How did Michael Guglielmucci get away with it?

I read today that Michael Guglielmucci has been lying about his cancer. You can read all about it at News.com.au. Basically it has been confirmed that he lied – but here is the part that amazed me: 

This news has come as a great shock to everyone including, it seems, his own wife and family,” Hillsong general manager George Aghajanian said in an email to his congregation yesterday.

How can your wife not know that you don’t have bone cancer? I’m not saying that there is some conspiracy here, but there is only one sort of person that can get away with faking a terminal illness to people who are close and care about them, and that is a practiced pathological liar. I say this means that he has been lying for a long time, and got so good at it that he managed to convince even those closest to him that he was dying of an illness that he didn’t have. Kind of like Frank Abagnale Jr. from the movie Catch Me If You Can (imdb), a man who made millions pretending to be a solicitor and a pilot.

Someone must have been suspicious, someone must have noticed something, but it seems like nobody said anything. We tend to assume that someone must have checked it out, he is on a stage, so it must be fine right?

Here is the Hillsong video – tubes up his nose and everything. At the moment Hillsong seem to be trying to take this down, so if it goes missing, I will try to find a replacement.

EDIT I can’t find another video – some poor intern at Hillsong must be working 16 hour days filing copyright claims with every video host on the planet.

So when did Michael start lying, and how did he perfect the art?

I read this in a forum post at gush.com.au from 2006:

when i heard he was sick, i laughed… not because i am happy he is sick, but because while he was at our church he was healed of:

Glandular Fever
Blood Clot in his brain
Brain Tumor
Burst Ear Drum

That’s right, isn’t it amazing that one man can have so many severe illnesses miraculously cured by God. Another post in that thread claimed to have seen his broken leg healed on stage. Now I actually believe that God can and does heal people, but it seems likely to me that Michael has been faking it for a long time, and that christians are so eager to have their “faith confirmed” in front of them that they jump and cheer at anything that seems to fit the bill.

I remember a man that preached at a church I used to go to (Gateway City Church in Wollongong). He was going to heal people’s backs, and he did this by sitting someone in a seat on stage, looking at their legs, declaring that one was longer than the other (there was someone from the church helping him and agreeing that the legs were not the same length). Then he got all the young children from the church to come down the front (the stage is over a meter high). Then he prayed, and said that the legs were the same length now, the other guy on stage agreed, and the “healed” walked around and said they felt better. But then he asked the children to confirm to the congregation that it had actually happened.

The whole congregation cheered wildly at the kids saying that it happened, despite the fact that it was completely impossible for any of the kids to have seen what happened, or had any idea if there was a change in the legs. Who knows, maybe the people were healed – but why the show? Why pretend to have kids witness something? The whole situation makes a mockery of the word proof.

 

So here is the challenge – just because a person says they have proved something, doesn’t mean that there is any proof at all. Just because someone is on stage doesn’t mean they are telling the truth. Just because you aren’t in charge doesn’t mean you don’t have a responsibility to the truth – if something stinks, then find the rot and deal with it.

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