Man of ‘God’ a man of greed

How many commandments did mogul of God, $50 million man, Pastor Joel Osteen break by having his church post a lie about why the doors of his megachurch were shut to the suffering rather than bringing them inside into its safe and sheltering arms? If there aren’t enough commandments set in stone, we should add another: You shalt not turn away the suffering from your giant place of worship, you selfish bastards.

Osteen (photo inset), who has made millions off God, apparently turnedhisbackontheLordandhisownflockwhenhischurchannounced that the surrounding area was inaccessible because of flooding and couldn’t take in victims of Hurricane Harvey.

Flooded with what — cash? Yes, but minutes later it was flooded with something a cash-rich pastor can never abide: social media backlash.

In fact, proof that his Lakewood Church was accessible began hitting the internet when folks living around the area posted photos and video of the mostly dry church — a facility so big it used to be the home arena for the Houston Rockets.

Radio host Sean Salisbury, for one, didn’t believe Osteen and went rightoverandshotavideoofthe dry church and surroundings.

As rain battered the city, the video battered Osteen, going viral as did tweets about how the only shelter the church cares about is a tax shelter.

Osteen’s image repair machine went immediately into high gear, and the next round of videos were of air mattresses on the church floors ready to take in victims, as well as retweets from the municipality saying the roads had been inaccessible.

Really? Then how did all those folks shooting video get in there so easily?

If natural disasters — and unnatural ones like 9/11 — bring out the worst in some, they also bring out the best in most of us.

In 2005, when the government fell apart and failed every victim of Hurricane Katrina, my friend Connie Simmons and I joined an 18-truck convoy of volunteers driving relief supplies to victims in Mississippi and Louisiana.

We went to the site of the trucks parked near Lincoln Center just to contribute supplies and found ourselves volunteering to drive one of the giant trucks instead. My then-boss threatened to fire me if I took the time off. I went anyway, and by the grace of God, I wasn’t canned.

I will always remember getting intothebigrigthefirsttime,hoping and praying that we’d figure out how to drive the thing. But Connie turned to me and said, “I’m from Texas, I can drive anything.”

And so, for three days and nights we drove in this insane convoy manned by volunteers ranging from homeless New Yorkers, to ex-service men and women, a firefighter, and a mom with her little girl in tow, stopping to let victims take what they needed from our trucks.

We helped the victims, but I suspect not as much as they helped us. They helped us to feel nothelplessinthefaceof the helplessness the country was feeling watching people dying in the floods. We felt then like we feel onceagain.

Oddly, as we drove through devastation of biblical proportions — women walking down mud streets in rags carrying babies, cars in trees, houses smashed to splinters with just doors and stairwells standing, boats on roofs, the heartbreak of families reaching into our trucks for food and water — I recall being so grateful that I lived in New York where tropical storms of such magnitude never happened.

Then we got hit with Hurricane Sandy. My family and I were evacuated for 14 days and ironicallyenough,itwasConnieandher husband, Jim Krugman, who took us in.

Our house in Atlantic Beach, L.I., was one of the only ones left standing without too much damage, and so we opened it up for anyone and everyone who needed shelter. But since it was without water, heat or electricity and had mold growing, it still wasn’t safe.

But this is what humans do — we help each other because one minute you are watching other people’s devastation on TV and online, and the next minute they are watching yours. If Osteen doesn’t spend a big chunk of the $50 million his church has raked in to help victims of his own hometown, he should join other disgraced televangelists and go sell potato soup on TV to end-of-the-world preppers. He’s prepped for that

possibility for sure.