Throughout the past week, I have been reading articles online about Sarah Palin’s church catching on fire caused by arson.

As I read the “On the Record W / Greta,” transcript from December 15, 2008., I noticed one particular section of the transcript that caught my attention.

VAN SUSTEREN: Now, I heard that — or let me ask you. Is there any suspicion in your mind that it may be in any way related to the fact that you’re the governor of Alaska, you ran for the second-highest office in the country and an obviously high-profile member of the church?

PALIN: Well, not — not just that church, but a couple other churches that I’ve even visited in Alaska certainly received some unfair scrutiny and negative press, I think, because I happened to have participated in some of the events at their churches. So maybe that raised some eyebrows right off the bat, and that was — certainly, it’s a concern of mine. And I apologized to the assistant pastor, letting them know and if there’s anything that I’ve done to draw negative attention to that good church, I certainly apologize for it. But I don’t know. There again, experts are looking into any kind of political threat…..

and later on in the show…

VAN SUSTEREN: Pastor, I don’t know if you heard our interview with the governor, but she said that — you know, that she hoped that she was not the one responsible. Have you had a chance to speak to her at all directly?

KROON: No, I haven’t been able to speak to her directly and — you know, there’s no need to apologize there at all.

VAN SUSTEREN: And I guess — I didn’t mean that she was responsible for the fire, but rather that someone was taking it out on her, is what I meant by saying that.

KROON: Right.

And I’ll tell you from my personal experience from being in churches like this one with the charismatic, word of faith, and domionalistic leanings, most churches are playing both sides of the fence here (I am not accusing Wasilla Bible Church of doing this).

The Public Side: We’re gonna survive. We’re gonna be stronger. We will rebuild. We are not down or destroyed. The perpetrator will be brought to justice. Jesus still rules. What was meant for evil will be turned around for good. We need money to rebuild (even though we had insurance).

The Private (and nasty side): Okay…. Who had secret sin, lacking faith, disagreed with the church, gossiped about the pastor’s wife, disagreed with the preaching. Someone amongst us is the great satan. People, when you sin, you break down the protection of God from us and therefore allow a crack in the armor for the foothold of Satan to creep in and attack us.

Somebody (besides the true criminal and real enemy) becomes the fall guy (especially if the criminal is never brought to justice or if healing never occurs) and gets blamed for a church tragedy because they were not ‘perfect’ and the worse part is that the true colors of the private side does not even begin to manifest until

(1): Months later when the press has gone on to the next major shock-value story and this story is forgotten and the church goes back to being like they used to be.

(2): If the instance is one not publicized by the local media, then the nastiness takes place right after the negative event took place.

Years ago, I spent quite a bit of time fellowshipping with a particular individual listening to their story of how they left a charismatic church over a very disturbing occurrence that took place. When their pastor went for his annual physical checkup, the doctors discovered the beginning signs of a very serious and potentially life-threatening problem. Extensive surgery was the only option.

Before the surgery, the victory choruses began to be sung. The ‘repentance rallies’ for the church began. The spiritual warfare times increased. One ‘mega pastor / apostle / bishop’ came and laid their hands on the pastor and anointed him pronouncing him ‘healed’. The fast-a-thon started for the pastor’s healing. The 2 Chronicles 7:14 solemn assemblies were held. Well, the pastor never got better and eventually had to receive surgery to fix this ailment that turned out to be legitimate and could have killed him if surgery was not performed.

After the surgery, pleas were made for volunteers to cook meals, wash the car and the laundry, etc. A week later, my friend received a letter from the church where the elders discussed the surgery but literally laid the ‘blame’ on the pastor having to have surgery not due to the fraility of the human body (and/or the possible sin issues of the pastor).

Oh no!

The blame was laid on the ’secret sin’, ‘lack of faith’, not praying hard enough for healing, etc. on the congregation. The letter placed guilt on the congregation with such statements as

The money that our pastor would have sowed for his hundredfold blessing went to the doctors and the hospital instead of the prophet of God.

The time that could have been used for evangelism and counseling was given to the hospital bed instead of the Great Commission.

and therefore led to a ‘church wide repentance service’ where additional offerings were taken up by the people going to the pastor and placing money in his hand and people publicly repented again in front of the pastor’s family for failing to pray hard enough for their pastor’s healing (using the ‘my brother’s keeper’ Scripture as their basis) and did a ’sevenfold restoration prayer’ (based on Proverbs 6:31) for restoring all this ‘lost money now in the hands of the evil doctors’ seven times more.

My friend was smart and ran away with all their might!!!

Playing up to the public to eventually downgrade the spirituality of someone in private. It really speaks to the true colors of being double-minded, hypocritical, and two faced.

Isn’t it a whole lot simpler to just say, the tragedy happened, we are temporarily set back but will overcome by the grace of God instead of looking for a enemy and a ‘great Satan’ from within to blame?