How to Control the Masses Without Really Trying...

Have you ever read a book that everyone is talking about, and says it's completely amazing, but when you read it you see something completely different and so appalling you're amazed people get away with it? That's how I feel about A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards.

A good friend of mine had recommended it and my dad had it on his book shelf, so I borrowed it. The reviews on Amazon and elsewhere that I've read on it all talk about how it's a great book for people who are suffering. People who maybe are (or recently have been) under tyrannical/abusive relationships with other believers or authority figures in church. But when I read it, I didn't walk away feeling better about myself or challenged to live a better Christian life, as many of the reviewers said I would. I walked away from it thinking, "Are people really buying into this bullshit?" (Sorry about the language, but it's really bugging me).

Here's my take on the theme of the book: if you're in a bad relationship in a Church or if you're in a church with an abusive pastor; sucks to be you. Grin and bear it, you can't leave or offer up any sort of dissent because that rebellion comes from ego, and if you give into that rebellion you're no better, or could potentially become that person. No wonder this book is being taught from the pulpit! It essentially says put up or shut up. You can do nothing about your situation, because the person who is abusing you might not really be abusing you in God's eyes, and the big man upstairs isn't going to tell you. So don't rock the boat, if you do you're bad!

Pastors are handing out this little $9 booklet left and right and I can't imagine why. You have problems with what I'm doing? I'm sorry, I'll do better. Here read this nice book, it'll help put things in perspective and quell any further criticism you may have. Wow, you just came from an abusive church so you're kinda' grumpy, why don't I not acknowledge your abuse and help you work through it; instead give you this nice booklet that tells you not to be too critical because I don't need another person to rock the boat here.

I mean, come on people! The one group of people that Jesus was critical and harsh with were the religious leaders of his time. The implications of many of the stories of demon possession is that the very religious system that Jesus was challenging was the enabler of the demon and they could be seen as in collusion with one another. Didn't the Reformation come from people challenging the abusive authoritarian powers of the Church at that time? I find it telling that this book is getting mass publication and reading during a time when many people are seeing a new reformation on the horizon. It seems a thinly veiled attempt at establishment trying to quiet the mass of those who would seek to challenge the answers of an age that is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

Anyway, sorry, rant is over...

Oh, and can you really trust someone whose glossy looks like this?