To me, if you're a televangelist, you should be in prison for life.
Well, I'm in favor of believers making as much money as they can possibly make
through lawful, legitimate means, with the foresight, knowing intentionally
that there are going to be poor people within their congregations,
you know, people who need their rents paid, people who need a job.
They should be hiring Christians.
Christians that have businesses should be giving Christians jobs.
They should be making as much profit as they can
without being onerous or dishonest
to their employees, because they should be using that profit for the kingdom,
for the glory of God, not so that they can go to Tahiti.
I don't have anything against Tahiti or places like that, but you get the idea.
And I don't want to create the impression I'm a killjoy,
even though that would be easy for me to do, because I largely am.
You know, I tend to be stick in the mud.
But I'm quite pragmatic, you know, when it comes to this.
Money and wealth should be viewed as a tool and nothing else.
It should be used as a tool to further the kingdom of God,
giving Satan and his minions a hard day.
That's what wealth should be doing.
You should be making money, planning on how to use money,
and using money in such ways that further the kingdom of God.
There's the loophole, "furthering the kingdom of God."
What I mean by that, and what somebody else might mean by that,
might be two different things, and I understand that.
Because to me, a lot of money is wasted in the church.
To me, if you're a televangelist, you should be in prison for life.
I mean, the amount of money that people get built out of every year is just staggering.
And then the stuff we spend it on as Christians.
Again, invest it in something else that's going to make more money,
and then distribute that money according to the need within your local congregation,
and support ministries that are doing that on scales that you can't replicate.
Why did we rebuild Noah's Ark?
I mean, honest to God, why do we have a Museum of the Bible?
I'm treading a little bit on my own territory here.
I like museums. I like the Bible.
And I do think that our culture needs to have the Bible viewed positively.
This is a good cultural thing.
And so I can see something like having a Museum of the Bible,
that might be worthwhile.
But there's a significant part of me that thinks that is one colossal waste of money.
Of course, I would deserve to be asked the question,
well, what would you spend it on?
And the honest answer is, I don't really know.
Because I don't have a lot of money, you know.
I'm not acclimated to how to think well on scales like that.
There are other people, though, who think really well,
and who know just what they're doing.
And they have foresight and planning.
Their whole economic enterprise as a business person, or as an investor,
it's run on ministry foresight, and they do it well.
They're gifted in that respect.
So that's how I would answer the question broadly.
I don't have a whole lot of experience, I'm kind of money and math dumb.
But there's just part of me that has to wonder, what in the world are we thinking?
If I'm a big donor to rebuilding the Ark of Noah,
if I devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars to that,
and there are people in my church that can't pay their rent, I should be ashamed.
That's how I think about it.
I should be ashamed.
Again, I feel real conflicted over what a lot of Christians put their money to.
Latin America, how many times have you commented about the lack of resources
in Spanish or in other language like Portuguese or something like that?
Why aren't we paying for that?
Why are we building an ark instead of doing that?
I can pretty much guarantee that putting scriptural resources
into the language of these people groups,
you know, commentaries, encyclopedias, dictionaries, whatever it is,
that that would far exceed the ministry value in the long run
than having an ark replica in Kentucky.
But again, God has not made me steward of resources like that, so.
But I think I have enough common sense to ask a good question.
There's so much that could be done that doesn't get done
because we're giving money to "ministries"
like this group who wants to argue with this other group.
Look at the way we fund intramural Christian argumentation.
I mean, I'm all for apologetics, trying to keep people in the faith
and persuade people of the coherence of the gospel and the Bible and all for that.
I'm talking about groups that exist mainly to debate other groups
within the Christian family, within the Christian orbit.
Again, I just think that's a poor, poor use of resources.