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I wonder---why do dead people suddenly become very "saintly" during tributes given them? The dead suddenly become flawless, or if they do have flaws, they become negligible.
I know, tributes to the dead are times when you highlight their good deeds---giving their good side about 90 to 95 percent emphasis. But that would make it all a big lie. It will sound so good and right, but that paints a wrong picture of the deceased.
I'm not saying we become judgmental---I'm saying we should speak out the truth or not speak at all. If you're a believer of God, truth should make everything look beautiful.
Look at the bible. When it talks about the lives of God's servants, it talks about the good and bad. Sometimes just the bad. You just have to read the lives of the kings and prophets in the Old Testament. God left no stone unturned. He exposed their lives (even King David's) and it all gave glory to God---and that's what's important---God's glory---not the glory of the one being given a tribute.
The world's tribute may be like that---giving glory to the subject of the tribute. But in the Kingdom of God it's different. The truth gives God all the glory.
So I went to this tribute for a minister who just died, and I heard all sorts of ridiculous, inaccurate tributes---because I knew the person they were talking about.
"He never feared anything except God," one pastor said about the dead pastor being given tribute.
Never feared anything? I know for a fact that the guy feared going to the hospital a lot, so much so that he hated visiting his doctors for checkups and even hated visiting his wife when she was hospitalized. In fact, he almost didn't see her in the hospital when she was dying there. What did this pastor mean, he never feared anything except God?
And before the pastor died, I knew for a fact that he claimed to be seeing a devil in his hospital room and he feared it so much.
"He was very humble," another pastor said.
Humble? The guy was full of arrogance. He spoke like he was always the best and the greatest and loved shaming in public people he didn't like---especially if they were of a different denomination. He scoffed at other church denominations and blindly believed his church denomination was the best. He put you down if you were a poor guy because to him success was having lots of money and possessions.
Now, I'm not saying these things because I have bitter animosity or anything like that for him. I don't. I know how it felt being victimized by his arrogance (although I tried my best to be kind and polite to him) and obviously hated me for reasons I couldn't understand. People saw how he treated me, but I didn't make a big deal of it. I just smiled understandingly. I ignored myself (actually, I've been used to being treated like garbage by church people).
I visited him at the hospital several times where he ignored me and showed everyone how he preferred other people than preferring me. He showed everyone I was nothing but garbage.
Well, in the final moments before his death, when he was suffering a lot and was so weak, I was the one who carried him (dying folks are heavy---or is it just my age?) and helped put him in more comfortable positions in his bed. I even supported him while he was seated on the toilet bowl when he was defecating and helped him stand up and took off his dirtied pants. All that, with a gentle voice and gentle handling of his dying body. I felt like I was Nightingale.
I think I got him that time, because since then, a few days before he died, he'd been smiling at me and treating me right, although he could hardly speak. You could see the change in his eyes. He looked sorry, and I understood it all. I always gently patted his back and hands and caressed his head to assure him he had nothing to worry about me. I was glad that he finally had the revelation to repent and be sorry for what he did before he died. And I believe God was not willing to take his life until he finally realized his faults and genuinely repented from them.
A lot of people told him how God had spared him several times from death because God still wanted him to achieve many things in ministry. This shows how church people, even leaders, are blind spiritually. I told my wife how God still willed him to live despite his ailing body and seriously failing health---not because he needed to achieve more in ministry---but to give him enough time for genuine spiritual revival---to realize his sins and truly repent from them.
It was hard for him to see that because of his pride and arrogance. He even thought he was very spiritual.
God does not need your ministry achievements or your so-called success in life. He needs your pure heart and life in Christ. Unfortunately, very, vert few church people realize this.
It's just sad that a minister of God who served the church almost all his life would end up like this, hating someone even if that someone had been trying his best to offer a good relationship with him. I don't know what about me he hated. Is it because I went out of their denomination and now belong to the body of Christ, God's spiritual and universal church, without any denomination?
So, what did the pastor mean when he said this dead minister was humble and loving when he was still living?
A lot of church people have failing spiritual discernment and good judgment. They can't tell who's who and which is which. They can't even tell between right and wrong. They just base everything on outward appearances and not the heart---because their spiritual blindness keeps them from seeing the heart. As a result, their so-called "tributes" are often nothing but lies. Never believe things you hear during tributes. Chances are, they're just 10 percent true. Church people tend to cover-up the sins of dead people, especially dead church ministers. It's a way of protecting their denominations.
They loved this dead pastor because he gave them lots of material benefits when he was alive. He gave them money, food and shelter, and even more. Little did they know that he did that only to those who liked him a lot---to people of his church denomination that got the benefits and those who praised him. After his good deeds (his dole outs), he expected them to come to tributes he had arranged for himself, to hear them praise and applaud him---all in the guise of giving "glory to God" later. But that's all talk because you'd see that the glory was all to this pastor.
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them." [Luke 6.32]A lot of people think I'm very judgmental when I talk like this. I'm not, I'm merely applying the Word of God to what we do. Things we do may look so good and right, but the Word of God is much higher than anything that looks good and right in this world.
