Over the last few days, I have been so excited to watch the special on CBC about Benny Hinn. Let me tell you why. I see this guy on TV with a bright white suit, grey hair and shouting FIRE, and people falling down and I stare at him in wonder. I don’t know if I like him, or if I don’t like him. Really, it depends on who I’m around.
If I’m around my friends, good ol’ Benny could be the butt of our jokes, and we don’t believe him at all, and we give the guy no credit. If I’m with the girl I like, or my good Pentecostal followers, I have no opinion. Maybe that makes me out to be very wavering and unstable in my convictions, maybe it makes me out to be a people pleaser, maybe it makes me into nothing at all. All I know is that there is something about this guy that doesn’t sit right to me.
First. I’m all about miracles, and God using the average human to perform awesome miracles and blessing humans. I believe it can happen and I believe it happens. What I have a hard time swallowing is that the man that God is supposedly performing miracles through throws massive conferences where thousand go simply for the chance to be saved. Why are we always in such a rush to get healed, or get a quick fix? God doesn’t promise that we won’t go through pain, or that we won’t go through physical, emotional or mental bondage, or that we won’t have rough times. In fact he pretty much tells us that once we get saved to get ready for those times. Yet it seems Benny Hinn is the quick fix for us Christians. I know God heals, and I know we can have faith he will, but I also know that God doesn’t heal, and I also know that we can know that sometimes he doesn’t fix us up. So when he doesn’t instead of following Benny around, maybe we need to learn to live in dependency on God with our broken hip. insert your problem here, and just live our lives after God instead of living our lives after the cure. We spend way too much time seeking healing, and not enough time seeking Christ. I find that Benny Hinn conferences are so focused on what you can take from the service. I highly doubt that there is a large amount of followers that go to these events to just glorify God, or to serve others (unless of course you’re a ‘catcher’).
Second. I’m not one to judge gifts, and I won’t. Whether he has the gift of healing or not, I don’t know, but to be honest I’d probably lean more towards the Yes he does. How he uses that gift is up to him, and he will reap what he sows, I pray that he uses it humbly and graciously and continues to give all glory onto God. So if you ever ask me if I think he is for real or not, I’ll just say I don’t know, but frankly I don’t care. I don’t care nearly about how people think about the messenger, as long as the message goes forth.
So it’s 3:20 A.M. on Sun morning, and I’m waiting up till 4am to watch a special by CBC on Benny Hinn. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to finally put my convictions to rest. I can’t wait till CBC tells me exactly what’s in Benny Hinn’s heart, exactly how many people he has affected, exactly how many lives God has changed through him. I can’t wait for this mystery to be over. I can’t wait for all my jokes about him to go justified. I can’t wait to show all those Pentecostals that they were wrong. Wait a second. Can CBC really help me? Can this secular broadcasting company really look deep into the heart of Hinn and tell me what I’m supposed to know.
I can’t believe myself. I had this realization earlier today. I’ve been so excited for this episode so I can sit down, with a Pepsi in one hand, the remote in the other and bathe in my glory as Benny Hinn gets put to shame. It’s about time someone exposed some light into this obviously dark, really dark episode of evangelical crap. Then it hit me. How selfish and prideful and arrogant am I. I don’t care about him, I don’t care about anything except the fact that I want to see that my initial feelings about the man are right. I’d much rather be shown that he is a failure, that he is wasting his money, that its all a scam then too see that its all for real and God is actually moving through him. God forgive me, because there I go again. Thinking about myself.
So here I sit, thirty-four minutes and all will be laid bare. But I think now, I don’t care. I’m angry at myself for being so prideful and hateful of this man. I pray now that God uses him, whether his intentions or actions are right or wrong, to exalt himself. I pray now that God message would go forward no matter what the outcome of this broadcast. I pray now that God would help me start to look at the big picture instead of this little pile of dust called me.