There are frequent outcries against and defenses of the so-called prosperity gospel, as delivered by Joel Osteen and his ilk. The news that this teaching has made its way to Nigeria recently appeared right here on TC. It's bad enough that Americans are worshipping at the altar of a vending machine God; now we're exporting it to the very poorest nations in the world?
Hear how John Piper feels about this. I'll give you a hint: he's not terribly pleased. You might be able to tell I'm not thrilled with the prosperity gospel either... but is it really a perversion of the Gospel of Christ? Or is it just America's cultural spin on Christianity, much like the cultural admonition in Paul's time for women to cover their heads?
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Comments (21)
I think a good place to start with "prosperity gospel" is to check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.... I'm not familiar with what the term has meant "throughout the ages", as it seems to be distinctly associated with the (relatively recent) Word-Faith movement.
As it is, I'm sure there are PLENTY of specific criticisms that Piper brings up elsewhere re: the prosperity gospel. In fact, search that Wikipedia article for Piper's name and you'll get a couple of references of his criticisms. The point of this video is probably that it be an artsy representation of a small part of his teaching against the prosperity gospel.
Thanks for the comment!
Peter
The big thing to remember is that Jesus forgave the sins of the cripple of Mark 2 first. I think Jesus wouldn't even have healed him if the Pharisees hadn't questioned His divinity.
I do agree however that there is no get rich gospel. There is nothing wrong with being rich as Paul makes clear to Timothy. It’s just that there are no promises of earthly riches and the love of money is clearly sin. Selfishly accumulating wealth that is consumed for pleasure is sin. Ostentatious displays of wealth are discouraged (King Hezekiah was judged for this).
Prosperity is a little different though. I do believe that God wants us to be joyful, happy, healthy, have our daily needs met, gainfully employed (as Paul tells the Thessalonians), dressed nicely, having enough surplus to share with others and blessed. The point of Jesus saying don’t worry about what you shall wear or what you shall eat is that God has promised us these things...If he clothes the lily so beautifully, how much more will he clothe and take care of you. That’s real prosperity.
The people that use the term “Prosperity Gospel” usually are the critics. It allows writers like John Piper to say “this is a bunch of crap called gospel”. Where are the nuances in Mr Piper’s theology? Where is the balance? The apostle John says “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.“
The half brother of Jesus, James says “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.”
God says in Malachi "try Me and see if I don't open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing."
Foolish claims that God wants us all rich, lusting after BMWs, selfish grasping after luxury homes, the inability to share, the ostentatious display of wealth is all disgusting and a cancer on the body of Christ. But praying for health, food, a job, a car, decent clothes and decent housing is something that the Father wants to do for us. Satan may throw us a curve ball with disaster, sickness, crushing poverty and tragedy but let’s not blame it on God.
I think what you said was fairly reasonable.
However, I do not think that Piper is promoting a gospel of suffering and loss, but only preaching the gospel with no extra, human agenda attached to it (as much as a sinful man can do of course). When he mentioned the death of a child, he was merely saying that the true gospel is and must be powerful enough to preserve love for and faith in God in a believer despite such suffering, not just to provide an easy escape route from such suffering.
Also, I do believe (and I think Piper would agree too) that in general, God wants good things for us including health and wealth. And just as you said, we are free to pray for health, food, jobs, cars and so on for He is our loving Father who hears our prayers. However, God is ready and willing to cause us pain and suffering when He has a good purpose for it, just as much as He does provide me with nice things (I didn't go hungry today and I even had a cup of coffee! Plus, I'm typing this on my own laptop. I figure I have nice things.) according to His greater purposes. Looking at Job, there is no guarantee that we will always find out that purpose in detail, but one thing is sure that when we face God (and we will on the Day of the Lord), we will completely be satisfied by Him and Himself only.
By any means though, the clip was an excerpt from a longer talk he gave I presume. And since it is a partial talk, it may come across as a harsh opposite end to the "prosperity gospel" but what he says in it, I believe, still holds true. I'm not just trying to defend Piper, but I agree with his stance against what he calls the prosperity gospel, which includes health promoting "gospel" as well as the wealth promoting "gospel".
Yes, but that didn't mean that we were to become financially rich.
>Having prosperity enables us to give to other people, not live off just enough to cover our needs, that's selfish.
Prosperity may make it easier for us to give to others a little, but it won't enable us to give as the Gospel demands. True Gospel not only enables us to give the excess we have, but will empower us to give even when it costs us and that with gladness and joy.
What does the gospel demand? To give with a cheerful heart. How can God require you to give when you have nothing? He doesn't ask for things we don't have.
I am a father, and I do not care one bit if my children are rich. In fact, if anything, I hope they are NOT rich; the Bible is so very clear of the spiritual struggles that rich (or merely comfortable) people experience. Either way, judging what God wants based on what *I* want is a dangerous proposition. How do you expect to accurately gauge God's perfect will when all we have to go on is our own wholly imperfect example of human desires?
Why wouldn't God want us to be rich? Because — here's a dirty little secret I've come to believe — God doesn't care one whit about your comfort. God doesn't care if you are living in a cardboard box. He doesn't care if you are sick every single day of your life. He doesn't ULTIMATELY care about those things, that is. You see, He's far too obsessed with caring about you loving Him, worshipping Him, pursuing Him, giving up everything for Him... He doesn't care about any of those other things, except insofar as it brings you closer to Him. And the majority of the time, money does the exact opposite; it encourages us to rely on our own strength, our own ability to provide for ourselves, etc. THIS is the lie of the prosperity gospel.
"How can God require you to give when you have nothing?" None of us has "nothing". Read Mark 12:41–44 and consider the many blessings each one of us has, even without "naming and claiming it".
Peter
Thinking positively is not anti-Christian. God is a good Father and does want to bless us. He is not glorified in the death of a child. Period.
On the other hand...
The overemphasis on cars, houses, go with Jesus and He'll make you wealthy is also extreme and questionable. If He does bless us, it is so that we can meet the needs of others.
I'm tired of left, right, prosperity and anti-prosperity, faith preachers and traditional preachers, HELLO EVERYONE. Stop flinging the mud around and try to understand each other. The other side is not the antichrist or demonic or heretics or lukewarm Christians.
In many cases, it's just a slightly different view of the same scriptures. We might all be completely WRONG in the end - it has been known to happen on other doctrinal issues. %)
If either side is really off-track, shouldn't it die of its own accord? Can we focus on giving and let the other side (whichever side you're *not* on) deal with its issues? There are lots more important things going down in the world that we need to focus on.
They'll know we're Christians by our love, right? Or won't they?
I don't know about you, but I think I'm going to trust John Piper — a man who is emerging as one of the great preachers of our time — to establish that line over Joel Osteen (for one), a man who has confirmed that his "gifting" isn't teaching the Bible. That's not mud-flinging: that's discernment.
As for your statement that "[God] is not glorified in the death of a child", I think you're missing Piper's point. He is saying that God is glorified when we say that He is sufficient, even in the face of the ugliest, most difficult and heart-wrenching trials. God mourns with the death of a child, I think, but He takes pleasure when we glorify Him in spite of all that. Job had it right (in the end, at least!).
If the prosperity gospel is really off-track, and I do not speak out against it, I am held responsible, in part, for its damage. As toothless a "gospel" as it is, there is no chance it will simply "die of its own accord"; it's a far-too-comfortable, namby-pamby message that fits perfectly with the narcissistic US culture. How can telling people what they want to hear EVER get old in a culture full of people obsessed with their own well-being, riches and comfort?
Thanks for the comment!
Peter
To say God does not care if we are sick every day of our lives or if we live in a cardboard box is just plain wrong. The overwhelming evidence of the New Testament is that God does care very deeply about sickness and poverty. Are you platonic, a gnostic, a hindu? Need I remind you that we see very clearly in the 4 gospels exactly what Jesus cares about. He was moved with compassion and He healed them ALL it says over and over again. The 12 were sent out to heal and preach the gospel, the 70 were sent out to heal and preach the gospel, then all Christians were commissioned to preach the gospel and told that healing would follow, then after the resurrection Peter healed the sick, Paul healed the sick, Jesus brother James told us that if any are sick, we should ask the elders to pray and we would be healed. Where do you get this "God doesn't care about my body" theology? It certainly isn't biblical. It doesn't look like Jesus.
Thanks for your comments. I'm neither platonic nor gnostic nor hindu... but I do have a tendency to speak in hyperbole. I do believe that God doesn't want us to be sick. However, given a choice between "healthy and self-sufficient" and "sick and God-dependent", God would (obviously) choose the latter. Given that the prosperity gospel tends to have promises of health and preaches an impotent God (when it preaches God at all), I conclude that its followers would choose "healthy and self-sufficient". (I also recognize that this is a logical fallacy of sorts, as there are clearly people who are "healthy and God-dependent" just as there are people who are "sick and self-sufficient". I am simply making the point that God is far more concerned with the eternal than the temporal.)
In any case, I wrote that God ULTIMATELY doesn't care about our comfort, when weighed against His care for our eternal souls, our reliance on Him, our ongoing transformation into the image of Christ, etc. That doesn't mean He doesn't care at all, but I probably didn't make that very clear.
Thanks again,
Peter
What I would suggest is to read the gospels again, followed by the book of acts and take your theological blinders off. I am a calvinist, a believer in an omnipotent, omniscient God. But more importantly, I am a person of the Book. I am not a believer in the "prosperity gospel" whatever that is. But I believe Jesus expresses perfect theology. Look at God's character. What does the word of God say. I think you are going to be in for a very happy surprise.
I think if you knew me, you'd realize I don't have any sort of theological blinders on. I'm so theologically ignorant that I would have a hard time describing what you, as a "calvinist", really believes. (And this from a graduate of Calvin College!) I'm just unable to understand this point:
If God is omnipotent and if He doesn't want us to be sick, why doesn't He heal everyone?
As for the word of God, it says that God would not heal Paul of the thorn in his flesh. It says that God's ways are not our ways. It says that we are made perfect in our suffering, that His power is made perfect in our weakness. I read that Jesus didn't heal Lazarus of his sickness, that it was "for God's glory" for Lazarus to die (!) so that Christ could raise him up again. I have to believe that the answer to my question above is that sometimes God has reasons for allowing sickness, that even though He doesn't want us to be sick in general, He doesn't want us to be prideful and self-sufficient even more.
But what we were talking about was the "prosperity gospel". Since you have no idea what that is, you might check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... to get an idea. You've probably heard of it even if you don't recognize the name: nearly every televangelist from Robert Tilton to Joel Osteen to anyone else that collects money and promises health and wealth, name it and claim it, etc... these are all prosperity gospel/word-faith preachers. And if you don't like my view on sickness, I'm sure you won't like the view that if one just believes (and maybe sends in a few bucks), one will meet with financial success and health. :-)
Peter
Rev. J