The toughest job at Trinity Foundation isn't dumpster diving, undercover exploits, washing dishes, leading Bible study, crisis counseling at all hours or even proofreading The Door, (although we've seen that chore bring even the strongest of believers quivering to their knees).

No, the absolute worst job is monitoring the videotaped replays of televangelist TV programs — hours of them, day in and day out.

It makes people run for the exits. Nobody wants that job, and those who do volunteer are treated with awe and hushed reverence. Why? Because after a monitoring session, a normal person feels slimed and vaguely ashamed. Later, after a vigorous Lysol scrubdown and a shower, you realize the reason. The gospel they're preaching has appealed to you on some level even though you know it's wrong.

It's sort of like being assigned to take an accurate count of the ceiling tiles at a topless bar. The flesh naturally gravitates away from things it doesn't like toward what is pleasing to it, and the church is constantly being drawn away from the cross to what can only be called paganism.

Monitoring the televangelists acts as a mirror that shows us how our cumulative, personal self indulgance combines to produce an abomination like the "name it and claim it" gospel.

The problem is us. We want a spiritual justification for our greed.

I'm calling this paganism, because if you take the cross out of Christianity, nothing is left but paganism — even if it looks like a church. And the cross is nowhere to be found in these broadcasts.

Sadly, the only picture many people have of God is through these televangelists' TV circuses.

Our monitoring activity over the years has shown us that Christians are no different from other people in the way we can be blinded by unexamined assumptions. We nibble our way toward oblivion.

It's simple, really. I first used this "nibbling" metaphor in 1994 in a speech to the Philadelphia Conference on Cults, the Occult and the Word Faith Movement, and today the drift is even more pronounced. Individually, and as a people, the move toward paganism is like a sheep nibbling a tuft of grass. It finds a hole in the fence and keeps nibbling until finally it's nibbled itself right out of the sheepfold and into unbelief.

We move furiously from one tuft of activity to another, not noticing how far we have moved from the truth.

We live like pagans, think like pagans and use the pagan view of the world to evaluate our own view. We forget that Jesus said, "that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination unto God" (Luke 16:15).

My nibbling might first bring me to a place where I can legitimitize my self-interest.

After all, doesn't Jesus want me to be happy and fulfilled? Jesus must want what I want.

Alduous Huxley pictured this best in his novel The Devils of Loudun:

"The untutored egoist merely wants what he wants. Give him a theological education, and it becomes obvious to him, it becomes axiomatic, that what he wants is what God wants."

What a contrast to the true gospel.

To save one's life (or interests or desires) is to lose them, according to Jesus.

"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Mark 8:34).

Paul echoed this in Philippians 3:7, "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ."

The next tuft of grass will convince me of the salvation of the isolated self.

It has become a dangerous assumption of American Christians to say, "It's just me and Jesus!" I don't have to listen to exhortation; I don't have to ask for help or be vulnerable; I don't have to lay down my life for my brother, daily.

In essence, the real believer sees himself as part of Israel, the Bride, the New Jerusalem. The pagan can only see himself alone.

By the time we've nibbled at the next tuft of grass, we've taken pain and suffering, depression and doubt out of God's hands and turned them into the enemy.

We believe the pagan lie of duality, that God does only good things and any negatives in our lives come from Satan. We secretly believe that "real" Christians never have to experience any discomfort, any struggles or depression or periods of doubt.

Peter reminds us to "think it not strange" concerning the fiery trial that will come upon us, to expect persecution and testing; to count it the highest joy when we do not get our way and are depressed.

Because if we do not suffer with him, we will not reign with him (Romans 8:19). It is through chastisement that the seldom-seen fruits of perseverence, patience and long-suffering are developed.

If we have come this far into the pagan field, it is an easy thing to discard moral absolutes.

Oh, we have our opinions about things and our own standards that we apply on self and others, but we believe a thing is right simply because we believe it.

We do not know the law, and therefore we do not understand grace. As a consequence, we are incapable of repentance. We never see ourselves as sinners, because we really don't believe in sin. We certainly don't see ourselves as the "chief of sinners" as Paul did, and therefore we can't abandon ourselves into God's mercy.

A few more steps, and we're almost out of sight of where we came from. We're blaming others for our own actions. If we fall on the sidewalk, we sue the city or even the cement-maker. Depressed? It's your wife's fault, or your boss!

Perhaps the last tuft of grass eaten before this sheep turns completely into a goat is the denial of consequences. Our conscience becomes seared as with a hot iron. Drunkenness, drug abuse, illicit sex, divorce, murder — anything is possible. And therefore love has no foothold in our life.

This tendency toward paganism that lies just beneath the surface in the Church in America is glaringly apparent in the activities of the televangelists.

One reason is that there is no accountability for televangelists. They are insulated from their audiences, and many times surrounded by body guards.

No one is able to compare their private lives with their preaching. They falsify testimonials on their broadcasts. They conceal their health problems, while preaching that to be sick reveals a lack of faith.

When their followers don't get the sought-after results, whether it's healing or prosperity, the televangelists claim that those people just didn't have enough faith.

Next, if you still complain, they tell you there is hidden sin in your life.

If there's still no success, you must have a demon oppressing you.

And finally, you will be diagnosed as demon-possessed, and an exorcism will be prescribed.

The lives and messages of the televangelists reveal a progressively straying path toward paganism.

But God has allowed them to come to prominence so the church can see the reflection of itself in them, and repent.