Posted on 09/20/2014 4:37:51 AM PDT by NYer
This morning I woke up and read an article about the Olsteen Predicament. It was kind of weird because the issue of the prosperity gospel has been coming up a lot lately. I watched the video of Victoria Olsteen’s sermon and wondered why anyone would believe that crap. It is so easy to see that her preaching that our happiness is the ultimate goal of following Christ is completely opposite of what Jesus Himself says in the Gospel. My problems with the Olsteens and people like them such as TD Jakes, Joyce Meyer and so many mega church pastors are many; mostly the fact that they preach against Catholicism for one reason or another but mostly because they claim that all things Catholic are unbiblical. Well, there is nothing more unbiblical than the idea that if you follow Christ all your wishes will come true and you will never suffer again. Jesus said to pick up our CROSS and follow Him, that whoever wants to keep his life will lose it and that the world will hate us just as it hated Him. So where exactly in the Gospel did Jesus say His number one goal for dying on a cross was so that we would be “happy”? Umm, nowhere.
If anything, the idea that Jesus saying He came to give us life abundantly is a twisted way of seeing things through human eyes that see “abundance” in the form of material things. That isn’t what He meant, what He meant was that His death would open up the door of salvation so that we could be saved. That when we finish the race in this life that we will be with God for eternity in the next life in Heaven.
Heaven is another thing that people turn into some kind of “wishes come true” place. Heaven is not Disneyland. It is not a place where we are going to go and have all our favorite things because God’s a genie who is going to grant us our every wish. God will not grant us anything that is sinful, not good for us, or in any way stands between us and Him. Not on this earth and not in Heaven. If you love something more than God, then guess what? You are not going get that in Heaven, IF you make it there.
All of that is really easy for me to say matter-of-factly. This past Sunday when I heard my priest say that the prosperity gospel is the gospel of Satan, I wanted to stand up and cheer. I wanted to high-five him and I was so happy to smugly sit there and nod my head thinking about how right I’ve been all along to delete all things prosperity gospel from my Facebook newsfeed. And then he said “It’s easy for us to call out the prosperity gospel when others are preaching it, but how about when we are suffering? Do we ask God ‘why me?’”
That smacked the smug right out of my sails.
Most of the time, when I see some quote by the Olsteens or any of the many other “happiness” pushers, I roll my eyes and then ask, “How do these people even suffer?” I mean, how can they suffer? When bad things happen to them, what do they do? How do they hold onto their faith when things fall apart? I usually ask that question with a lot of pride as if I suffer so graciously. Not.
Father’s question made me think about how I suffer. I do not suffer well. At the end of his homily he said that if we think we are suffering, then we need to look at the Christians in Iraq or the Holy Land and rethink that idea. On the one hand, suffering is suffering. If I am not a Christian in Iraq being hunted down to be killed, then that is because God knows that I would never, ever make it to Heaven on that path to sainthood, which basically means that He is well aware that I would reject Him and everything to do with Him if that were me. I’m a pansy. God not putting me there is Him saying, “you are not that strong.” True dat. My own suffering is still a cross that I have to embrace and carry, even if it’s washing the dishes and not fearing for my life (yet, that day could easily come this way). That’s just it though; I do not embrace my cross.
I drive a really ugly car. Instead of being thankful that the car gets me to point A to point B, I look around at everyone else’s car and wonder why I got stuck driving the humbling death trap. I act as if having to jump my car every time I need to go somewhere is the worst thing that could ever happen to me and that God must hate me to put me through this. Because He is supposed to grant my every wish, like get me a badass Dodge Challenger. It’s really easy for me to point out when someone is preaching the prosperity gospel, but it’s not so easy to look in the mirror and realize that I am living the prosperity gospel. If I don’t have all the things that I want in life, then it must mean God has forgotten me.
That could not be further from the truth. Does that mean that He wants me to suffer all the live long day? No. He created all things for our good. He wants us to enjoy life, but that isn’t the same as centering our life around being “happy”. Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness is fleeting, but joy is always there even in the middle of a storm. Joy is what comes when we center our life around Jesus, Who is the source of life.
The last several months (maybe even a year or more) of my life have been full of crosses and I have gone to great lengths to try and avoid carrying them. I have whined, complained, sat down and pouted, begged God to take them away or just plain out yelled at Him for daring to give them to me in the first place. It wasn’t until I realized what a hypocrite that I am for always pointing at the splinter in the eyes of those who love the Olsteens messages while living with the plank in my own, that I finally heard the words of Christ to pick up my cross and follow Him.
The first step in fighting the prosperity gospel is for me to recognize my own faults, to reject it in my own life and to resolve to change myself. When enough Christians do that, then that false gospel will die on its own. It doesn’t happen by fighting the preachers of it, it happens by fighting it in our own hearts and lives.
He’s kinda’ creepy looking, holds his eyes closed whenever he turns his head, has thick preacher’s hair, doesn’t have a crucifix on his stage, seldom if ever holds a Bible, and babbles on for an hour about the Prosperity Gospel . . . which I don’t think exists.
It’s Olsteen that the article is about.
;-)
This sort of thing just doesn't cross my path in the real world. I would never have heard of Joel Osteen, except for FR.
I would never have heard of Joel Osteen, except for FR.
What prepares me for when his teaching does come up in conversation in the real world is the bible and prayer. And that goes for pretty much ANY teaching that comes up.
"....another fine example of Catholics never posting threads denigrating the beliefs of others...." PING
Yes, excellent observations.
I remember, as a teenager, our minister preaching a sort of abundance line at the end of his sermon: And remember to join us in the fellowship hall after the service for coffee and Daryl’s (the town baker and church member) hot cross buns.
I was amazing to see how fast those buns danced off the platters.
I watched Joel Osteen once and didn’t think he was actually teaching the gospel.
“This past Sunday when I heard my priest say that the prosperity gospel is the gospel of Satan, I wanted to stand up and cheer”
WEll that part is correct. It is the gospel of Satan. Temptation is what Satan always offers. Of course the other part of the Osteen gospel is that its just ignernt. :-)
In John 14:6, when Jesus said “no one comes to the Father but by me,” he was referring to salvation through his own shed blood and completed work on the cross.It is because of Calvary that our sins can be forgiven, that we can be healed, and can have eternal life through Christ. Osteen and other preachers of the prosperity gospel avoid the fact that we are all sinners in need of a Savior, and that the wages of sin is death. They cheapen the genuine gospel, turning it into a feel good self help message that requires no repentance. This is why so many are drawn to it—no cross, no confronting one’s own sin, no repentance, no spiritual accountability, no death of self.
You are right.
The prosperity gospel appears to me to be an inversion of the belief that “bad things happen to sinners” - e.g. a person born blind was due to the sins of the parents.
The fact that many are attracted to these types of mega-church television religions is indicative of the human condition common to all of us - a search for truth, peace, salvation from the problems, trials and suffering in this earthly life.
This morning I got devastating news that my beautiful teenaged niece learned yesterday she has a malignant cancer. Bad things happen to good people. Pray everyday for others, and ourselves - if we have been blessed to have even a speck of the Divine Truth revealed to us, that we are not so proud to be blinded by our own sin, or put to the test.
“In her spare time she sleeps.”
And even that is probably an exaggeration!
God as genie and dispenser of gifts~
Sometimes prayer can devolve into a gimme like that instead of accepting and waiting on His will.
.....Or it is like the old Egyptian pharoahs who built tombs that were BIG, which would not only bury them, but take their stuff with them.
...Yep, they sure are!
She lost me in the first line when she couldn't even get Joel Osteen's name correct. I know that "Pundits gotta punt" about the latest fad "issue," to get their ad-clicks or meet their syndication contracts ... but come on, have some editing standards.
Spellign (sic) is fixed in the original now. The Smiling Man is correctly named.
From the article:
“Most of the time, when I see some quote by the Olsteens or any of the many other “happiness” pushers, I roll my eyes and then ask, “How do these people even suffer?” I mean, how can they suffer? When bad things happen to them, what do they do?”
My comment:
I’m no osteen fan, but during one of the few shows of his that I’ve seen, he described what one of his relatives did when she was suffering some illness: she spent most of her time praying for and thinking of others.
From the article:
“Most of the time, when I see some quote by the Olsteens or any of the many other “happiness” pushers, I roll my eyes and then ask, “How do these people even suffer?” I mean, how can they suffer? When bad things happen to them, what do they do?”
My comment:
I’m no osteen fan, but during one of the few shows of his that I’ve seen, he described what one of his relatives did when she was suffering some illness: she spent most of her time praying for and thinking of other people who were suffering.
from the article:
And then he (her priest) said “It’s easy for us to call out the prosperity gospel when others are preaching it, but how about when we are suffering? Do we ask God ‘why me?’”
my comment:
If you complain about the prosperity gospel, then to be consistent, you have to embrace any suffering that may come your way.
Good article Nyer, thanks for sending.
Growing up I heard the poverty gospel preached almost every Sunday. I heard fiery condemnations of everyone, especially those that dared to say that God was for you. The flock stayed broke, sick, and there was little joy. At the end of almost every service the pastor would beg for money to keep the lights on, and the downtrodden would reluctantly scrape up whatever pennies they could spare to drop in the plate. And then we would half-hardheartedly sing a final song with the following lyrics, “Praise God from whom all Blessings flow...” Oddly, nobody believed it, or ever experienced God’s Blessing.
I’m so glad I finally studied God’s Word for myself and stopped believing such religious nonsense. God is SO GOOD! Whether you believe it or not, does not change His nature, or His Promises.
Romans 3:3-4 (KJV)
3 For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?
4 God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.
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