Hurricane Harvey Flood Victims v. Joel Osteen: Preacher Blames Criticism On Social Media Devils

AUSTIN, TX — If all else fails, blame the media. In this case, social media. Blasted for closing his downtown mega-church in Houston to residents fleeing the floodwaters wrought by Hurricane Harvey, the televangelist Joel Osteen on Wednesday blamed a "false narrative" advanced by social media.

“I think sometimes social media can be very powerful, and it can create this false narrative, but if you’re sitting in another state, and you’re not here — I mean, my niece was stranded right across the street from this building with nowhere to go,” Osteen said on "Today."

But in the same interview, Osteen seemed to be having trouble getting his story straight. After attributing flooding to the church's inaccessibility, in the next breath he blamed the city for never asking him to provide shelter.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Wow, there’s that building. They’re not using it.’ But we don’t have volunteers,” Osteen told Today. “We don’t have staff that could get here. We’re all about helping the city whenever we could ― if they would have asked us to become a shelter early on, we would have prepared for it.”

As the world knows by now, Houston has been beset by historic floods since last Friday when Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the Texas Gulf Coast. As thousands of people scrambled to find shelter, Osteen's nearly 17,000-square-foot Lakewood Church — an arena transformed into a gorgeous house of worship — stood out like a relatively dry, ample green thumb that would make terrific shelter from the storm.

Related story: Houston Televangelist Joel Osteen Finally Opens Mega-Church As Harvey Shelter

Also See: Harvey Could Be One Of The Most Expensive Storms In US History

While the evidence shows otherwise, Osteen on Wednesday continues to insist the place was flooded: "This building was 1 foot from flooding," he told "Today." "If we didn't have our floodgates, it would have flooded."

Yet as if Moses himself parted this alleged foot of water, the church now is miraculously habitable for evacuees who started arriving by the busload on Wednesday after Osteen relented.

The whole controversy has been a black eye for Osteen, a real public relations disaster from which it might be difficult to recover. Osteen and his wife, Victoria, already were facing backlash over their $10.5 million mansion in one of the more ritzy parts of the city that doesn't exactly speak to the tactics of humility that guy, Jesus, once espoused.

Despite his newly found enthusiasm for welcoming the displaced masses, Osteen looked a bit queasy seeing all those people entering his church during unguarded moments at an interview. Those same social media devils are ensuring that display of body language is widely shared.

Osteen's blaming of social media for his current woes isn't exactly going to endear him to the oft-vicious internet masses. Osteen now finds himself starring in a series of widely circulating memes in the aftermath of the controversy, one popular one positing Osteen as not a good pastor while extolling the delights of tacos al pastor.

Yet Osteen continues to take a defensive position on the whole controversy, not once acknowledging a pastor's obligation to adhere to the Golden Rule (isn't that in the God contract for men of the cloth?) But, hey, we get it. It's tough keeping a 16,800-square-foot house of worship clean and shiny.

Maybe the hundreds, if not thousands, of evacuees — many of whom lost everything in the deluge — now headed to Osteen's place will take their shoes off before entering. You know, so's not to track in dirt.

>>> Photo: Pat Sullivan/Associated Press