The Church as a Corporation - Part 3

The message of the church is not primarily led by the truth, but by its paying members. For the church to survive, the message need not agree with truth at all, it must agree with the church’s paying members. Truthful messages are not nearly as monetarily profitable as agreeable/popular messages. Quite the opposite, truthful messages can be quite offensive and repellent. The churches that are very monetarily successful have done a great job tailoring to what people want to hear, thereby attracting lots of people. People dislike having their strongly held views called into question, so they attend and fund agreeable churches that affirm their existing views. In their mind they’re going to hear the truth, but in reality they’re going to hear a message that they themselves are dictating with their funding. They go to church to hear themselves. The strong tendency of catering toward one’s sponsors is why the government has laws limiting campaign contributions and gifts to the government. But the church has no other way of surviving, so it must please its sponsors.