Trillion Dollar Question

Spirituality Column #148
September 8, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) Carmel
Current in Westfield (IN) Carmel

Trillion Dollar Question
By Bob Walters

A traveling preacher in our Sunday pulpit recently had what appeared to be a stack of 100-dollar bills peaking out of the top of his shirt pocket.

An animated, engaging, energetic orator, the guy removed his sport coat early in the sermon revealing the visible, rectangular ends of several dark, greenish “bills.”

I was embarrassed for him at first. I thought maybe he’d been paid for the preaching gig in cash, and the money was indiscreetly exposed.

Sometimes I over-think a gag.

‘Turns out the “bills” were faux currency; the presently popular “Obama Trillion Dollar Bills” that have a Christian tract on the back. The idea, he enthusiastically preached, is to approach a stranger, or group of strangers, distribute the gimmick “Obama Trillion” (or “Michael Jackson Million” – both are available online), and as the unwary souls giggle and examine the fake cash they’ll turn it over, see the Christian tract, and … um, be saved.

Wonderful … a sucker punch for Christ.

Have I got this right? Let’s save the lost by blending our natural human avarice – “hey … is that real money?” – with a cult-inducing celebrity?

And as long as we’re trolling for the unsaved – the lost and unknowing; the spiritually weakest among us – let’s put the most draconian, condemning “Gospel message” imaginable on the back, and scare people into the perfect, loving arms of, and eternal communion with, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Are you kidding me?

The tract – which includes the phrase “God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous adulterer at heart” followed by John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son …” – is not only contradictory and confusing but … terrifying.

Which is it? Does God hate me or love me? And before you answer, consider that John 3:16 is a direct quote from Jesus – God Incarnate – while He was alive as a human on earth. “God so loved the world,” it says, and that means before, during and after Christ’s sacrifice.

God loves us sinners today just as much as then – His love is eternal – and He wants us to find our divine freedom from death through our love and faith in Christ.

But trying to trick the lost into salvation with a scary, ill-defined and theologically suspect message on a fake paper idol?

Not exactly grace that sticks, nor an appealing picture of Christian love.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com) notes that it was love, not trickery, that defined early Christians. See Acts 2:42.