Episode 127: Yom Kippur, Job, and the Prosperity Gospel
The Prosperity Gospel comes in many forms—all of them smacking of paganism and an extreme misreading of the purpose of blessings and curses in the Bible and oftentimes a lopsided cherry-picking of wisdom literature. As this aberration curses those who we are commanded to bless, we’re going to talk about how believers should respond to the reality that not everyone who seems blessed has their blessings due to righteousness and not everyone who seems cursed has their troubles due to unrighteousness.
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Prosperity Gospel only truly works out for the person you are paying to preach it to you. But not everyone has the presence to pull it off, you know? You need the looks, the charisma and the wardrobe—and the stuff. And the stuff is different based on the different variations of the prosperity gospel you are preaching. Today, for Yom Kippur, I want to talk about all the various incarnations of prosperity gospel and how it can even hide in plain sight not only in the most obvious form of money and stuff, but also concerning health and fertility and just about anything where we are told that if we do X and Y properly, that Z will follow. And we’re going to compare and contrast it with ancient magic beliefs and just paganism in general and how much of the Bible we have to ignore in order to believe it all. Parents of special needs kids and those of you who are poor, barren, disabled, chronically sick, or whatever—this one’s for you. If you have lived a faithful life and can’t keep up with the Jones’s, this one’s for you. If you are tired of seeing people getting rich promoting the idea that God is required to give us whatever in exchange for obedience—you get the picture. It’s Yom Kippur this week, and we all of us have a lot to repent for as a Body.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have six years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
Full disclosure—one of my favorite television shows of all time is Leverage and I am just thrilled that they have come out this summer with a new season. There is something innately appealing about bad guys who take down other bad guys in extremely clever and humiliating ways—beating them at their own game. But maybe my affection for con artists is why my first “Torah” focused congregation was run by a man who was actually preaching prosperity gospel with a bit of Torah thrown in. When I was a mainstream Christian, I had never really been exposed to it so it took me a long time to figure out what was being peddled to me. I look back now and I am embarrassed—obviously anyone wearing a fancy suit and lecturing everyone about tithing for at least ten minutes every week should have sent up red flags but honestly, I was too captivated by his delivery and natural charisma and besides, he was making me feel good about observing the Sabbath and the Feasts and not eating pork—well, by making me feel good about not being one of the people who wasn’t doing those things. That’s always one of the tricks, isn’t it? Divide and conquer. Divide people from legitimate brothers and sisters who love God but who see things differently and then gain mastery over whoever is still left listening to you. And, of course, now that you are on the right side of the fence, you need to be tithing to me too, and you need to only listen to the people I tell you to listen to and only read the books I recommend because I don’t want you more educated or educated differently than I am.
It wasn’t until he started talking about how the parking lot should be filled with Cadillacs that I started to even begin to see what was happening. But still, he was teaching me “Torah” I thought, and he was interesting, so I gave him a pass. And then I had a dream about him handing me a script, and the dream troubled me. And I made the mistake of telling him about it and he took it as a sign that he should start making more of an effort to tell me what to do—giving me a script was something he felt was a good idea. In retrospect, it was a warning that I was increasingly coming under his control. It wasn’t until a few months later, when I had a dream clearly telling me that he wasn’t serving up anything special or worth digesting, and made the mistake of taking that to him as well (I know, I know, I was worried about him)—that the dark side of the controlling prosperity gospel was revealed to me. He immediately took to a live-streamed sermon that very Sabbath and lied about me and said I was possessed of a Spirit of Fear. Now, you have to know that I have never told anyone about that dream or the contents of that dream, nor did I or have I ever made any of it public—nor would I have ever. It was a private thing. He chose to take it as a potential attack and decided to act against me before I got the chance to act against him. I left the congregation and he expressed concern over me leaving his teachings—but it was the best thing I ever did. He followed up by going to people in private to undermine and warn them about me, causing a lot of division where none was needed. And all that is to just express one concept—prosperity gospel, at its core, is about controlling the actions and religious expressions and daily lives of other people through shame, manipulation, and promises of good stuff (in whatever form).
As such, it is very much reminiscent of ancient paganism and magic. Do this and get that in return from the deity. That, in a nutshell, is what Prosperity Gospel teaches, that if we live a certain way that God owes us certain things and we can bank on them but the problem is that we have to ignore a lot of Scripture to come to that conclusion. We’re going to start out in Job to talk about ancient Near Eastern causality beliefs within the pagan world and how they were waged against Job by his buddies who were bound and determined to figure out what he had done to deserve everything that had happened to him, and accused him of everything under the sun in order to figure out why he was being afflicted. Now, going in, of course, we know that Job hadn’t done anything wrong at all. Job tells the story of an honor challenge waged against God, where Satan accused God of manipulating Job to worship him and to be good through blessings. First, Satan made this accusation:
Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (ESV Job 1:9-12)
Job can be very disturbing—indeed, it is very disturbing. The idea that God would turn faithful Job over to Satan—seemingly to satisfy a bet, but that isn’t what is going on here at all. There was no bet. Satan was accusing Yahweh of engaging in Prosperity Gospel tactics, that He is buying Job’s loyalty, and that the reason Job is so faithful and obedient isn’t actually out of gratitude but because he is, in effect, being paid to do so. In other words, Satan is telling Yahweh that He isn’t worthy of being worshiped as Creator but has to buy loyalty—and that’s what prosperity Gospel is all about, God paying us to do what is right. Let’s look at Job’s stuff—because Job had a lot of stuff.
2 There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3 He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.
Just, dang. In a time when most people had to walk everywhere and the lucky had a donkey, having 3,000 camels and 500 donkeys was like owning a ton of luxury car dealerships—camels were like the Cadillac of the desert. On top of that, 7,000 sheep meant that he was swimming in wool and milk and cheese. And 500 yoke of oxen? You know how much land can be plowed with that many oxen? What this all suggests about how much land he has on top of all the critters is just mind-boggling and remember, wealth in the ancient world wasn’t tied up in money. Money was next to useless except to buy necessities when you are a day laborer. Actual wealth was always converted to land and critters because land and critters could give you an unending return on investment. Job was insanely wealthy. In fact, this verse says that he was the greatest (most prosperous) of all the men of the east.
But, as I said, Satan twisted the situation around. Instead of Job just being a really prosperous guy, Satan implies that this is a purely vending machine sort of relationship. Job does good because God makes it worth his while. Remove all the bling and Job will turn into a degenerate gambler and pimp. Okay, so he didn’t actually say that but we might as well have some fun with this. Don’t hate me for being a bit extra today. It’s how I amuse myself and fortunately, I am very easily amused. So, God calls Satan’s bluff and defends His honor and says, “Fine, take his stuff, but don’t touch one hair on his head.” You see, Satan was calling into question how God inherently runs the universe—was he like a crooked politician, buying votes? Or was he like a good politician (oops, this story just turned into a fairy tale, sorry)—a metaphorical good politician, who is in office because everything he does is good? Okay, guys, do you need a minute to stop choking or should I call 911? Work with me, guys. Metaphors are never perfect, or they wouldn’t be metaphors.
So, long story short, Satan takes all of Job’s stuff—including and worst of all, his kids. He didn’t take Job’s wife, say what you will about that. Maybe it’s a one flesh sort of deal and maybe it’s just sociological commentary, we don’t know. And, although I am being lighthearted, there is nothing funny or reasonable about killing someone’s children but Satan isn’t known for his subtlety, mercy or compassion. Job reacts in a very un-prosperity Gospel way. He doesn’t go looking for wrongdoing because he knows he is a totally stand-up kind of guy. He really handles it with detached resignation—perhaps he knew that he never really deserved the blessings in the first place and so he didn’t really deserve to have them removed either—no matter what he has or hasn’t done.
Remember, and I say remember even though I haven’t mentioned this before—Job is what is called wisdom literature, which means it doesn’t have to be a historical account but was written to reveal the wisdom of God and the difference between God and the gods of the ancient Near East. Job might have happened but this is elaborate poetry designed to convey wisdom. So, we don’t know if this is historical or if God inspired an author to write this account in order to reveal deep truths. It is very modern thinking to want everything in the Bible to be historical but that’s not the way the Jews have ever really looked at it. Modern thinking tells us that something has to be historical to be true but we don’t really believe that—Aesop’s fables endure because they teach fundamental truths and a lot of them are as old as or older than quite a bit of the Bible. Likely they will still be studied in another 2500 years because they are timeless wisdom—wisdom literature, to be exact. Of course, we do not put them on the same level with the Bible, much of which actually is historical, but we recognize them as teaching true concepts.
So, probably really bummed out that Job didn’t curse God and prove his accusation true, Satan tries again. “Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. 5 But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” 6 And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.” Now, anyone who has ever endured real devastating heartache of any sort knows darned well that physical pain is nothing in comparison. But Satan has to be hoping that this will push him over the edge, or that maybe vanity will get the best of him or that he will fall into absolute despair and go nuts. It would probably work for me but I already get angry at God for far less than any of this anyway. Job is like the male version of the Proverbs 31 woman and the unbelievably diligent Pharisee in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector—people just way too good to be literal.
And Satan covers Job head to toe with sores and his wife is incredibly helpful and encourages him to get it over with—but lest we judge her, she’s had it just as bad as he has. They are financially destitute and shamed and it isn’t like she can get any respectable job to support them. You don’t even want to know how I would be carrying on. Every read Lamentations? Ha! I can complain a whole lot better than that, and with far less provocation. But Job continues to remain sinless and blameless…until.
Until his Prosperity Gospel-preaching, very helpful friends come to visit and be supportive. And, to their credit, they sit shiva with him for seven days. Shiva, if you don’t know, is the seven traditional days of mourning within Judaism where the family members sit and mourn, and people come to sit with them and mourn with them. It’s a good thing to do. But his friends just sit there silent with him and we might think that’s a bit heartless but then when they begin to open their mouths, we realize that their silence was an act of supreme compassion because these guys are just brutal as the conversation progresses. But, I am getting ahead of myself—before they speak, Job commits the unforgivable sin—he starts complaining instead of doing his positive affirmations. And, you need to know that (1) that was sarcasm and (2) it is a very Biblical thing to honestly vent and complain and to do it to God. Psalms, Lamentations, the Prophets—it’s all over the place, people howling with grief and indignation and protestations of holiness as they work through their anger and grief. Job has a right to be totally upset and messed up right now. He wishes he was dead—can we blame him? All he has in the world right now is a grieving wife who is too crushed to offer him any support because she is beyond desolate in her own right. No judgment from me. Lord only knows where my head would be and what I would be saying. But, as I said before—Job has “friends.”
Ever have something really bad happen and then someone feels as though they need to defend God when it hasn’t even occurred to you to attack Him and they say, “Well, just remember that God is good.” Well, one, that comes off as accusatory, as though you are harboring evil thoughts about God secretly in your mind when really all you have been able to do is cling to Him in desperation, and two, it plants the seed of resentment. Defending someone that isn’t being attacked it the easiest way in the world to get thoughts going that maybe that person isn’t so innocent. Well anyway, the first round of comments from Job’s three friends, they are kinda like that. But worse. Because they immediately start with the snippy remarks and cheap shots and worse than that, they are like claiming that nothing bad ever happens to anyone who doesn’t have it coming. That God is too good to allow anyone righteous to suffer. And from their vantage point as fellow rich males in the ancient Near Eastern world, and not slaves, poor, or women, it just makes perfect sense to them that they have it good because they deserve it. In effect, they are preaching the content of what Satan accused Yahweh of in the first chapter.
And it’s not just one voice, but three of them ganging up on Job and reiterating this horrible travesty upon Job—whom we know from chapter 1 and 2 is absolutely innocent of wrongdoing. Their words have elements of truth to them but their application is in error and lacks wisdom. But then, there is nothing easier than kicking someone when they are down, right? And there has never been an easier target than Job. Every time Job tries to tell them he hasn’t sinned, the more argumentative and certain they become that he has not only sinned, but they suggest the worst sort of offenses against justice and righteousness. It’s like they pull every sort of potential sin off the shelf to accuse him of it—Job must be guilty of one or many horrible offenses otherwise this wouldn’t be happening to him. Where they accuse him of being dishonest in business and oppressive to the vulnerable, it would sound to him like accusations of slavery, child molestation and rape would sound to us. They are not accusing him of small sins but the big kahunas of ancient Near Eastern transgressions. The more Job asserts his innocence of wrongdoing, the more self-righteously and relentlessly they push him and all the while drawing anger out of Job that he previously had either not been feeling or had not been giving voice to—but let’s be honest, we never feel anger toward anyone until it is brought to our attention that we are being wronged. Just an FYI, a really awesome book about reading Job and other Wisdom literature is Wisdom’s Wonder by William P Brown.
In the speeches of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, their pretense at defending God is really all about blaming Job instead. In their mind, someone is to blame and it can’t possibly be God—by default, Job has sinned and needs to repent. But Job, he knows he has nothing to repent of and is caught in the trap of all those against whom false accusations are brought—damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You have nothing to repent for because you haven’t done anything, but you are told that until you repent, you are damned. That’s why I hate false accusations so much—I would rather be accused of something I am actually guilty of because then I can either admit it or not—and I am guilty so being accused isn’t a huge deal. It’s when everyone thinks you are guilty and you can’t prove yourself innocent or be accepted back into community until you lie and repent for a sin you didn’t commit, which isn’t repentance at all, that’s what’s awful. And I’ve had that happen to me quite a bit. I think everyone in ministry has. I would rather be accused of actual sin because I really can do something to correct that. But false accusation leaves you so powerless and being powerless is a great breeding ground for anger. And Job is sure getting a crash course in that!
Back and forth, back and forth—all Job wanted was for his pain to be heard. He wanted to tell his story. But his friends made it into an artificial battle with God and who can come out of that the winner? And what Job does what is actually very wise, He demands arbitration in the matter. Only God can condemn or vindicate him and so he throws his case before God. He knows he is innocent, that is what he knows with absolute surety. I have skipped a lot because we can’t do 42 chapters in fifty minutes and we still have other things to talk about but in the end, Yahweh makes an appearance and says that Job didn’t do anything to deserve what had happened to him and that the words of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar about him, seemingly spoken in Yahweh’s defense, were really off base. Their prosperity Gospel held no water because it presumed upon the deity that nothing in the world just happens, that God is to be blamed or credited with it all. That bad things don’t happen to good people because Yahweh wouldn’t allow it, and good people can expect only good for doing good. In the end, the only person that has spoken correctly about Yahweh is Job, despite all his complaints and lamentations and anger and questioning. Job’s friends, whether they knew it or not, were tempting Job to sin against Yahweh by making it into an either/or situation—either Yahweh or Job was in the wrong. They didn’t understand that perhaps, neither was wrong.
In the end, Job lost everything but was vindicated and the three friends were rebuked but also prayed for by Job. Job got back double amounts of everything he had lost. However, although he had ten more children, it wasn’t like the ones he lost were returned to him. Job did come out of it a changed man. He even broke with the traditions and laws of the times and gave full shares of inheritance to his three daughters. Job learned, the hard way, who God is and is not and so did his friends. God is good and merciful and generous—but he doesn’t buy our love with bling. We don’t get rich from being obedient—our obedience is tied to our gratitude for Him just being Him. He deserves our love and we give it to Him regardless of our material or health circumstances. Prosperity Gospel was Satan’s accusation, not Yahweh’s normal operating procedure. In effect, Job was Prosperity Gospel on trial.
So, what does this have to do with us in modern times? I don’t own a single camel, ox, sheep, or donkey. I don’t even have enough land to put one of each on. And what would I even do with any of them except the sheep? And I’d eat the sheep, totally. So, then I would be stuck with three large animals in my backyard. My husband’s evil cat—she would probably die of a heart attack. This would not be my idea of a blessing. Now, a university library bequeathing me all their books and the library to live in. Oh man, yeah, I am all for that. Wait, would the university have to die in order to write me into their will? Not sure how that would work. Darnit, another pipe dream.
Anyway, now I am going to get really serious because we have had our fun but we see Job’s friends alive and well and gathering around every tragedy like vultures around a decaying wildebeest. Okay, that wasn’t super serious—work with me while I transition here. Believers that I believe are well-meaning, like Job’s friends were probably actually very well-meaning and undoubtedly thought they were saving him from damnation or worse, not having stuff, tend to get very prosperity gospel-ish when people are going through tough times. In fact, it is a rather comforting thing to believe that the good things in our lives are God’s mark of approval and if we just keep on keeping on, tragedy will not strike our houses. And yet, we know historically and biblically that terrible things happen to good people. Exhibit A, the Cross. We also know that good things happen to terrible people. How on earth did Jezebel live so long and so wealthy, anyway? Sure, she was thrown to her death and eaten by dogs, but dang, until then she had very little to complain about. She wasn’t going hungry during the drought, right? The Psalms—one says, “Oh thank you Yahweh, the righteous are blessed with plenty and the wicked are destroyed.” But then a few Psalms later, we see something like, “Yahweh, why do the wicked prosper and why are the righteous begging for bread?” With wisdom literature, you are going to see the extremes of reality. Yes, the righteous should never lack enough to eat—but then they shouldn’t be rotting in Chinese political prisons either, being tortured. Read Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand if you want an eye-opener to what happens to righteous people. Read early Church history. No, the righteous are often afflicted and it isn’t because God is punishing them for secret sins. And the world is always full of healthy, rich people enjoying their lives while oppressing pennies a day workers in third world nations.
To preach Prosperity Gospel and to make those sorts of promises is not only to impose on the goodness of God but to deny inconvenient realities and, worse, to explain those realities away by blaming the victims. Why did my friends, in the ministry for decades, lose their twenty-year-old daughter last year? Why don’t the wicked all end up childless and impoverished? Who do we blame for the reality of how life turns out before Messiah returns and makes the whole world a just and righteous place? Why do we make assumptions that the wealth that is available here in America is freely available to everyone who is righteous enough to merit it? Why do we want Church parking lots filled with Cadillacs instead of Churches filled with the vulnerable whose needs are getting met and who will probably never be rich but will find healing and the sort of prosperity that comes from a soul at rest and not in a perhaps hidden internal crisis?
In the west, we are rewards and external blessing obsessed—it’s like porn to us. It’s coveting turned into doctrine. I remember about nineteen years ago, back when I was a Southern Baptist, I read a book called “A Life God Rewards” and it really pushed the idea that we should be working hard in this life for the Kingdom because this life is a blip before the unending eternity and how we will live there depends on what we did here. And it was the worst thing I could have read. Gone was the joy I had previously had in the Lord, my covetousness and greed took center stage. I was stressed out that the Lord could return any time and I didn’t have enough works to end myself up in the kind of living quarters that would show everyone how righteous I was in my former life. Oh yeah, I am being very painfully honest here. I should have mentioned pride along with covetousness and greed. I didn’t love Him yet and I didn’t want to serve Him for His sake alone. I was still scared of what eternal life would look like and now, honestly, I couldn’t care less. In fact, I have come to the place where, if there turned out to be no eternal life at all, I would not consider my life wasted. He has healed me of so much pain and trauma and heartache and given me such peace—not all the time, of course, I still live a real life filled with nonsense—but what He has done for me already feels like, for lack of a better word, Heaven compared to what life used to be like inside my head. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, I feel it every day. If I wanted prosperity on the world’s terms, I would take my chemistry degree and go get a job and stop breaking even in ministry—but I want people to know this God who has emotionally healed me because I want them healed as well.
That’s just one type of Prosperity Gospel—serving God now not because of loving devotion and truly wanting others to know Him but out of the stress of wanting eternal stuff. What about people who promise perfect health if you just eat right and exercise and use the right herbs and oils and shun modern medicine, which is said to be sinful (and I did a whole broadcast on what Pharmakeia meant in the Septuagint and in the first-century world)? They mean well but it is also a form of prosperity Gospel. If only it were a guarantee—and prosperity Gospel always speaks in terms of guarantees on behalf of God. But some of the most responsible naturopathic people I know suffer from terrible conditions. They’re actually some of my favorite people because they see the world as it is—that you can do things as right as possible and still get the short end of the stick without it being divine punishment. There’s just something about being otherwise innocent and yet still afflicted that fashions people into the most beautiful of believers. It grounds them in compassion and the sort of wisdom that only comes through the hard walk of suffering and unjust judgment and rejection based on appearances. Had a gal on my social media wall a number of months ago who was adamant that blame was to be assigned when someone has a health issue because it is supposedly rare that a body can have something wrong with it if you have been living right. But how many of us suffer from issues that are congenital—due to birth defects or genetic issues? The evidence is all around us that we cannot ever be of the mindset that most people have earned their problems because it puts everyone in the crosshairs as guilty until proven innocent. But, that’s always an excellent indicator of Prosperity Gospel.
How about people who are married vs single or who have a “quiverful” of kids vs those who are barren and/or infertile? I have seen these both touted as the rewards of the righteous and the punishment due to those who have unrepentant sin in their lives. But, seriously, a lot of us respectable religious gals are married right now because we were, frankly, willing to put out before marriage—to put it crudely. And there are a ton of righteous ladies who came into this walk single who aren’t willing to go there, and rightly so. So, how come I get to look like I am being rewarded for my righteousness with a thirty-year marriage and a forty-year-old virgin is getting the sideways glance and people are wondering what is wrong with him or her? Statistically, when we look at how unlikely it is to (1) find and be attracted to someone who is also attracted to you, (2) find that person to actually be a believer, and (3) have that other person be committed to a long term relationship—it’s a wonder anyone gets married at all. Instead, we should all be focused on living righteously and stop looking at marriage as some sort of litmus test of worth. Amy Carmichael and Gladys Aylward and countless other godly women never married, and it wasn’t for a lack of worth or not wanting to. It just didn’t happen. I dare any married woman to exalt herself over either of those two. And just—don’t exalt yourself at all, actually, although that is another aspect of Prosperity Gospel because the haves get to claim more righteousness in the eyes of God than the have-nots. Life is hard enough for the have-nots and they don’t need to be dismissed or patronized as though we are meant to have stuff. We are meant to be a blessing to others.
Telling someone that if they were only faithful enough to God and submissive enough to/or leadership enough to their spouse, they wouldn’t have been abused/cheated on/ etc. Nonsense, people make their own selfish decisions all the time and they don’t care who they are hurting. No one has ever deserved spousal betrayal. Imagine telling a child that if they had just been more obedient that they wouldn’t have been physically, psychologically or sexually abused. Yeah, that feeling of disgust you just had? You should have had it for the grown-up example too. This is a stealth form of prosperity Gospel.
Again, I mentioned family size. There are a lot of religions and denominations that promote the idea of the righteous woman having as many kids as possible and we talked about that last week and why that was important in the ancient Near Eastern world, to produce sons and a small fighting force. But the evidence of Scripture speaks against it being a litmus test for favor or righteousness as a ton of the named women in the Bible (and there aren’t that many) were barren and one never gave birth at all, and some only had one or two children. So, if you are barren or infertile, like me or if you choose not to have a large family, you’re just fine. If you choose to have a big family, you’re just fine. What isn’t fine is women exalting themselves over one another based on either of those things. Telling someone that their childlessness and miscarriages are about hidden unrepentant sin is not only oppressive and cruel, but a shot across the bow of women like Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, and Anna. We need to cut out this sort of elitist womb-based Prosperity Gospel.
Telling the poor that they wouldn’t be poor if they tithed to their slick-talking, well-dressed minister. The Bible is clear–the tithe is for the benefit of the poor. They don’t pay it, they receive it. Anyone who tithes in order to be rich is acting like they feel God owes them some sort of monetary exchange for services. Nonsense. God isn’t an atm or a vending machine. We tithe because it is the Kingdom thing to do, in order to support those who minister to us and to support the poor, not in order to get anything back. You think you deserve more than eternal life? Huh?
I am sure you can think of more examples, but all of this is promoted by folks with agendas (whether they see it or not) and oftentimes they haven’t thought it out critically or compassionately. They are often as driven by their flesh as any lusty teenager with a pocket full of condoms, they are just less honest about it. Sure, our bodies operate better if we exercise and feed them properly but there are no guarantees. Guilting disabled or sick people that they don’t have enough faith is really, seriously poking at God’s mercy with a stick. Maybe you don’t get sick not because you are so excellent but because of good genetics that you didn’t deserve and because God knows you will crumble the moment He tests you. Greed comes in many forms. Bragging comes in many forms. Cruelty comes in many forms. And God’s mercy also comes in many forms.
Agendas need to be handled more honestly or they turn into prosperity Gospel. You can’t make any guarantees to anyone on anything. You don’t have the right to make promises that God or someone else’s body has to deliver on (or even your own). Talk about probabilities, trends, possibilities, whatever–but guarantees? Don’t do it. I mean, unless they involve gravity or other immutable laws of physics, just don’t.
We’re killing faith by abusing God’s love and reputation for personal gain. It has to stop. And the people making these assurances are false prophets because they are obligating God to their claims–which rarely bear fruit. Of course, they just blame the victim when it fails to come to pass but don’t for a moment believe that they are absolved in God’s eyes. And like I said at the beginning, the only person Prosperity Gospel works out for is the guy in the fancy suit whom you are paying to preach it to you in hopes of being rich yourself. Sure, it seems to work in the people they trot out for testimonies, but not in the multitudes who are paying for it and seeing no harvest at all and being told it’s because of sin. And if the sin of greed isn’t penalizing the preachers, I don’t think it’s what’s holding back anyone else either. We just can’t afford to make those same claims about God that Satan did.