This was my first introduction to what is popularly called the “prosperity gospel” or the “health and wealth” gospel. At the time, the logic seemed airtight: “If it worked for him, why shouldn’t it work for me?” Posted on 01/27/2015 10:33:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
I have a confession.
When I was in college, I read a book by a prominent megachurch pastor. The author told me to live like a child of God. He told me God wanted to bless me. He also mentioned that if I only believed, God would give me the nicest house in the neighborhood. That seemed to make sense.
The author explained that he once wanted the nicest house in the neighborhood, and God gave it to him. Here was a man with evidence. Not only did he have the story about the house, and other anecdotes, he also had a very nice set of white teeth (Ah, supernaturally white, I thought).
This was my first introduction to what is popularly called the “prosperity gospel” or the “health and wealth” gospel. At the time, the logic seemed airtight: “If it worked for him, why shouldn’t it work for me?”
If I had dug a bit deeper, though, I would have seen the actual reason it worked for him and not for me. It’s because the prosperity gospel is a pyramid scheme.
Here’s how pyramid schemes work.
Step One: A snazzy entrepreneur wants to make a lot of money. Said snazzy entrepreneur tells two little old ladies that if they sell his “Wow-What-A-Sham 3000,” they can make some dough to pay off their cat-sitting bills. That will cost them a startup investment of $401.76. And yes, Wow-What-A-Sham 3000 is a gimmick. But that’s okay, it’s not really about selling the product anyway; it’s about recruiting more salespeople.
Step Two: These two little old ladies recruit more little old ladies, and give them the same spiel.
Step Three: At some point, people realize no one wants to buy the Wow-What-A-Sham 3000, and no one is actually selling any Wow-What-A-Sham 3000s. All the buy-in money is funneling straight up to the top. Meanwhile, snazzy entrepreneur is up in his office, cackling, and swimming in wads of cash.
That’s a pyramid scheme.
What does this descrption have to do with the book by the prosperity pastor? Everything. Because the prosperity gospel is strikingly similar to a pyramid scheme in at least three ways.
1. It’s based on the deceptive success of the guy at the top.
I was bamboozled by the prosperity pastor’s ploy in the same way people are fooled by pyramid schemes. They see the success of the guy at the top, and think: It’s working for him, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. And that’s because someone paid for that pastor’s house. Me. I paid, when I bought the book. So do millions of others, when they bring truckloads of seed-money to his doorstep each weekend. The people who fund the prosperity pastor’s success, in other words, are the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Of course it works for him. He’s at the top.
2. It’s a lie told to desperate people.
Like a pyramid scheme, the health-and-wealth gospel feeds on the down and out. My friend Vallerian Mganga tells me that in Kenya, the health-and-wealth message is the only version of Christianity most people ever hear. My father-in-law, who mentors prisoners, tells me that he runs into this teaching routinely in the prison system. Why? Because the health-and-wealth gospel preys on people desperate for relief.
Missiologist Paul Borthwick tells of a trip to Ghana, where he witnessed a 300-pound preacher appeal to his body as proof that God had blessed him, and would bless his listener’s seed-money as well. “When you live in poverty” the missionary with Borthwick said, “you don't want to feel loved. You want God's power to make you prosper. . . . [T]hey have been taught [that] money is the way to release the power.”
The prosperity gospel isn’t just bad theology. It’s a form of oppression.
3. It feeds our idolatry.
Like the pyramid scheme, the prosperity gospel doesn’t necessarily require financially desperate people. It just needs people who are sufficiently idolatrous. We don’t fall for pyramid schemes because we’re stupid. We fall for them because we want to fall for them. We want the money, health, and esteem they offer—and we want it quick. We want to believe it can all happen with the flick of a “faith” switch in our brains. We want it desperately.
I’ll never forget the time I challenged my friend’s health-and-wealth notions with the life of the apostle Paul. She replied, “Well, Paul didn’t have enough faith.” That’s what pyramid schemes do: they compel us with our idols. Then they blind us to anything—no matter how obvious—that tells us we’re being conned.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe wholeheartedly God wants to bless me. I believe God favors me. I believe he wants me to have the best possible life. But I also believe the good news of Jesus is far better than the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel climbs over people; Jesus descends to pick us up. The prosperity gospel oppresses the poor; Jesus identifies with the destitute. The prosperity gospel fuels our idol factories; Jesus smashes them with a vision of his glory.
The truly good news is this: Jesus’s dreams for us are weightier than the pursuit of health, wealth, and personal success. Jesus doesn’t offer self-esteem; he offers the esteem of God when we give up self-estimation (Matt. 5:3). He doesn’t offer positivity; he offers God’s profound comfort when we’re brokenhearted by sin (Matt. 5:4). He doesn’t offer the nicest house in the neighborhood; he offers hope in the resurrection when we forego personal power (Matt. 5:5). And he doesn’t offer “supernatural favor” from others, but instead offers God’s eternal favor when we’re despised on his account (Matt. 5:10-12).
In short: Jesus is a better God, a weightier God. He’s not a huckster standing on the top of the pile promising us worldly wealth. He’s a God who climbs down to the bottom of the pyramid. He lays himself flat in the dust and stretches out his arms at the cross, where health, wealth, and abundance are nowhere in sight, and he offers us his riches.
Nicholas McDonald is associate pastor at Carlisle Congregational Church, and is completing his MDiv at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is author of the forthcoming book, Faker (The Good Book Company, 2015), and blogs on art, culture, writing, and Christianity at www.scribblepreach.com.
The OT Book of Job is a teaching lesson that it is okay from time to time to get angry at God and it shows He does have big shoulders.
But do not get bitter though.
Probably.
I remember when a Bible School teacher claims that the church van was out of gas and they ‘prayed’ the gas tank full. She said that everyone in the van witnessed it.
I’d call it either BS or a defective gas gauge. lol
(sorry I’m just cynical like that)
Yup.
I sat through many a Mormon church service where the missionaries told whoppers much bigger than that.
Two words: Three Nephites. These fellas have a special knack for pulling people out of fiery car crashes.
God knows how I hate these prosperity hucksters. I have a sister who suffers moderate mental illness and she is drawn to them like a fly to shite. She lives on poverty wages, yet still gives money to them... I have tried to gently explain to her the wrongness of interpreting the Bible the way they do, and I’ve tried to nudge her towards a reputable preacher like Charles Stanley, or her own, in town pastor, but nope. Their lies draw her.
So she is constantly being hounded by one of them or the other, by phone, or mail, they want money. I’d like to wring their necks.
God doesn’t need money. We need to give our money but as a joyful obedience, not as a bribe. If you give your money with the expectation of getting something back in return, that’s buying not giving.
For instance: If you give your money as a seed to plant a harvest of God’s blessings, you bought that seed and, by God, He better deliver.
i think we can all see the heresy at work here.
There are reportedly a couple of escaped emus roaming the county where I reside in central Virginia. Escapees from a failed emu farm.
Every once in a while the animal control officers get a call about one of them messing around on someone’s property.
Or a van with dual gas tanks...
Well said.
What I am getting at ... is ... if you identify an “organization” that is getting your money (and therefore “God” is not getting it), then where is “God’s bank account” (for those who do want to give their money to God).
OR ... are you saying that NO ONE can actually give money to God (therefore don’t even bother doing that with your US Dollars)?
That brought a huge dose of laughter for me! Thanks!
You cannot give money to God. He has no use for it. You should give money to your church and to charity because it is a fruit of the spirit. Keeping/Hording your money is troubling sign.
Giving your first fruits was a sacrifice. It showed obedience.
So you’re saying God doesn’t want your money, doesn’t take your money and doesn’t need your money. And in fact there is NO WAY to give God your money.
THEREFORE ... my “take-away” from all this is that the ONLY THING people can do (if they want to “give money”) is give money to “organizations” exclusively, since God doesn’t want it.
And ... I guess any organization would do ... since God has nothing to do with the “money business”.
Thanks. I have witnessed people, myself included, who get angry with G_D when he does not answer our prayers or condemn him for the bad things that have happened to us.
But as I have gotten older, I have come to realize G_D allows bad things to happen, sometimes for our own good in the long run. And sometimes we bring bad things upon ourselves by not following his commandments or letting Satan deceive us.
But whatever one believes, G_D is sovereign and will do as he pleases.
both are espoused in catholic teachings in latin america.
we even see a healthy does of it here in America in both catholic and "Christian" churches.
I don’t think you can say “God has nothing to do with money” since He is the source of blessings but more “You can’t give money to God”. I know too many people who justify bad financial decisions by blaming it on God, like giving your money to religious hucksters.
He’s the omnipotent Creator of the Universe, not a vending machine.
You need to give your money, God doesn’t need to get it. If you give your money to Planned Parenthood, it doesn’t mean that God gets it even if you think it does.
If I stood in front with a manageable sign, no one would see it. I would look like a dot in front of the mammoth edifice that is Lakewood. Last time I was in the building it was to see a Rockets game. The building used to be The Summit, home to the Houston Rockets.
When God said in that famous passage in Jeremiah “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you”, Read it in context
This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
This guy is full of horsecrap. I know what I believe, I know what works, faith works.
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