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"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. [...] And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206&ver...
Why does that matter? There are abuses happening now, every day, by high profile. Some (Epstein, Diddy) are starting to be caught. Others (Drake) may face judgement far into the future. Others (Chris Brown) never will.
If criticizing modern church culture requires referencing acts of 40 years ago, and criticizing secular culture requires references acts that happened recently, and will probably happen again tomorrow, that could indicate that the modern USA church is doing better than we think. Possibly a lot better.
Maybe the original action (the sexual abuse) happened 40 years ago. But he continued to lie about it until recently and pushed other people to lie on his behalf. This isn't 40 years ago, this is still very recently. This is still wrong and was a wrong that was ongoing. Had he actually been honest about these things and properly served whatever justice is right for these things and lived openly about it for the last 40 years, it would be a very different story.
And now he's suing the church for millions of dollars for some retirement he feels he's entitled to. This is church money, which should be used to push the work of Christ. He's massively enriching himself, to continue living a lavish lifestyle instead of actually helping the people he was charged to help. Yet another wrong.
From what I've heard, he has disclosed actions years, possibly decades, ago but did not mention that involvement of a minor. I expect this is because a lawyer, or possibly anyone with a quarter of a brain, gave the same advice to him as they would any other human - shut your mouth. Is that a wrong?
> And now he's suing the church for millions of dollars for some retirement he feels he's entitled to.
One article [0] says "his attorney sent a letter to church lawyers [demanding] more than $1 million that had accrued in Morris's retirement account". Again, I suspect that he is getting advice from lawyers to do what they would advise any other human to do - collect on earned retirement benefits. Is that a wrong?
> He's massively enriching himself, to continue living a lavish lifestyle
If you'll forgive the crudeness of this comparison, I expect that running a church of 100,000 attendees to be of comparable, but not equal, complexity as a company with 100,000 customers. That could make running Gateway in the same ballpark as running Asana. The CEO of Asana gets 15 million a year for his trouble. Morris got, what, 5% of that? 3%? Is it self-enrichment to offer world-class leadership to a church at a 95% discount to its free market value?
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/robert-morris-gateway-chu...
And while it might be sound legal advice to shut your mouth, it's not necessarily the moral thing to do.
And yes, I think it's wrong pastors are paid millions of dollars, and that he's suing to try and continue the gravy train. And its asinine to compare counts of attendees to a church as the number of employees at a company. People attending a church aren't employees. And comparing the mission to the church to a for profit enterprise is once again just clearly missing the point.
If the person leading the congregation is making significantly more than the poorest of the congregation there's a real problem.
Your continued comments just further exemplify the things I find wrong in the modern Christian church.
You did not comprehend my comments, because I did not.
> And while it might be sound legal advice to shut your mouth, it's not necessarily the moral thing to do.
I hope that you argue that the 5th amendment is immoral when anyone uses it, and not just pastors.
> If the person leading the congregation is making significantly more than the poorest of the congregation there's a real problem.
Ideally a congregation will include all of society, which will include people making zero, so your argument becomes that a pastor making significantly more than zero is immoral.
I would challenge you to find a moral basis for that in the Bible.
> I hope that you argue that the 5th amendment is immoral when anyone uses it, and not just pastors.
Once again, you're not understanding man's law isn't God's law.
And also he wasn't just not bringing it up, he was actively suppressing his victim from coming forward with the truth, having his lawyers tell her she would face jail time for bringing up the truth. If you don't see that as morally wrong I don't know what to tell you.
And I'm not against pastors being paid. Absolutely, they should be compensated for their work. Paul says this. But they shouldn't be living in mansions with fancy cars and private jets and living a life of opulence. If those around them are living homeless and hungry while they pull down millions, there's a problem.
It's objectively true in general from what I can see.
Like I said: it shouldn't be hard to figure out why.
Matthew Chapter 25:
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Leviticus 19:33-34:
When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Luke 12:
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
We are all so worried that if we give strangers(or immigrants) our food, clothes, and shelter - there won't be any left for us! I think we are worried about nothing. If we all pooled our tiny fragments of mustard seed, nothing would be impossible...
15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
A lot of people see this as purely a supernatural thing Jesus did. As if the pile of broken bread pieces just kept growing and growing out of nothing. Maybe that's what happened. But maybe it was also that so many saw the charity that was happening and were also so compelled to share what they had. I think both possibilities are supported by this scripture.