Is God Your Celestial ATM?

"Does God want you to be rich?" asks TIME Magazine's lead article this week as it examines the controversy in Protestant churches over the revival of Prosperity Theology: "God wants you to be rich!"  Going by names like Word of Faith, Name It and Claim It, and Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Prosperity Theology teaches that Christ not only died for our sins to give us the hope of heaven, but also to provide his children with material blessings -- prosperity and physical health -- in the here and now.  The article highlights Pastor Joel Osteen's ministry at Lakewood Church in suburban Houston.  Osteen outlines his understanding of God's plan for your prosperity in his best-selling book, Your Best Life Now.  [9/13/06 -- To be fair, I need to tell you that I have not personally read Osteen's book, so my comments are based on the TIME article only.]

The article does an excellent job summarizing the main tenants of Prosperity Theology.  While sitting in a back room at the former Compaq Center sports arena that now is the home of Lakewood Church, Osteen explains his view of God, money, and the believer:

"I don't think I've ever preached a sermon about money," he [Osteen] says a few hours later. He and [and his wife] Victoria meet with TIME in their pastoral suite, once the Houston Rockets' locker and shower area but now a zone of overstuffed sofas and imposing oak bookcases. "Does God want us to be rich?" he asks. "When I hear that word rich, I think people say, 'Well, he's preaching that everybody's going to be a millionaire.' I don't think that's it." Rather, he explains, "I preach that anybody can improve their lives. I think God wants us to be prosperous. I think he wants us to be happy. To me, you need to have money to pay your bills. I think God wants us to send our kids to college. I think he wants us to be a blessing to other people. But I don't think I'd say God wants us to be rich. It's all relative, isn't it?" The room's warm lamplight reflects softly off his crocodile shoes.

In other words, God may not let you become a millionaire, but he does want you to experience the finer things of life.  How much properity one must possess to be rich is "relative."  Suffering and sacrifice are not necessary.  Your personal happiness and comfort are God's greatest concern.  Whatever prosperity you need to be happy can be yours by faith. 

Other pastors who criticize Prosperity Theology are also given equal time to state their case, including Pastor Rick Warren, Professors Ron Sider and Ben Witherington, and others.  TIME also contrasts Bible verses that seem to teach God wants us to be wealthy (Deuteronomy 8:17-18, Ecclesiastes 5:18-19, Malachi 3:10, Luke 6:38, and John 10:10) with passages that apparently teach the opposite (Psalm 49:16-20, Matthew 6:19-21, Mark 10:24-26, Luke 12:33, and James 5:1-3). In the heart of the article, writers David Van Biema and Jeff Chu make this stunning observation about Osteen's book:

"Your Best Life Now, [is] an extraordinarily accessible exhortation to this-world empowerment through God. "To live your best life now," it opens, to see "your business taking off. See your marriage restored. See your family prospering. See your dreams come to pass ..." you must "start looking at life through eyes of faith." Jesus is front and center but not his Crucifixion, Resurrection or Atonement."

I think the Apostle Paul had a balanced view of Christians and prosperity based on his own life experience in Philippians 4:11-13.  The passage teaches four important lessons:

• Wealth and health are unreliable indicators of God's blessing.  Paul was at times well off in the will of God, and at other times just as much in the will of God and impoverished.  Compare 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.
• Riches come and go.  Paul's poverty and prosperity came in cycles during his lifetime.
• God wants us to learn to be content, not because we have everything we could possibly want, but because we have Him.
• The secret of contentment that Paul learned is this: You and I can endure every circumstance -- poverty or plenty -- through the One who gives us strength: the Lord Jesus Christ.  We need to learn this lesson of contentment rather than seeking wealth and health.

Scripture is clear that God does bless hard work and saving.  He also blesses generosity to the poor.  But does this mean that every Christian should be wealthy and healthy?  Doesn't following Prosperity Theology to its logical conclusion mean that Christians should never be in poverty or die?!?  I guess my big question for the proponents of Prosperity Theology is simply this: Is their doctrine founded on Scripture or on the materialism lust of our culture?  Jesus warned, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15).

Comments

[Seven Star Hand]

Hello Scott and all,

RE: "Does God want you to be rich?"
How about, does the Creator want some people to suffer and starve while some wallow in luxury and ignore the plight of others? What about "serving mammon" (money and materialism) instead of truth, justice, and your fellow souls? How about the rich man and the eye of a needle? Talking about the blind leading the blind...

To take this a step further, what would the Creator say about forming organizations (corporations, religions, governments, political parties, etc.) that accumulate vast wealth and resources while living people and other lifeforms suffer as a direct result? What does this say about the complete hypocrisy of all religions.

Here's some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so people can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity's seemingly never-ending struggles.

Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavement

There is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty, debt, and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and their control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom
http://www.geocities.com/sevenstarhand/twospirits.html
and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few.

We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452287081/
Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity's problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?

Here's a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it's bones to the hungry...

Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world's currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio.

Here is Wisdom
http://sevenstarhand.blogspot.com/

Doctrine of Two Spirits...
http://exposing-religious-deception.blogspot.com/

Peace...

[Scott Morgan]

Thanks, Lawrence W. Page II, for your comments. It seems obvious to me that we are approaching this topic from two totally different perspectives. I do believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is God and Lord of all, and that the New Testament is an accurate and trustworthy record of God's revelation to humankind, contrary to Dan Brown, Bart Ehrman, and your opinions. I base that belief upon the evidence of history, such as Christ's physical resurrection from the dead. The DaVinci Code is work of fiction, and Bart Erhman's argument presented in Misquoting Jesus is full of holes.

Revelation is a difficult book to understand with all of its mysterious imagery, as you correctly note on your websites. Yet, it is crystal clear that Revelation proclaims that the Jesus Christ of history, who died on the cross and rose from the dead, is the soon returning King of kings and Lord of lords. The mystery mainly surrounds the timing of his return.

As for a truly lasting solution for the political, economic, and societal problems you pointed out, it seems clear to me that humans cannot fix the mess we've made for ourselves. We desperately need THE Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, to come and establish His righteous Kingdom. "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" Yet, we are responsible to do something while we wait for Him to come. That's why we must walk in humility and justice toward all people. Humankind needs to experience the new birth through faith in Christ. That alone can transform sinful human hearts which then makes it possible to change society in the here and now.

[Wes Ramsey]

I don't need to type up 3 paragraphs of response to comment on the one brothers post about getting rid of all the money. That is like saying all the cold people could be warm if they had a coat. Never going to happen! so it's not a valid solution. He showed his intelligence when he mentioned global warming. You may want to research and discover that this isn't even the warmest period on our planet in the past century. In fact the 1930's were warmer. Global warming is a farce brother. Stop listening to the guys who have to say global warming is true to get government grants and start reading up on the real scientists that know and prove it's all a joke everyone seems to believe. I don't mean to be negative with ya man, i am a Christian, love God, and depend on faith, sometimes you gotta look to him instead of looking at the world where you will never find the answers you are looking for. (theshow777@yahoo.com)