You know how TiVo goes out and gets things that it thinks you will want?  You know how it’s often so wrong?

     Well, yesterday, I saw a name I wasn’t expecting in my TiVo line-up; Ron Luce.

     I had heard that name before in letters from a cousin, and from the son of an acquaintance.  These two young men had spent several months sending me letters and e-mails about their decision to go to Honor Academy.  They were going to get a year of training study for the mission field.  Honor Academy is just one of the Ron Luce "ministries" administered under the umbrella name of "Teen Mania".

     The letters were pretty standard.  They talked about the “boot camp” activities like obstacle courses, endurance tests, fasting, prayer marathons, Bible studies, and the hours they spent working their jobs (like being garbage collectors, or working in the cafeteria.

     Oh yeah, and they asked for money.  Money to pay their tuition, and money for incidentals, and money to put in an account to save up for the mission trips they wanted to go on.

     “But wait!”, I thought, “didn’t they mention having jobs?”

     Well, no, not really.  Turns out, they have internships.  Turns out, they were learning while they were working for the Honor Academy, and they have to pay tuition to do so.  For twelve months of working, they have to pay…and work.

     Anyway, I have no idea how much they had to pay, I just know that they sent out a lot of letters asking for money.   The letters also talked about the physically exhaustive boot camp training, and the mentally exhaustive study and prayer marathons, and the stints of fasting (lasting for days) and about their prayers for money to make their goals so they can continue their training.  Sometimes they talked about how they were doing additional fasting and prayer so that God would see their devotion and move people to give them money.

     I did feel some pressure to send some money.  After all, I knew these kids, and I didn’t like to hear about them going without food for days at a time.  Still, I also didn’t think it was very fair that I should have to pay money to keep them from holding themselves hostage.  In the end, I didn’t send the money…recognizing that even though they were going to be hungry for a few days, they probably would not starve themselves to death…and if I DID send the money, the only person to benefit would be Ron Luce, because they would hand the money right over to him, and it would just prolong their stay in a place that could make them over-ride their basic need for food.

     I did notice that one of the boys, the son of the acquaintance, talked about food a lot in his e-mails.  He also talked about the training they were getting for their work in the mission fields (he wanted to go to Costa Rica).

     One of the training exercises he mentioned was a re-enactment of a mission story where a bunch of missionaries went to go witness to Buddhists.  So a bunch of the “interns” were pretending to be Buddhists, and were worshipping Buddha.  (He made sure to assure everyone that the interns were not actually worshipping Buddha, but instead were pretending.  I was previously unaware that anyone actually “worshipped” Buddha…even Buddhists.)

     But anyway.  Back to the mission simulation.  The Buddhists were “worshipping Buddha”, and the Christians came in and witnessed to them and prayed to Jesus for them (The Christians were really worshipping Jesus, not making a mockery of prayer, you understand, but genuinely praying, as opposed to the Buddhists, who were faking it because they were actually Christian interns.  Everyone clear now?)

     The Buddhists resisted for a little while, but eventually most of them accepted Jesus as their savior (presumably pretending to be converted, as they were already converts to Christianity pretending to be Buddhists.)

     Then, the Buddhists invited the Christian missionaries to a feast in honor of their new religion.  But when the Christians bowed their heads in prayer (genuine prayer), the Buddhists (who were really Christians pretending to be Buddhists, as I think I’ve mentioned) rose up and slaughtered the Christians (played by real Christians.  The slaughter was fake, though…I’m pretty sure).

     See, the Buddhists had faked their conversion to Christianity (the one in the exercise…not, presumably the original conversion that has made them Christians pretending to be Buddhists pretending to convert to Christianity).

     Anyway, the boy writing the letter concluded by saying that the whole thing really opened his eyes to “the reality of the dangers of mission work.”

     Another revelation I recall him imparting in a letter is that as Christians, it is important to have less “tolerance”, and tell people about God’s judgment and make them see how much they need Jesus in their lives.  Particularly the homosexuals.  They need to feel God’s judgment so that they can save their souls.

     So it was with a not-so-subtle blend of schadenfreude and trepidation that I selected “Ron Luce” on the TiVo list and played it.

     It was awful.  There was a several-minute-long lead-up with loud club-style music, lots of jumping, scribbled, animated do-dads, and seizure-inducing jump cuts with a voice-over spewing disjointed neo-Christian buzz words and phrases like “Acquire The Fire” (another of Ron Luce’s “ministries”) and “Soldiers for God” and such.

     Then came the “program”, which was a skit performed by three teenagers in front of a live audience.  The level of production quality, acting, writing, and staging can only be described as “bad” if you set the bar for “good” at the level of your average small-town Community Theater.

     It’s almost as if Ron Luce had the entire thing put together by a bunch of physically, mentally and spiritually exhausted and brainwashed interns that he had been leaching money and psychic energy off of for the better part of a year.

     The premise of the skit is that today’s Christians failed to execute The Great Commission, and less than 4% of the world population is Christian.  A Christian lawyer is working to defend two missionaries against a secular government who has disseminated lies about the true goal of missionaries, casting them as evil cannibals (among other things).

     During her research, the lawyer discovers that the prosecuting attorney (who specialized in the “separation of Church and State”) has never lost a case, and that this case has, in fact, already been decided.  We also discover that the two men she is defending have, in fact, broken the law.  They have used computer piracy and other criminal activities to spread the Word of God.  Nothing will stop them, not even the law.

     Somewhere in there, the two male missionaries reflect on their time in the mission field, and one of them refers to the time the other had a “parasite”.  His companion objects to him bringing up memories of the uncomfortable disease brought on by the parasite, to which he responds “I was referring to the girl you were dating at the time.”  Ha ha ha.  Girlfriends are useless, Dating is a disgusting process akin to illness, stay pure for God.  Oh yeah, and women are to be casually disrespected if they are sexual beings.

     Then the lady defense lawyer shows up.  She is not to be casually disrespected because she isn’t a sexual being, she’s a fresh-faced pure, holy warrior and sister-in-Christ, who is bringing the message of how completely screwed the young missionaries are, being at the hands of a secular state that is out to get them, and doesn’t play fair.

     In the course of their discussions of how screwed they are, they manage to tell the stories of two “real life” missionaries.  One guy from Scotland who spends his life in India witnessing to the Hindus and “Mohammedans” (really?  People still use that word?).  They say something about how he’s the first missionary in India to witness to these people, as the other missionaries found them to be too fierce and dangerous to witness to.  I wondered briefly who else was there to witness to in India, but then I remembered that we’re talking about a religious huckster here, and most likely, NONE of this has any basis in fact…so why bother with questions like that?

     Anyway, this missionary bravely spends his life witnessing to the people of India, and then returns to his native Scotland when he is old and gives himself a fatal heart-attack standing at a podium in a church pleading past the point of exhaustion and collapse for someone in his home town to take his place.  Two young men are moved by the sheer power of his psychosis and decide to emulate it.  Inspiring.  I almost teared up.

     Then there was a Count who formed a group called the “Merovingian Brotherhood”.  Supposedly, they were so fanatical about witnessing for Christ that some of them sold themselves into slavery in order to go and witness to the slaves of the New World.

     Yet another testament to the power and glory of people who have no sense of self-preservation.  Sigh.

     But back to our little skit.  In the end, the three “heros” find out that they are all scheduled for transport.  I’d tell you how it ends, but I don’t remember.  I thnk my brain was two or three-jump-cuts behind in its processor speed, and then the program was over.  I suspect, however, knowing the mentality as I do, that the intrepid heroes decide that it is a honor and privilege to be incarcerated in the name of the Lord, and they will continue to do his work until it kills them.

     So there you have it.  Join the Christian right because Jesus loves you, and to show his love, he’s marking you for persecution, self-starvation, self-denial and self-destruction.  Come on, join the game where the only way to win is to completely lose your mind, health, and sense of personal preservation. 

     And that way you won’t notice how filthy rich and politically influential Ron Luce has become, and how he’s using your diminished capacity to suck money and time and energy out of you and everyone you know…for his own purposes, and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus.

Here's a fun site that is working to debunk Teen Mania.