Eutychus

Michael Spencer at Internet Monk, gave me food for thought with his post The “Real” Prosperity Gospel.  It is one thing to denounce the “name it and claim it” theology that promises that we can have health and wealth if only we have enough faith to believe God for it.  But Spencer responds to a commenter on his blog who suggests that those of us who reject the prosperity gospel often hold to a subtler form of it:

The real prosperity gospel isn’t the overt appeal to wealth. It is the more subtle appeal to God guaranteeing that we are going to be happy, and the accompanying pressure to be happy in ways that are acceptable and recognizable to the community of Christians we belong to.

The real prosperity gospel is the belief that God will- must?- keep things at a level where it’s still possible for us to follow Jesus without overt appeal to rewards in this life. The real prosperity gospel is revealed not in the promises of a yacht or a large home, but in the unspoken approval of a level of prosperity that allows us to live the Christian life on our own terms. It is the ratification of our private, sometimes entirely secret, arrangements with God of what his “goodness” means.

It’s the notion that, even if we are going through tough times, we can still be happy if we have Jesus Christ.  That if we ever lose our joy, we are somehow poor Christians.  We have to be careful not to teach, or give the impression, that if we are ever discouraged, sad or struggling, something is wrong with us or our faith.  God calls us to cast our cares and anxieties upon Him, He doesn’t promise that cares and anxieties with be absent from the lives of faithful believers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 7:08 am and is filed under Church Life, Discipleship, Pastoral Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.