No Class in First Class

The following story (from The WittenburgDoor Insider) is eerily similar to one about "Hour of Power" televangelist Robert Schuller from a few years ago.

Your Worst Flight Now! There it was on the Dallas Morning News Op-Ed page (just days after they nominated Joel Osteen as "Texan of the Year"): "Lord have mercy, what on earth got into Victoria Osteen, wife of millionaire megastar pastor Joel Osteen, on a recent flight from Houston to Vail? According to press accounts, when a flight attendant wouldn't clean Mrs. Osteen's fold-down table quickly enough, the church lady leaped up from her first-class seat and began banging on the cockpit door. The Osteen family had to be removed from the plane before takeoff. Isn't that special?"

So much for Victoria's secret... Well, now Miss Vickie is saying it was just "a minor misunderstanding" and that she, with Joel and the kids in tow, chose "to remove myself from the situation." Alas, FBI Special Agent Luz Garcia tells a different story, saying the Osteens were asked to leave the jetliner after "an altercation" in which Victoria Osteen "failed to comply" with instructions from a flight attendant. Osteensibily, it's all a big misunderstanding, right?

"She was just abusive," said Sheila Steele, who said she was sitting behind Victoria Osteen. "She was just like one of those divas." Steele said Osteen was upset about liquid on her pull-down tray and asked a flight attendant to have it cleaned. When the attendant, who was carrying paperwork to the cockpit, told her she couldn't do it immediately, Osteen replied, "Fine, get me a stewardess who can," Steele said. She said Victoria Osteen then pushed a flight attendant and tried to get into the cockpit. (Ya know what gets lost in the shuffle in this story? The words "millionaire megastar pastor," "first-class seat," "flight to Vail" and "diva." And we wonder why the world laughs at Christians?)

There's a terribly flawed perspective held by many that to be on TV, one must possess superior attributes of character. If so-called "reality TV" has done nothing else to benefit mankind (likely), it has permitted some deflation of this myth. Yet, people still seem to hold in unwarranted esteem seemingly authoritative figures, such as charismatic televangelists... or their wives.

Televangelism has long since passed its point of usefulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In my world, it is far more hindrance than effective tool.

One bit of empathy for Osteen: the utter loss of freedom presented by modern air travel does push us all to the limits of our character. Mine has been tested. I've murmured things, harbored thoughts I seldom have had on the ground, when imbued with more of a sense of freedom (control). I've become agitated at flippant responses from flight attendants (one such occasion recently). So - I understand the frustrations. But that does not forgive bad behavior.

And one final thought. If you can't cut it in FIRST FREAKIN' CLASS, you're not going to cut it anywhere.