On JP Miller and those stupid sermons

Most people would NOT have walked out on those sermons like they think they would have - and we have proof.

Along with the rest of the Country, I watched “Death of a Pastor’s Wife” on Netflix this weekend and was horrified, mortified, grossed out, pissed off, and SO MAD for Mica Miller.

But I wasn’t confused.

I wasn’t sitting there saying, “How did people sit right through those sermons?!? How was his congregation ok with this?!? “How does he still have a Church?!?”.

BECAUSE I KNOW A LOT OF JP MILLERS and a lot of people just like the members of Solid Rock Church.

Sure, it’s natural to be on the outside looking in and have these questions, but I would bet quite a bit of money that MOST church-goers have done the exact same things that the members of Solid Rock did. Most Christians I know HAVE sat right through sermons that were red flags, have sat through preachers talking about things that should have made them get up and leave, have stayed when a person in their church has done something bad.

“How could these people be so blind, he was very obviously a bad person?!?”

Yeah, and we have a rapist, cheater, pedophile, abuser as THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES because the same people who did excuse or would excuse JP Miller’s behavior excused his.

Psychologically, our beliefs - politically, religiously, etc - become WHO we are; like, when someone identifies as a Christian, they ARE A CHRISTIAN, they’re not just someone who goes to church. When someone believes that they’re a member of a political party and the other party is evil, they don’t just vote republican and move on, THEY ARE A REPUBLICAN.

So, naturally, when a person ties themselves to OUR BELIEFS, aka, who we see ourselves as, we see that person as someone like us, someone who exhibits the things that make us who we are, the things that you believe in our core.

To question them becomes to question god; to question them becomes to question who WE are.

The scary part? Narcissists know this (I honestly don’t know if I believe that all narcissists are that smart, because I know some really stupid ones), and, if they don’t know know it, I think they are good at pattern recognition; they know when something makes people react and they start to pick up on patterns that make them do certain things more and other things less.

"Oh, when I delivered that sermon about how we’re all sinners and look how God used David, who was not a good man, to spread the word, Sarah in the front row had tears in her eyes, Billy 3 rows back was nodding his head in agreement the whole time, Scott in the band raised his hands and shouted; let me preach about how we’re all wicked again, let me use myself as an example, let me show them that’s me too.”

And bam, a few sermons in, and this man could tell the congregation he committed murder (cough cough), that he’s sorry, he has repented and, well, look at David - and they’re going to sit right there and feel a level of respect and intimacy with him and get even more devoted. Almost like a trauma bond - exactly like a trauma bond, ha.

A man named Rickman Sam, who played in the worship band/choir with Mica at Solid Rock made a post that I just happened across this morning:

“He had an odd sense of humor. But the way he talked, his charisma, and the way he could communicate and talk about scripture all played a part in how things were perceived at the time.”

That’s what Rockman said in response to, “Well, if he had said THAT from the pulpit, I would’ve known immediately that he was a monster and I would’ve left.”

You can read the whole post here.

That didn’t start with JP standing on stage screaming about how a wife owes her husband sex; it started with a message about how a woman is supposed to submit to a man, it started with a few sermons about how men are different than women, it started by hitting on things that made the congregation shake their heads, raise their hands, and say “amen”, and then it turned into that - it’s that easy.

When being a Christian is CORE to who you are, and a man who you see as “next to god”, because, like it or not, that’s how a pastor/preacher is seen, stands on stage and slowly trickles in a message that’s HORRENDOUS to the outside world, and may have been horrendous to you at some point, you just see it as normal - and worse, as part of your faith.

Then, repeat after me class - when something is part of your faith, it’s part of who you are, so when someone who you see as a person “high” in your religion says something, you take it as Bible…literally, ha.

Not only do people who want to manipulate you know this, but they intentionally (and, I think unintentionally, because, again, I know a lot of dumb people doing this shit too) do it to make sure you stay loyal.

If you haven’t walked away from Trump yet, you would have been one of those people sitting right there in that church raising your hands and saying “amen” to JP Miller’s obviously horrible sermons.

If you want to learn more about the tie between Christianity and the Republican party, I highly highly highly recommend the book Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.

I live in the Bible Belt, so I have sat in sermons where the pastor was telling women they shouldn’t wear pants (I walked out of that one), where I knew the man teaching Sunday school or preaching was treating his wife like CRAP (because she told me), where the preacher that everyone LOVED was a horrible person behind-the-scenes; I can think of several preachers RIGHT NOW who have done terrible things, illegal things, things that ANYBODY would see as bad if they were watching a documentary about it, and they’re still standing in a pulpit with a church members amening their every words.

There’s a reason Donny J. Plump said he could stand in the middle of the street and shoot someone and not lose followers - BECAUSE HE COULD.

Somewhere along the way someone heard a sermon about how Trump may not be perfect but neither was David; or about how, sure he’s done some not-great things, but the other party wants to kill babies; or they’ve had someone akin their masculinity to the harshness of DJT’s words; or they’ve seen a preacher they respect endorse him, and now we have a chunk of the country who pairs Trump with their faith, or their manhood, or their beliefs in some way, and they’re all essentially, “sitting through a sermon full of redflags” and proudly supporting it.

When Trump said he could “grab women by the…[you know]”, they laughed it off as locker room talk.

When it was revealed that he would regularly go backstage in pageants and watch TEENAGERS change - it was just how he was.

When he called a female reporter Piggy, lashed out at several others, and spent several minutes demeaning Kaitlan Collins after she received an award - her name was Peggy (not it wasn’t), and those reporters were being mean to him (no, they were asking questions and being, ya know, reporters).

When he was FOUND GUILTY for paying off a sex worker so she wouldn’t say anything during his run for President and charged with 34 felonies - oh, that’s fake news.

When he’s on his 3rd wife, says things like, “Two Corinthians”, and proudly proclaims that he’s not going to Heaven - all things that show that he doesn’t align or practice the Christian faith - oh, well, none of us are perfect.

THAT is how the congregation just sat there and let JP Miller say that crap - the JP to Trump pipeline is SHORT and most people will never see it.

Our belief systems, our religion, our morals, our ideals - they’re ALL core to who WE are, so when a person ties themselves to those, it’s damn hard to see them (or anything they do) as bad.

Here’s a snippet of how this works that came up on my phone AS I was typing this:

A Christian’s brain says, “JD Vance is doing God’s work, I believe in God, if he’s doing God’s work the other side must not be, I know the end times has to come, so yeah, go JD!”, when what it SHOULD be saying is, “WTF?!? The VICE PRESIDENT OF OUR COUNTRY is taking actions and doing things that he sees as “helping” the “end times” come - run!”

I’m not saying that churches or religious leaders are bad, but I’m saying that there are JP Millers EVERYWHERE and most people would not have stood up and left that church like they would like to think they would.

For me and my house, we’re gonna be stander-uppers-and-leavers.