Rich

Who’s to Blame for the Prosperity Gospel?

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The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.
—1 Samuel 2:7-8a

Yesterday, a reader left this comment:

It’s even worse, it seems, on the black gospel music stations where most of the teaching and much of the music is infected with the widely popular health/wealth/prosperity “gospel.”

I’d like to comment on this by asking why it might be that so many black Christians find prosperity teachings attractive. Money, money, money , money...moneySadly, that’s not a question too many opponents of the “prosperity gospel” dare ask because the ultimate answer strikes a little too close to home.

Consider a similar scenario. Evangelicals who went ballistic over the Emerging Church lacked the nerve to ask why the Emerging Church existed. Many times here, I discussed why: It was a reaction against Evangelicalism’s many blinders, especially on issues of nonexistent community, a lack of social justice for the oppressed, and rampant consumerism.

Yet rather than consider the possible truth of even one scrap of the Emerging Church protest, the loudest voices in Evangelicalism let loose with a tirade about the bad theology in the Emerging Church (and hey, let’s be honest, it was atrocious theology in many cases). Rarely, though, was there any Evangelical self-examination.

I find it both dispiriting and amusing that the very same Christians who idolize the Reformation revert to Catholic theology when it comes to these types of battles.  It’s always their own sins that are venial, while their opponents’ are the most vile, wicked, mortal sins imaginable.

And the same is true of this battle over the so-called prosperity gospel.

It’s not for no reason that the prosperity gospel exists. This may only be my experience, but it seems to me that the loudest voices crying out against the prosperity gospel come from those people who never wanted a day in their lives for anything. They never went to bed hungry. Never saw all the other kids get nice toys for their birthday while they got busted up junk those others threw away. The people who complain loudest against prosperity teachings are most likely to be the same people whose money could buy them out of every problem, and whose lifestyles define prosperity, God or not.

You see, it’s darned easy to come down against someone’s misplaced hope of escaping poverty when you’re already prosperous. In many ways, that viewpoint is the same one that seeks to keep “those people” down, lest “those people” rise up and end the party. And that’s reprehensible self-righteousness and pride.

However, it’s equally reprehensible that many of the proponents of prosperity teaching get rich off the backs of their poor followers. Those false teachers and leaders deserve a special place in hell and may actually find that their hoped for heavenly mansion of gold ends up looking more like a lake of fire.

Yet for all the anti-prosperity-gospel talk out there, the Bible contains more words about prospering this side of heaven than the opponents care to address. The patriarchs were not a poverty-stricken lot. The Lord promises hundreds of times that He will pour out plenty on those who are obedient to Him. He rewards those who seek Him, and not just with spiritual gain, but also material. God leads His people into a land of milk and honey. The reaper overtakes the plowman.

I’m not going to try to proof text this point. If you must, just look up the word prosper in a concordance. God prospers his people both spiritually and materially. It’s there, really; I’m not making it up.

On the other hand, people who put all their trust in the material, who build huge barns to store all their accumulated worldly wealth, often run into an impoverishment of the soul. And that’s a state of being God is none too happy about.

Whether you’re a prosperity gospel fan or foe, whether you can trot out battling Bible verses to bolster your position, the solution to this theological war is found in an achingly simple response. You see God already shows us how to live in a way that satisfies both sides of this issue:

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
—Acts 2:41-45

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
—Acts 4:32-35

Folks, the point is moot. When the Church is living this way, no matter which side you are on in the prosperity gospel battle, you will find your answer here.

But you see, we don’t want to deal with those two passages in Acts because they stand as an indictment against how we live, whether we’re rich or poor. The greed and hard-heartedness that keeps us from fulfilling these passages in Acts today afflicts both those with and those without.

When I mention these verses and ask why we’re not living this way, a million excuses come out. I know; I’ve heard them all. It gets a little depressing.

So maybe in the eyes of God it doesn’t matter if we’ve gone off into “Lord, I name and claim a Lexus—a gold-colored one with goatskin leather seats,” or into the rich, young ruler’s perfect theology framing a heart of cold selfishness. The answer to the problem of the prosperity gospel is staring us in the face.

We simply don’t want to obey God and live it.

 

 

 

Banking on God: Theology, Part 1

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Uncials & stuff—now we're getting serious!For Christians, where do our ideas on wealth and benevolence originate? Well, supposedly from the Bible.

But we tend to look at the Bible as chunks of passages, some of which we like, some of which we tolerate, and some of which we ignore altogether. Even in the most dedicated Bibliophile, a tendency exists to proclaim fealty to every word of Scripture, yet the backtracking starts the second a few contentious verses come up.

Few passages are more problematic for people than those with money-related insights. Sometimes it seems as if no two churches preach the same basis for their perspectives on wealth and benevolence.

Readers of this blog, though, tended to fall in line on this topic. Critics would say that this is due to self-selection in the polling process, as these polls can’t possibly be a truly random sampling of American Christendom. Though I would tend to agree with that complaint, I also know we get a pretty broad readership here, more so than some other blogs that strictly cater to one specific type of Christian denomination or philosophy.

Despite whatever sampling problems these polls might have, let’s look at the theology readers bring to the issue.

A reminder of the Bible passages quoted for the first few questions:

Deuteronomy 28:13 – “And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them….”

Psalms 1:1-3 – Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

Proverbs 21:13 – Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.

Malachi 3:10 – “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”

Matthew 6:31-33 – “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Mark 11:23-24 – “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Luke 18:24-25 – Jesus, seeing that [the rich young ruler] had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Acts 2:44-45 – And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7 – The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

1 Timothy 6:10 – For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

[poll=27]

All I can say here is that I’m not surprised by the results. The top three verses are heavily used by churches when justifying their perspective on giving. My only surprise is that the Deuteronomy passage (“Head, not the tail”) was not supported more. That’s a very Pentecostal perspective and I know a respectable number of Pentecostals read this blog.

Then again, the number of people taking these polls dropped by half by the time this poll ran, so perhaps some readers just got fed up with a week of polling!

[poll=26]

I found these responses to be interesting because it shows that readers are more aggressive and less structured in their giving than what their churches preach. The Malachi passage (“10 percent”) dropped here and the Acts passage (“Selling possessions and sharing wealth’) moved up. I think that’s a good thing. Considering how often I talk about going “all in” on this blog, I’m not surprised that readers tended to agree.

[poll=28]

I once blogged that the Mark passage (“Believe and it will be yours”) is the least-believed verse in the Bible, and eerily enough, you readers verified that my assessment may not be off the mark. (“Off the mark“—Ha! a pun!) The Acts passage, though more readers agreed that it was close to what they believed, was also hard for some to handle.

The Mark passage is tough, but I know I personally struggle even harder with the Psalms passage (“In all that he does, he prospers”) in my own life. I know a lot of good people who are struggling, some asking when that promised prosperity is going to show. That’s a tough call. I think of myself as a Psalm 1 kind of guy, but certainly not everything I’ve done prospers. Still trying to process that one in my own life. I guess a few others struggle with it, too.

[poll=29]

Interestingly, my previous unpacking of the poll on tithing had a lot of people agreeing with me in the comments that the temple tithing system had been completed in Jesus and was no longer binding, but a quick look here shows that a third of you disagreed. I’m wondering why the dissenters didn’t comment then on my follow-up post on tithing. Dissenters?

[poll=30]

Well, we’re on the same page regarding consumerism, that’s for sure. Same goes for neglecting the poor. Thanks for those answers. Fewer picked the prosperity gospel as a threat, but guess what? That’s what the second part of this analysis will address, seeing that a few other blogs have talked about prosperity teachings lately and their insidious effects on the American Church today.

But back to consumerism. It’s a form of idolatry, isn’t it? We’ve found a way to fill that classic “God-shaped hole” with whatever the hot new item at Apple or Target may be. Heck, don’t we all know at least one person who has purchased every incarnation of the iPod since the day of its first release? The gal who’s on her fourth digital camera? The guy who’s 30 and yet has owned six different computers in his life? Buy and discard. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And yet that consuming ideal has not only run our country into the ground in our quest for more cheap stuff that rusts and decays, but has been elevated to satisfy the ennui of the soul—if only from one great buy to the next.

Worse, our entire economy is geared to a frenzy of buying. When people finally wise up and scale back, it only damages our economy more, based as it is on a house of cards. Pull out a couple cards and the whole thing collapses. Or so it seems from the newspaper headlines. But I’ll talk about that in a few days, so hold on.

[poll=31]

Ah, Ben Franklin’s classic aphorism. Considered by some to be in the Bible. The “God can’t steer a parked car” passage.

Most of you said that was false, but almost a third said they either weren’t sure or thought ol’ Ben was right on target. I want to thank those of you who answered “True” or “Unknown” for your honesty. I think people struggle with this idea immensely. Everything in American culture tells us to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and grab for the gusto.

And while it may seem like that indeed works for a lot of people (I’m thinking Oprah. here), I’ve got to wonder if it’s the arm of flesh rather than the arm of the Lord. Waiting on God to work is a foreign concept to most of us. We want things in our time done our way (because if we want something done right, we have to do it ourselves). But I just can’t find that way of thinking in the Bible.

I’m willing to be corrected, though. If someone would please, and I mean this seriously, sketch out the Biblical support for “God helps those who help themselves,” I’ll be willing to listen and discuss it here. Because as that great theologian Tom Petty once wrote, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

[poll=32]

The Bible most definitely teaches that God is the one who makes a person rich or poor. A verse that comes to mind:

The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts.
—1 Samuel 2:7

And this is an interesting concept since God also commands us in hundreds of passages to take care of the poor. In fact, when we ignore the poor, it angers Him.

So what is going on here?

In the case of the Church, I believe that God makes rich and poor to reveal His glory. And He wishes to reveal that glory by using the Church. It is in the Church’s best interest to partner with God to raise the poor up so that they are rich. I think of the state of widows and orphans, two classes of people dear to God’s heart, and the impact the Church in Jerusalem had on their lives. They went from poor outcasts to having families, food, clothing, and shelter. If that’s not being raised up, I don’t know what is.

This goes hand in hand with Jesus’s response about a certain blind man:

And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
—John 9:2-5

Yes, God is in control. But He also wants us to bring things into alignment with His Kingdom. He may indeed bring a good man low, but He also charges the Church with raising that good man up again for His glory.

Too many of us are willing to sit back and do nothing, believing that what is exists because God has made it that way. And that may be true. However, is that state meant to be permanent? The rest of Scripture most definitely shows that God wants those who follow Him to act, to help change the person of lowly estate into one of abundance and riches. We have to understand this! God is glorified when the Church takes a bad situation and corrects it. In fact, God may have provided that bad situation as a learning tool for us. To make us work to bring light into darkness.

May we never be content with someone else’s suffering.

As that 1st Samuel passage concludes:

He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and on them he has set the world.
—1 Samuel 2:8

And guess what? He uses us to accomplish that purpose!

[poll=33]

Your answers surprised me. A couple years back, I asked how many of you were taught to cast your bread upon the waters, so to speak, and most agreed. In other words, when you give, you get in return. Yet here very few said your church taught that idea of the multiplication of giving. Very intriguing. I’m not sure how to think about this.

The KJV has this:

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
—Psalms 27:13

Do we believe that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? Or will we have to wait to see it after we die? Most of you thought the latter.

I’d love to get some feedback from all sides on this particular answer. Why did you answer as you did?

[poll=34]

This last question showed that half of you thought your work impacted your walk with Christ positively. I believe that God blesses our work, so that’s good. Yet a little more than 1 in 6 of you thought it worked against your growth.

I would love to hear feedback from both sides of this answer. Why did you answer as you did?

So ends my first comments on the theology behind wealth and giving. My next post, as I mentioned, will look at prosperity gospel teachings and whether they are good or bad for the Church in America. My answers may surprise you, so stay tuned!

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Banking On God: Series Compendium

We Need a Gospel That Speaks to Failure

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Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11-15 ESV

We hear a lot about the sovereignty of God. How He is in control of all things. When good things come our way, we rejoice, and it’s ridiculously easy to feel the favor of God’s sovereignty in a moment of joy. His blessings are raining down. His will is at work. And we know it.

I’ve been in Christian circles all my life, so I’ve witnessed the myriad ways we respond to God and to other Christians. I’ve seen that thrill of experiencing God’s will.

But I’ve also seen what happens when His will appears to us to go “awry.” I’ve seen how we Christians respond to failure, and I’ve concluded that more than just about anything, we need a Gospel that speaks to failure.

You won’t hear much about failure in the American Church. In Evangelicalism in particular, failure gets held at arm’s length, as if people who fail do so because they’ve acquired a disease. FailureWe’ve made failure into some kind of plague. “Don’t come too close! I might catch your failure and it will ruin my perfect little world!”

We live in a country where failure isn’t an option. Every system we’ve erected in America extols the self-made man and kicks the failure when he’s down. While we venerate the rag-to-riches stories and laud everything that led to those riches, we come up with excuses to explain the mirror opposite, the riches-to-rags story.

The American Church acts more like Americans and less like the Church because we adopt the same belief about failure as the world does. Failure makes us squirm. And though we’re all ready to jump on the “God is sovereign” bandwagon when blessings rain down from heaven, failure presents a problem for us.

When blessings come, they come solely by grace. We don’t truly merit blessings. God offers them to us out of the grace and riches of His heart. Or so we say. But what happens to our view of God’s sovereignty when failure strikes? What becomes of His grace when someone’s life winds up in the toilet?

Many American Christians believe failure results from something the failing person DID. Yet if we claim to be people who truly live by grace, acknowledging that we did nothing to deserve the benefits of grace, why then do we approach failure with a morbid works righteousness? The response to failure in people’s lives seems to abandon God’s sovereignty and grace to become a legalistic list of activities the person who failed must now undertake in order to dig himself out of his hole. The Gospel we’re so ready to trumpet in good times suddenly gets turned on its head, and grace goes out the window.

Think about it. Our business failed because we didn’t pray hard enough. We need to pray more. We got a chronic illness because we didn’t read the Bible enough. We need to read the Bible more. We lost our home because we didn’t tithe enough. We need to tithe even more.

Yet blessing was all of grace and not because of anything we’ve done? Curious dichotomy, isn’t it?

Sadly, we only like one side of the coin when it comes to God’s sovereignty. We’ll take the blessing, and our church will love to gather round us then, but how to explain failure in light of sovereignty? If failure IS a part of God’s sovereignty, why do we address failure so differently from how we deal with sovereignty in the midst of plenty?

Remember Job:

But [Job] said to [his wife], “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
—Job 2:10 ESV

Why is it then that the American Church talks like a foolish woman when it comes to failure and the sovereignty of God?

Yes, some failure clearly stems from sin and a lack of faith. We all understand this. Our problem becomes one of ALWAYS applying that standard to every case of failure we encounter. Case in point: what was Job’s sin?

We see our faulty mentality at work in the following Scripture:

As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
—John 9:1-3 ESV

That’s God’s sovereignty at work.

The problem goes beyond merely accepting God’s sovereignty even in the midst of failure. Our response to failure either takes the form of piling on a list of things for the failure to do in order to fight against the sovereignty we supposedly uphold, or we act in another faulty way.

Consider this famous person of faith:

Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
—Luke 21:1-4 ESV

We tend to comfort ourselves by believing that people who have failed in the world’s eyes will somehow rise up out of their failure so long as they have faith and persevere. Yet I’m not certain it works that way. The poor widow who faithfully gave all she had may have been putting in all she had for a long time. We probably weren’t seeing a one-time event; she faithfully contributed not once, but every time she visited the temple. Faithfulness tends to be a pattern of life, not an isolated incident.

Yet by all standards of Jesus’ day (and ours), that woman was a failure. No husband. No money. Failure. And we’re not given any assurances from the Luke passage that her condition changed immediately after her contribution. (We can only hope that she became a believer and was cared for by the early Church.)

The poor wise man in the Ecclesiastes passage that begins this post fell back into obscurity after rendering his faithful deed. He got his pat on the back and that was it. One day lauded by the city, and the next forgotten by everyone. Success for a moment, but a failure otherwise.

Notice that many of my failure examples so far in this post have dealt with money. In America, success equates to money. Sadly, the American Church has bought this lie. As a result, our standard for spiritual success and maturity automatically means passing the wealth test.

Too accusatory? Well, consider this. Your church is looking for new elders. Which of these two 40-year old men has a better chance of becoming an elder, the self-made man who runs his own company OR the fellow who works the night shift as a convenience store clerk? In the split second (Blink!) you thought about that pair, did class distinction enter into your assessment? Has anything been said about the spiritual maturity of those men? Don’t we assume that one is more spiritually mature simply because he runs a successful business, while the other only makes $8/hr.?

Did Jesus ever think that way? He summons the less esteemed to the head of the table, while one who believes he belongs in the place of honor is sent down. The beggar Lazarus, whose sores were licked by dogs, winds up in heaven, while the rich man suffers in torment. Jesus said nothing about Lazarus’ spiritual maturity, did He? But Lazarus is the one in Abraham’s bosom. Obviously, failure and poverty have nothing to do with one’s eternal destiny and spiritual depth.

Why then do we place such an emphasis on success and pour so much contempt on failure?

We need a Gospel that speaks to failure. I don’t believe that most churches and the Christian people who comprise them deal with failure biblically. Instead, our models for responding to failure are psychobabble self-help tomes, blithering business books, and positive confession self-talk. We talk, talk, talk about grace and sovereignty, but find them in short supply when confronted both with people who did dumb things and failed and the innocent bystanders pumped full of rounds by the world’s drive-by shooting.

So we must ask, What does a truly biblical Gospel that addresses failure look like?

Please leave a comment. I’ll consider what readers say and comment in another post on this topic in the future.