You have spent, or are still spending way too much time making your church district and it's social circles into something way more important than you should have. You can do better....
God actually hates popularity.
I mean, you really just have to read the Bible to get that picture. But it's pretty obvious. Moses, Paul, , David, etc.... God liked people who were not cool in any way whatsoever.
Moses was that dude at your church who stuttered a lot. The guy who you felt obligated to invite out to eat after church, even though you didn't want him there and he knew you didn't want him there. Real sad guy, that Moses.
Paul was that guy who was absolutely convinced that he was right but yet was hated by almost everyone else because of how right he thought he was. Paul was your classic insecure, ego-maniacal mama's boy. Acted entitled. Like killing Christians at one moment because he was "correct" and then like totally apologizing to all Christians a moment later because the Christian Truth was, get this, totally correct. No humility whatsoever. Just a lot of self-pity when he needed to make a point. Paul was really good at making you feel guilty.
David..... Complete and total Emo. If you read Psalms and I and II Samuel and still manage to like David, something is wrong with you. The "woe-is-me" kind of guy... overly dramatic... making a mountain out of an ant-hill kind of guy. People like David can only be dealt with in small doses.
Point being: God's favorites are the kind of people we hate to be around. They were the biggest dorks within the Dork Kingdom.
All of the above also means that God doesn't like the cool kids. Because he rarely, if ever chooses the really good looking, popular crowd to do his work. My guess is that people in the cool crowd believe in their own hype too much for God to be able to do anything with them.
And this is reason #1 of why you should never trust any pastor who openly professes that he is doing the work of God: He's the guy who confuses his popularity within the church as a naive validation of his own "feeling" or "intuition." So much so, that this pastor-guy loves himself so much that he never questions the voice of the all mighty God within his own head... since everyone else seems to believe in his own self-confidence. People cry during his altar-call and assumes God must really really love him...
Kind of like celebrities in Hollywood tend to confuse their own popularity within the movie-industry as proof that they are smart and funny and insightful. This is a lie most of the time. But because we care about celebrities, the celebrities tend to love themselves way more than any human ever should ever love themselves.....
Likewise, most pastors are the kids who were once losers growing up and sat around bitter and whiny and cranky, and by the time they became of age, they found that preaching with a sense of urgency and rage and bitterness could be easily confused as "the anointing" by all parties involved.
But the weird thing here is not the delusional pastors within the UPC. Nor is it weird than no one calls these wacko's out. But the weird thing is that we have somehow let the religion of celebrity obsession on gossip websites (e.g TMZ) infiltrate our own subconscious to the point that we treat the UPC itself like a celebrity ring.
Like hipsters with favorite music groups that no one else knows, we have our favorite preachers. This is natural. We look up to certain people. The better looking people in the youth group. The "bad" pastor's daughter. The pastor's son who plays ball, and secretly imagines inheriting his dad's church one day and making it a mega-church once he sells out with his devilish good looks, a little charisma, and a whole lot of compromising of UPC standards. All the better if they are unique and special and the kind of person we can call our own "kind of preacher."
But between looking up to a few preachers from a far, and actually creating a whole web of intricate "who's who" of UPC pastors, youth pastors, and good-looking-sharply-dressed-young-people, something has gone terribly wrong. The internet is to blame. (Cue the usual reference to facebook, tumblr, instragram, twitter here).
We care less about the content of what people are saying and care way more about who people are, as in fame, looks, reputation, and who-they-know within the preaching world. Just like we now pay attention to celebrities because of who they are and not what they have done as a human being.
Likewise, we've done this with the UPC. Especially as young people. We gossip like none other. And not necessarily in a bad way. Just mentioning a few rumors of who is politicking for a certain position within a certain district or section (I'm looking at you State of Michigan-Section 1-Up-And-Comers-Who-Have wonderful charisma- and may or may not look like McGee from the TV show McGee and Me). Sure their may be a few scandals involved, and yeah we may like the scandals we speak of, but the point is, what we truly in our heart of hearts love about the UPC, is that it gives us a sense of having our own mini-universe of preachers who are bold and important and sharply dressed and possibly having an affair.
And this culture is not good....
And oh by the way: I have a list of preacher's names who may or may not be dabbling in scandalous activities. And by that I mean I have access to these said pastor's internet history and it could stir up trouble and cause a whole lot of chaotic nuisance and could or could not possibly really make this website into a UPC-celebrity-gossip-page but will refrain for the time being. It's not worth it..... but I'm just saying.... we could make this thing real fun...
And if I'm who I am and I refuse to make gods out men because of their reputation, I advise you to do the same.
