Posted on 05/04/2019 3:04:32 AM PDT by Gamecock
Major theological issues can sometimes show up in the most surprising places.
The Financial Times reigns as one of the most influential periodicals in the world—it is the reading assignment of the Davos class, and it rivals the influence of The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Financial Times leads the newspaper world in its insightful analysis, cultural critique, and economic breakdown of the most pressing issues facing the globe. It is a paper not read by the faint-hearted.
And, it is the very paper that recently ran this surprising headline, “A Preacher for Trump’s America: Joel Osteen and the Prosperity Gospel.”
Edward Luce, the American Editor for the Financial Times, penned this article, which chronicles his visit to Lakewood Church, the most significant temple to the prosperity gospel in America. Luce marshals all his prowess and analytical skill to craft this insightful article—a story that explores the friction between the prosperity gospel of Joel Osteen and the historic, orthodox Christian faith.
Luce’s report not only details what is present in prosperity theology, but what is absent. He attended a men’s support meeting and wrote, “Optimism, hope, destiny, harvest, bounty—these are Lakewood’s buzzwords. Prosperity too.” Then, he reveals the glaring absence of crucial theological terms: “Words that are rarely heard include guilt, shame, sin, penance and hell. Lakewood is not the kind of church that troubles your conscience.” The supervisor of the men’s support group said to Luce, “If you want to feel bad, Lakewood is not the place for you. Most people want to leave church feeling better than when they went in.”
This statement distills the essential message of prosperity theology—a theology not centered on God and his glory, but an anthropocentric psychological message aimed at making individuals merely feel better about themselves.
Indeed, self-promotion undergirds the success of the prosperity gospel. All meaning and significance in the universe revolves around the self. Thus, meaning and identity have shifted away from the self-revealing, self-existing God and towards the self-important, self-worshiping individual whom God loves.
God certainly loves us. Indeed, the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” The prosperity gospel, however, shifts the impetus of that love away from the praise and glory of the Creator towards the praise and glory of the creature. Luce captures this sentiment in his report, noting that Osteen said, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a computer, your face would be the screen saver.”
Osteen has reversed the entire theological order of biblical Christianity—an order that begins with the supreme priority, glory, and holiness of God. God and God alone receives the glory. The manifestation of his love through Jesus Christ demonstrates himself to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ. Osteen, however, reverses the polarity and makes God the great admirer of the individual.
Luce had the opportunity to meet with Osteen and interview him privately. During that interview, Osteen candidly offered his biblically anemic theology that in no way resembles the teachings of Christ. Luce asked Osteen how he managed to keep sin and redemption out of his supposedly Christian message. Osteen responded, “Look, I’m a preacher’s son, so I’m an optimist. Life already makes us feel guilty every day. If you keep laying shame on people, they get turned off.”
The secular reporter for the Financial Times seems to have a stronger grasp on the teachings of orthodox Christianity than Osteen. Luce rightly asks how a message can parade as Christian when it avoids the idea of sin and redemption? Osteen’s response was not theological but psychological.
He offers that no individual should experience guilt or shame—not even for their sin against a holy and righteous God. Luce asks Osteen, “How does telling people to downplay their consciences tally with the New Testament?” Osteen retorts, “I preach the gospel, but we are nondenominational. It’s not my aim to dwell on technicalities. I want to help people sleep at night.”
Osteen exchanges the eternal consequences of the gospel’s redemptive power through Jesus Christ for a thinly veiled mash of modern psychotherapy and positive thinking. His teaching is pop psychology that resembles the mantras of Oprah rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
After detailing his conversation with Osteen, Luce turned to analyzing his time with the prosperity preaching, writing, “Osteen knows his audience. We want fatted calves slaughtered in our honor. There was no hint in his message of the fire and brimstone of a Billy Graham or a Jerry Falwell, two of America’s most celebrated 20th century evangelists. Osteen is more like Oprah Winfrey in a suit. He is not peddling the opium of the masses. It is more like therapy for a broken middle class.”
As Luce’s article makes clear, Osteen’s message is a gold-mine. Indeed, Osteen’s false gospel works for him financially. As the article makes clear, Osteen received a $13 million advance for just one recent book. Luce details, “With a fortune estimated at $60 million and a mansion listed on Zillow at $10.7 million, Osteen is hardly living like a friar. His suburban Houston home has three elevators, a swimming pool and parking for 20 cars including his $230,000 Ferrari 458 Italia.”
Luce also cites in his report this quote from another prosperity gospel preacher, Paula White: “Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is Satan.”
Someone needs to tell Paula that Jesus actually said that we should deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him. If you get Jesus confused with Satan, you have made an eternally fatal error.
Yet, the entire superstructure of prosperity theology peddles false theology from top to bottom. Osteen is quoted by saying, “If you do your part, God will do his. He will promote you. He will give you the increase.”
This amounts to an entire reversal of the gospel of Christ revealed in the Scriptures. Nowhere do the Scriptures tell mankind that if we just do our part, God will do his. Instead, the Bible reveals that God accomplished everything needed for our salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on his cross.
Perhaps the most horrifying statement in the Financial Times articles pertains to Osteen’s exegesis of Jesus’ last words on the cross, “It is finished.” Osteen does not believe that Jesus declared those words as an attestation of his imminent death and the atonement he made. Instead, Osteen preaches that “It is finished,” means, “The guilt is finished. The depression is finished. The low self-esteem is finished. The mediocrity is finished. It is all finished.”
Osteen has replaced the entire biblical message of Christ and what he accomplished at Golgotha. He has exchanged sacrificial atonement for self-absorption. When Christ declared, “It is finished,” he declared far more than the watered-down psychotherapy of Joel Osteen—indeed, Christ declared that salvation had been secured; that death and the devil were defeated. The temple veil was torn in two, declaring the end of the sacrificial system because the perfect sacrifice had been made. Through Jesus Christ, we now have direct access to the Father.
That is the good news of the gospel; that is what Christians have understood to be the foundation of our hope as God’s people.
Osteen tragically exchanges the hope of gospel centered on Christ and his accomplished work for a wishy-washy, self-centered, self-exalting message of psychotherapy. He does not proclaim the gospel but a false hope. He turns the eyes of his audience away from the glory of the eternal God to a god who is a cosmic butler, waiting on our beck and call to give us health and wealth.
When we think about the theological competitors to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we immediately turn to the major world religions like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. We might even lump modern secularism into that category of theological competitors to the truth claims of Christianity.
But, in many parts of the world, the greatest competition for the hearts and minds of people is between biblical Christianity and the prosperity gospel.
And the central problem of the prosperity gospel is not that it offers too much, but that it offers too little. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings salvation, the forgiveness of sin, and life everlasting. The prosperity gospel promises a Ferrari. At least it did for Joel Osteen.
Except for this swipe at Trump the Article is spot on.
And let's not forget Osteen did very well during the Obammy years.
What kind and color? Can I upgrade to a Lamborghini?
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Pastor John Gray defends decision to buy wife Lamborghini for anniversary
Of course, using one’s wealth to advance God's Kingdom is a good thing. But true wealth isn't how much stock one owns.
Revelation 3 14-22:
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
***************
By the way - notice that JESUS! is the one standing at the door and knocking. Compare it to his parable where it is US who knock at the master's door to get a loaf of bread. (Or whatever it was.)
But Jesus is just as adamant and pleading with those He wants to reach, as those of us that are pleading for Jesus.
Good Lord. Whatever happend to the “camel passing thru the eye of a pin?”
Benny Hinn is probably the worst offender of the Gospel in this respect. At least Osteen earned his income, though he also teaches a false gospel.
Thanks for posting this Gamecock, I pushed it to my FB timeline.
But he may have a better idea of how to create prosperity
and know better what to do with wealth, than Joel Osteen.
And guess what the President said yesterday!
DJT: “I’m going to be allowing declassification pretty soon...”
“I’m going to be doing it very soon, far more than you
would have even thought...”
“I will be declassifying yes, everything.”
(So, maybe something going on in the Truth and Love
Department as well.)
Oh, lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
My friends all have Porsches, I must make amends...
CC
Covet much?
bump
Osteen is just like Schuller and Swaggart, his 80’s contemporaries. He does have a hot wife, though.
Bookmarking
I read “ferret”.
Must be past my bedtime...
Ferrari? Reminds me of the old Jack Benny gag where a
mugger comes up to him with a gun and says “Your money or your life!”
Pause.
Mugger: “Well?!”
Benny: “I’m thinking!”
My pastor talks about sin and does not hesitate to tell us that any sin, even the smallest ones will prevent us from entering heaven. Our recent study of the Sermon On the Mount graphically pointed this out. The reason that this is not depressing news is because he always follows it up by reminding us that giving of our lives to Jesus and opening our hearts to God’s Holy Spirit, redeems us of all of those sins by Grace. Jesus is our once and for all sacrificial lamb, cleansing us, thus making us worthy of entering God’s presence in Heaven. Knowing that truth, how could I go away from Church feeling depressed? Rather just the opposit happens. I go away with real joy in my heart.
I suspect that no matter how many times Osteen tells his audience that they are worthy and deserving of God’s love and showering of gifts, they deep down know that they sin and so can’t be really sure about their salvation. Temporary feel good is not at all the same as Blessed Assurance.
“At least Osteen earned his income, though he also teaches a false gospel.”
I spend about 2 to 4 weeks every couple of years at my sisters farm helping her jump start the place for the season. She is not religious.
Oddly enough she watches Olsteen on Sunday mornings. The first time I was there she asked me to watch it and tell me what I thought, and I did. And what I saw on that television show was not so much a preacher, and not so much gospel preaching but when asked my opinion I told her that Joel Osteen is a motivational speaker.
I’ve seen him a few times since and he comes across as one of those motivational speakers we used to get at some of the companies I worked for back when I was subbing for large contractors.
Does Joel Osteen call himself a preacher? I guess he could be called a pastor or a shepherd of sorts. I think he is a motivational speaker. And he seems to be doing a pretty good job of it.
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