I have a particular dislike for preachers. Now there are all kinds of preachers, some have it as a profession, a paid vocation, others are self proclaimed. The latter is the worst type.
I have met many of them both in real life and online, both proved to be the worst hypocrites one can come across.
Contenting themselves to project this aura of holiness, holiness as in "clean speech" and "clean demeanor" and "clean attire", they give you sermons so eloquent and pleasing to the ears...
At first, if you are a novice, you are in awe - for they take on this godlike authoritative position, placing themselves on a pedestal of knowledge and piety...many have fallen in their traps. Because a trap it is. A devilish trap.
I've been around and I had to learn the hard way, through hands on experience. Alas, experiences that have ripped all illusions I may have had about people.
Try rubbing under the surface, try digging in a little more, and you will find nothing but deception, self seeking, lies, manipulation, profiteering of all kinds, opportunism, double standards - in short - pure hypocrisy.
I have seen that ugliness too often, and I can no longer brush it off as some coincidental mishap. And I have often wondered why is it that God has repeatedly put such scum on my path. What was the purpose of this repeated exposure to hypocrisy in its most hideous forms ?
Then finally the lesson dawned on me - to recognize it for what it is.
At first the revelation is like a shock to the system, because the gap between the words and the deeds is enormous, because the illusions that these people have managed to entertain in the heads of their listeners are powerful... It is like when one is faced with a pathological liar - at the beginning you doubt yourself, you think you are reading too much into it, or are imagining things, and the deceiver keeps repeating that to you - that you are imagining things or comes up with some other explanation of a "divine nature". But you know in your heart of hearts that this is no imagination and that the insidious, vicious, harm has already happened by none other than the preacher - the self proclaimed preacher males and females (and am reserving a special post on the males soon)
One would argue - so what, these people are no different from others, people are like that. After all they are human. Yes and no.
No - because the ordinary Joe, does not lift you up to bring you down. But most importantly the ordinary Joe does not ram into your head all these ideals, principles and virtues you ought to live by. Nor does the ordinary Joe mention the Divine word in every sentence, nor does the ordinary Joe pretend to be something he/she is NOT. In all likelihood, the ordinary Joe is much closer to God than all these preachers combined.
So why am writing all of this ? Because I feel I need to, because appearances (both virtual and symbolic) have been ripped apart, because I need to exorcise the experiences, because you can meet the Devil smack in the middle of God's house and in His places of worship, because Falsehood in the end, is always exposed.
