundreds of years old thinks of himself as "Progressive."
Since secularists have no God in their lives, they tend to gravitate to substitutes. They might deify the self, anointing themselves the subjective judge of all things in some sort of Narcissistic fantasy. They might deify a pet, their family or some humanitarian cause they use as a substitute to find meaning in their lives. Since they have no God, they can have no objective certainty of anything, particularly when it comes to morals or ethics. Post-Modern philosophers are now even questioning whether or not murder is unethical. From the point of view of the murderer, he might feel that killing is right and who are we to say he (the murderer) is wrong? Sounds unbelievable, but a terrifying example of how the secular mind can easily slip into moral relativism when they have no absolute certainty of anything.
No doubt some very intelligent secularists inhabit the planet, but many tend to fall victim to bandwagons and some pretty "wacked-out" conspiracy theories. After all, if you don't believe in anything, you tend to fall for everything. No certainty of an afterlife leads them to harbor exaggerated fears of war and death, and they'll haughtily criticize people as being foolish for monetarily supporting a Pastor, yet they'll spend exorbitant sums on their own messiahs--usually on the people they feel can deliver them from war and death (Patrons pay $25,000 a pop just to be in Al Gore's presence, apparently he is their deliverer dujour from their fear of death by Global Warming).
So when you meet a rabid secularist who criticizes Pastor Melissa Scott, they usually haven't even listened to her. They've already neatly categorized all religious people as intellectually inferior, so why bother? To justify their closed-minded position, they'll pose a philosophical question that they think topples God from his throne, or they'll cite some religious leader who abused his position by stealing money, molested a child...whatever. The secularist will then argue that ALL religious leaders are "that way." This tactic is not far removed from that of the racist who, when watching the nightly news report on a black man robbing a 7-11, proclaims, "See! All black people are robbers!"
I don't hear any secularists crying out that we should abandon the the discipline of Psychology when a Psychiatrist molests his patient. Yet, anyone who misrepresents Christianity is held up as the latest shining example as to why we need to get the government to police the church or better yet, just abandon this religion thing altogether and unify under some one-world vision of a godless utopia where education and human ethics can guide us.
The long and short of it is, when you hear secularists criticizing our Pastor, it's not so much a personal attack as it is a built-in prejudice and intolerance towards Christians in general.
CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS:
These people are not bright. I hate to help divide the church world more than it already is by criticizing other factions, but these people aren't smart enough to grasp something as complex as the Bible, so they cherry-pick a few simple rules they can understand, anoint themselves God, and go about condemning everyone else to hell. Jesus loves them best because they don't drink, don't smoke and don't cuss (at least when no one's looking). The self they present to the outside world is that of perfection as they've defined it. I've heard their criticisms of our Pastor, and they condemn what the rest of us find so endearing about her--the fact that she's not perfect and never professes to be. Yet certain Fundamentalists rail on her like the white-sepulcher Pharisees of Jesus' day. They're so blinded and wrapped up in their legalistic traditions, they never open their minds up long enough to hear what Pastor Melissa Scott has to say about Grace and Peace, and starting over.
Dr. SCOTT GROUPIES:
One thing Dr. Scott reiterated was that he preached Christ--not himself. He often joked about Balaam's Jack-Ass being a better spokesperson for God than most Christian preachers. His point was, it doesn't matter who the preacher is, so long as the message being preached was RIGHT. Throughout the historical record, God has picked some interesting characters to communicate his Word -- messengers that most religious people today would never have approved of. Yet when Dr. Scott died, a small faction of people left the church claiming their commitment was to him and no one else. Interesting, because I thought their commitment was supposed to be to God and whatever spokesperson HE chose?
You'll find this tiny group of disgruntled ex-employees and ex-members to be among Pastor Melissa Scott's harshest critics. They congregate in chat rooms, blogs, and usenet groups hurling vile abuse and accusations under the guise of some religious calling. They are pretty easy to spot. They are not secular, they are religious zealots in every sense of the word. Whenever there is a positive post in a blog, they respond with, "I used to like Pastor Melissa Scott too, but then I found this informative news group that told me all about her." The so-called News Group is actually ten to fifteen old guard burn-outs and a few wanna-be insiders who daily socialize, commiserate, and share conspiracy theories. Once they have tried to bond with the positive poster, they launch into their porn allegations, conspiracy theories, and every evil that festers in their wild imaginations. Their goal is to distract new people from the reality and truth of the message being preached and direct them into trite, superficial, human criticisms that I suppose could work if one were raised in a judgmental, fundamentalist household.
Suffice it to say, not only is their hatred of her inhuman, so is their obsessiveness. They relentlessly search out positive blogs about Pastor so they can taint them. They watch her program constantly--not to study God's word--but so they can find new ways to criticize her. They'll criticize her for going left or going right, going up or going down. She will never win with these people no matter what she does. All public figures have their "haters" but these people are an outrage to all possessing sensible faculties.
I don't want to sound magical or like one of these religious types that sees the devil around every corner, but for the life of me I can't see what else drives these people? Some have been posting negative comments for over 10 years. In Biblical history, there is one figure constantly hurling accusations, constantly bringing up past sins--and it isn't Jesus. In Biblical history, there was one son of Noah that God cursed for exposing his father's shame. Noah was indeed drunk. Shem and Japheth covered him, backing into the room so as not to look on his nakedness. Ham gossipped and tried to expose his father, and it was a line of Ham that was cursed.
I thought Christians were supposed to celebrate changed lives, not beat people to death for their past sins before they found Christ? I thought Christians were supposed to get excited when a worldly person stopped, turned direction and refocused their lives to a higher spiritual purpose? Not according to this so-called news group. Any new Christian seeking forgiveness must fall down before their self-appointed throne of grace and grovel to them for approval before God will even hear their prayers. I can't help of thinking of the verse where Satan is our full-time accuser. These people are in the business of full-time accusing. It's a Satanic spirit that hurls accusations, as if Christ's shed blood isn't good enough to cover past transgressions. It's the Hamidic spirit that seeks to gossip and expose human frailty. How these zealots can think that accusing and gossipping (not to mention lying and exaggerating) about Pastor's past life is somehow God ordained is truly beyond me.
Dr. Scott passed away years ago, and these people are still rabid in their attacks. They cannot seem to get over the fact that Dr. Scott left a woman in charge (Pastor Melissa Scott) and who with a tiny staff, took on the awesome responsibility of running a worldwide ministry, keeping Dr. Scott's voice on the air, and even began teaching herself. With all that, this obsessive faction of people still sit in judgment of her. It's ironic that the Dr. Scott Groupies criticize her when she is the one keeping the ministry alive. And it will be Pastor Melissa Scott that finally realizes the dream of taking Dr. Scott's voice to the world.
Thank you for indulging me as I criticize the critics. I truly am perplexed by these people, but I shouldn't be. Anytime anyone steps out into the public realm to do anything noteworthy, there will always be a faction of haters. My advice to you new people is to focus on the teaching. God's Word is all that matters. Deep calleth unto deep, and if God's word truly touches you, you won't be able to run away from it. Be thankful that God has called you and snatched you out of the current of life down here that has so many people spinning away their precious few years in frivolity. Your life dedicated to a higher purpose can truly make a difference in the Kingdom.
God has given us a great teaching Pastor. I for one am grateful.
Please visit the photo gallery for more pics of Dr. Gene Scott and Pastor Melissa Scott. Read my - Sunday Blog
PastorMelissaScott.com - Resurrectionism.com - MrsScott.com
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