The WAMU segment that aired last Friday is now archived on their web site. Se "A Slice of the Desert in the Washington Garden." Whenever I do this show, I get lots of feedback and what amuses me the most is when people tell me they heard me on "NPR." I wish! Close enough anyway as WAMU does carry some NPR programming on its airwaves - while the Metro Connection show is a local WAMU production. Nice to just be in the company of Garrison Keillor and Diane Rehm.This morning I did a live segment on WUSATV9. After being out all day yesterday and up to the wee hours partying, I managed a total of 3.5 hours of sleep. Not the greatest time management decisions I've ever made and I was sure cursing my boneheadedness when the getting dressed at 6:00am. To make sure I got up I programmed my TV alarm to be set to the early Sunday morn local evangelical preachers. Most days I can laze in bed with the best of them, but nothing gets my booty in gear like a little hellfire and brimstone. You'll get up - if only to shut it off!
One of the guys today was talking about how God chose the ministry for him, but his own personal choice was to be an entrepreneur and that God further tortured him by having him advise flock members when they came to him for advice on their own budding businesses which he clearly envied and thought he could do better than them. Hearing this I could only shake my head. Why could he not also start a few sideline businesses? Why is that mutually exclusive to preaching? And how can he be so positive that God did not want him to take that entrepreneur path instead since he obviously has an aptitude and leaning for it? Maybe I just need to sleep on that.
There is a whole school of evangelical thinking that's very popular out here in the Big D. It goes something along the lines that God wants you to be rich, and being a good Christian will bring you prosperity. And they have people who testify about how when they accepted "Jesus as their personal savior", all of the sudden they had all this money. Somehow, that concept just makes all the neurons in my brain short-circuit. Are they trying to say that people are poor because God doesn't like them and they're not good people? I don't remember seeing the Fabulous Life of Jesus Christ on VH1. Somehow it just seems like being good so Santa will bring you presents. Wasn't there something about camels and eyes of needles? Anyway, good post.
ReplyDeletePartying till the wee hours, eh? Lucky girl.
Yeah, I've heard some of them talk about being blessed and nothing wrong with enjoying "your hard-earned dollars" - the whole thing is so opposite of Christ's teachings - it is very twisted and frankly bizarre. It is also incredibly insulting and self-righteous - only good people get rich and the poor are by implication evil?! Same goes for the sick and diseased - if they only loved God enough they'd be cured, right? Makes me want to smack them - but I guess that is pretty unChristian of me too.
ReplyDeleteYou know what else I thought of today about that preacher's talk? -Would I go to my priest for start-up biz advice? I guess he might have good networking connections, but that would never occur to me to do.