BELIEF TO DISBELIEF, AND BACK

Belief to disbelief in anything you see, touch, or feel, is a short trip.

First you hear something you like and it’s all, “Hell yeah, brudder.”

But real life happens, as it does, and what you’ve heard comes to fruition.

It’s not what you expect?

Your inner-immature critic says, ‘F-that. No one asked for that.’

Your inner-mature critic says, ‘Isn’t that interesting,’ before hitting the, ‘F-that,’ default.

For example:

Once there was a man who answered all the questions asked of him, or at least the important ones, and those answers were rewarded with abundance and wealth year after year, decade upon decade.

 

Despite having little formal education, Ewing managed to build a massive direct-mail empire from his mansion in Los Angeles. All his ministry mail is directed to a Tulsa post office box.

Ewing’s computerized mailing operation, Saint Matthew’s Churches, mails more than 1 million scam letters per month, many to low-income, uneducated people.

 

Since I’m seventy years old it makes sense that I’ve questioned the world of faith. Who hasn’t?

I heard there were more faiths than the Methodist Church in North Bend.

It first dawned on me in junior high when new kids showed up from Coos Catholic.

 

Holy Redeemer opened the Coos Catholic School in the fall of 1954.

Located at the time on the border between Coos Bay and North Bend, the school provided first-through-eighth-grade schooling for 16 years before closing its doors in 1970 due to declining enrollment as well as staffing and funding shortfalls.

 

Let’s say I didn’t grow up in a spiritually-searching household.

I was more reward driven. If I want to Sunday school enough I’d get a red bible, which I’ve still got.

If I went to Methodist Youth Fellowship with my older brother I got a breakfast of the best scrambled eggs before or since.

(The secret was crumbling Williams Bread crust into the well-whisked eggs.)

Since then I’ve been aware of the grip people feel with faith, with belief.

If I had been a struggling, starving, 12th Century stonecutter and offered a job with a place to live for me, my wife, and eight kids, but I had to say a prayer first?

Sign me up.

If my life was a spiral of one low paying hard-labor job to the next with no sign of improvement or change until I dropped dead?

Sign me up.

Mr. Ewing signed them up.

 

The Pitch, The Swing, The Hit From Belief To Disbelief

One mailing from Ewing included a $10,000 “faith check.” The bogus check was from the “Bank of Heaven.”

Of course, the bank president was God, the Father, the vice president was Jesus, and the secretary and treasurer was The Holy Ghost.

“Place the faith check in your wallet and keep it there until the blessing unfolds,” the letter states.

“Whisper the name of Jesus three times as you write your name on the back of your Faith Check.”

Some mailings would contain items like prayer cloths, “Jesus eyes” handkerchiefs, fake golden coins, miracle water or oil, communion wafers, a prayer rug made out of paper, and “sackcloth billfolds.”

To conceal these letters from family members who might have better financial sense, the recipients were told to open the letters in private and not discuss them with others: “Try to take it to a room or somewhere where you can be alone with the Lord.”

Other mailings asked for a donation before opening a second letter marked “Personal and private.”

No amount of money is enough to make it worth losing your eternal soul.

I can’t imagine how someone who preys upon the poorest and most desperate people in our society can be regarded as Christian brothers or sisters.

The funny thing about men who are truly evil: They tend to envision themselves in a positive light.

Somehow they manage to find a way to view their evil deeds as helping their victims.

 

Wait, wait, there’s more.

 

Ewing would send out paper prayer rugs with a picture of Jesus on the front and out of context verses on the back. There would be instructions to follow.

If the sucker followed the instructions, they were promised a monetary blessing. The letter also had testimonials from people who were blessed.

There was also a subtle threat that the person receiving the letter would miss out on the blessings God had for them if they didn’t follow directions.

If you answer the first letter with a donation, expect a follow-up letter.

These usually include a second envelope inside marked “personal and confidential.” The reader is instructed to show it to no one, to discuss it with no one, and to only open it in secret.

The second envelope asks for more money and makes more promises and contains more subtle threats of missing God’s blessing for not obeying the instructions inside.

 

Spiritual Searcher? Keep Searching

I came across the man named Ewing during an evening out.

Until then the only Ewing I’d heard of was from the old TV series Dallas and a character named JR Ewing.

The name came while we were talking about the times we live in and one of the ladies mentioned someone she’d dated in the seventies.

The more I heard the more I was convinced she’d dated Jay Gatsby with all of his mystery.

But it was someone from the Ewing business who wanted her to guess what he did for a living.

I’d never heard of any of these Ewing people, but it rang a bell.

 

Giving people hope that there will be better days is commendable.

I like to think it’s true for everyone.

In my world I like to give hope by helping the wife and kids, by being a granddad and husband and father.

However, I self-identify as a writer, a word slinger, a dedicated blogger of some years.

 

 

From 2012 to 2025, thirteen years of boomerpdx, a baby boomer blog by a Portland baby boomer blogger sounds about right.

Along with hope and some helping out along the way, this blog has been one of questions asked about it’s very existence, like why bother?

Good question. Here’s why:

I’m not pitching my tent to sell faith, or hope based on an object. No magic here.

I’m not doing a mail-order business based on belief or disbelief  because I believe you can work it out on your own.

(I’m giving you, the reader, a lot of credit? Yes. I give my subscribers even more. You could subscribe for good luck?)

What I like to think I’m doing is giving a heads-up to people on the fence who know better, but can’t admit it.

They can’t admit that people like Mr. Ewing are more of a role model than threat to eternal damnation if they don’t send a check.

It’s hard for them to see Mr. Ewing’s approach to banking loads of cash money:

Make a promise based on legend and memory with hints of history sprinkled in to help it resonate.

Deliver a bombastic message of faith based on pain and suffering to a gathering willing to endure pain and suffering because that’s all they’ve ever known and ever expected.

Convince those gathered that their pain and suffering is not their fault, that others are to blame, and you will dispatch them forthwith, if not sooner.

That’s the winning formula?

PS: If you feel the pull of a tent revival preacher, and you’re not poor and uneducated, who are you?

 

PSS: If you see the poor and under-educated being groomed by the proven methods of tent revival showmanship, what happens when it’s your turn to pet the snake?