Minnesota Fraud, False Faith, & Cheating Churchgoers

At least one daycare in my town of residence shuddered its doors during the pandemic for one reason or another. Turns out, the daycare administrators were doing it all wrong—they actually enrolled real kids, when they could have easily kept their doors open, and profited financially, without any kids. Or wait, does that only work in Minnesota?

Minnesota Fraud

You’ve no doubt seen the many headlines alleging fraud in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Apparently, there were more than a few sham daycares in the North Star State that claimed taxpayer subsidies when in fact said daycares had zero students. From the outside (thanks to signage and other so-called symbols of authenticity), these institutions of kid care looked legit. But on the inside, they were childless and altogether illegitimate.

I’ll leave it to someone else more experienced and knowledgeable than myself to detail the money trail and decipher all the forthcoming litany of litigation. Yes, I’ll let the legal experts handle all that.

For now, what I’d like to do, as a pastor and a fellow heir of the grace to come, is connect some spiritual dots, the kind of dots—when the lines are latched together—that form an uneasy illustration. It’ll be the sort of illustration, when you step back and see the bigger picture, that has the potential to make a person squirm. Like, let’s say, after you’ve sung a concert solo to a packed auditorium, with much applause afterward, only to realize later in the restroom, when it’s just you and the mirror, that some unsightly blemish had been beaming from your face the entire time. Your sudden gasp of disbelief does nothing to ensure that others didn’t really notice. But at least now you can do something about it—and move forward with a clean countenance.

False Faith

Jesus has a lot to say about those who wish to “fake it until they make it.” Anyone who has read the New Testament for any length of time can attest to the fact that the Son of God is not one to have a hankering for hypocrisy. Our Lord clearly has an aversion to duplicity. Sure, actors in Hollywood—that is, professional performers who get paid to pretend to take on another character—may make bucketloads of money. But mask-wearing hypocrites in the real world outside of Netflix get Hell for their reward (Matt. 23:33). Go ahead, Jesus says, paint the signs. Put forward a beautiful outer layer. Fool as many as you please. Live a double-minded life. Play-act. Do whatever you please. But the rottenness-stained reality will seep through, eventually. Your fraud will find you out. It’s one thing to have a whistleblower expose the misdeeds in Minnesota before a human court of law—it’s another to have the Ultimate Judge reveal your heart-level, secret sins for all eternity. There’s no hiding before him “to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13).

Like the sham daycares, professors of faith are just that—professors. They profess something on the outside but possess nothing on the inside. This is false faith, the kind of empty faith that does not save but only damns to the darkest dungeons of teeth-gnashing despair. Fake-news faith inevitably leads to a place where worms never die and the fire is not quenched (Mk. 9:47-48).

Cheating Churchgoers

This is where I, as a pastor, feel overly burdened. I walk and talk with my congregants each and every week. But what if some even among my so-called finest members have cheated all this time? What if on the outside they appear swept and clean, all put together—but on the inside they are full of deadness and decay? The startling truth of Minnesota’s stolen millions is the mere plausibility of the daycare claims. There are a lot of daycare-age children in Minneapolis, don’t you know? Who would have ever dreamed that these very children were not, in fact, inside those purported daycare learning centers? Similarly, who would ever dream that inside a Bible-believing, gospel-loving church—such as mine or maybe yours—there might be lifeless corpses that appear alive? Lusts aflame. Greed unyielding. Anger aplenty. We all know that fraud can go on for a long time, undetected, even unimagined.

It’s true that fraud happens everywhere. What happened in Minnesota could just as well have happened in Maine—or California or Kansas. But here’s an earnest plea for our churches, of all places, to be free of fraud. May the fraud first and foremost not be in me.