The Greatest Scam EVER!

This story about a woman who is accused of stabbing a priest at Holy Cross Catholic Church started me thinking.

At the time of her arrest on April 26, Josephine Gatchell, 57, said the priest, the Rev. Michael Massaro, was the devil. Of course, the logical response to such a reasonable conclusion is to stab said priest… or not.

The mug shot:

If you want my body, and you think I'm sexy...

It is absolutely shocking to me how much she looks like our resident psychiatrist Jake‘s ex-girlfriend, but I digress…

Anyways, perhaps the greatest scam in North America, or at least the greatest scam I am aware of, is the prosperity gospel. I mean, think about it: God wants you to give me money and if you do he will bless you. If you can convince people of this then your stealing earning potential is greatly increased.

Of course fleecing the sheeple isn’t necessarily easy. There are some key ingredients.

A dash of biblical illiteracy: This is a must for the hawker of heavenly riches. People must be unaware of large portions of their Bible, and most of all, must be completely unaware of the context of their Bible. They have to be completely ignorant of their own presuppositions, and that “money” and “needs” meant something entirely different during biblical times than it does in our opulent society. This is important as the prosperity pimp can then use the Bible to convince greedy sheeple that God wrote the Bible to them–just to them–to tell them how he wants to make them rich… because it’s a biblical principle.

A dollop of lack: This is, in my estimation, the most important ingredient in many recipes of the prosperity gospel: creating a sense of lack in the victim. This is where the skill of the con-man comes into play. You have to convince the mark that God is holding something back on them. This is insidious in its brilliance, and made easier in our materialistic society characterized by the social attitude of relative poverty. When you can take people who are in the top 1% of income earners in the world, and the top 0.01% in history, who have access to food, lifestyle, and health care that is simply beyond the imagination of billions and convince them that somehow God is holding out on them… well, simply put: it’s evil, but brilliant in its effectiveness.

A pinch of middleman: Once the sense of lack has been created the swindler can move on to the next vital stage: convincing the dupe that he can access what God has been holding back only through his ministry. This can take a variety of forms: a love offering, a “seed”, a donation for a green handkerchief, etc., the versions are only limited to the creativity of the scammer. The only thing that is necessary at this point is something tangible that the person can do to access what God is holding back.

A mountain of immediate and future blessings: Maybe this is the most important ingredient, if not, it’s close. Perhaps, only those who have adopted the sort of heart disposition that cannot be thankful and grateful for the many ridiculous blessings they have to live in the twenty-first century on a continent like North America, but instead have filled their heart with greed  for more ‘stuff’, could fall for such an obvious scam. If you give to me and my ministry–which is really giving to God–then God will give you more, bless you abundantly, pressed down, shaken together, one-hundred fold. He will bless you until your cup overflows.

In ‘faith’ the mark hands over their money and the fraudster drives the Mercedes home to his mansion laughing all the way to the bank… literally.

Which brings me back to Jake’s fiancee. Oh yeah, he called me during the writing of this post. They’ve patched things up and are walking down the aisle next spring. Congrats man. But I digress again…

Anyways, I was wondering: if things continue to go poorly in the US economy. People continue to lose jobs. Unemployment continues to grow. The national debt gets larger and larger. Home prices keep going down. Foreclosures continue. Etc., etc. What happens if people start to wake up to, and recognize, the prosperity pimp’s scam?

Will they be angry?

Will they try to harm them?

Will someone try to hurt a well known televangelist?

Will they recognize that if any prosperity shill–Copeland, Dollar, Osteen, Bentley, White, Hinn, et al–actually believed anything they said from the pulpit they would give away everything they had and wait for God to give them a hundred times more?

And then I realized that the answer is, unfortunately, probably not. And that’s why the prosperity gospel is such a great scam. Why you ask? Well it’s simple.

The sense of lack the fraudster creates in fleecing the sheeple endures. So the reason they have not received God’s blessing is not that God’s Word returns void, or that the “man of God” has somehow been deceitful, but because… wait for it… wait some more…

They didn’t have enough faith (or some variation thereof, such as everybody’s favorite: unconfessed sin). That’s right: it was your fault before you gave that God hadn’t blessed you more, and because you didn’t receive his blessing, it’s still… your fault!

And that’s why it is the greatest scam ever. You can bilk people out of their money, have none of your promises even remotely fufilled, and people think it’s their fault, and the cycle continues.