Five years ago today, heck, five years ago almost to the hour, I did something I had only done one time before, something I had tried by best to avoid, I preached a sermon I didn’t believe. I wanted to believe it, but I didn’t. It felt absolutely shitty to get up in front of 300 people packed into that steel church in an impoverished village outside of Cancun and, through a translator, feed them lies for an hour.

Sure, all the people praising “El Pastor” felt good, really good, but once I was back in my hotel, with the lights out trying to sleep it was just me and my conscious. Five years ago today, I started the darkest three and a half days of my life. That night I made the decision to keep on going, hoping one of the sermons would have something that would restore my faith, but looking at the sermon notes sent by the sponsoring organization, I knew I would have my resolution within just a few days.

There’s a lot of people who do this every week. Some are honestly trying to restore something they had lost or waiting for their chance to get out, they deserve our pitty and our support. Others are content to keep feeding people lies as long as the money and accolades keep coming in, they deserve our scorn and our contempt. Unfortunately you can’t really tell who they are.