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#Post#: 35725--------------------------------------------------
Re: God wants you to prosper
By: patrick jane Date: November 16, 2021, 12:22 pm
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[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/125693.jpg?h=393&w=700[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2021/fall/rejection-prosperity-gospel-missing-gods-provision.html
In Our Rejection of the Prosperity Gospel, Are We Missing God's
Provision?
As church leaders, we can model a balanced mindset about God's
material blessings.
I knew full well going to Facebook to ask for advice could be
dicey. My wife and I had had our fill of mechanic bills and were
in the market for a new (used) vehicle. Searching online for
low-mileage, well-maintained cars in our price range was proving
difficult, but I thought I’d found a good lead. The car was
about 15 years old but appeared to have barely been driven by
its one owner. It was in great shape and seemed like a steal.
There was only one problem. It was a BMW.
Am I a BMW guy? I thought to myself. My first concern, I
confess, was about what others might think. So I took to
Facebook and asked, “Anyone out there think it’s problematic for
someone in my position to drive a car like this?” I was worried
it might appear immodest or even hypocritical for a seminary
professor and preacher of the (free!) gospel to be seen driving
such a car.
I made sure to mention a few exonerating details—that it wasn’t
new, wasn’t expensive, and the like. Most of my friends said
they wouldn’t have a problem with me driving one. Interestingly,
one commenter said that the very fact I was asking meant it
probably was a violation of my own conscience. And another
commenter added that seeing me drive a BMW onto the campus where
I teach pastoral ministry would “cause him to stumble.”
In the end, my wife and I opted to keep searching, mainly
because of warnings we received about costly repairs to
older-model BMWs, which was the very thing we were trying to
avoid in the first place. But the experience got me thinking
about Christians’ vision of money and the perception, right or
wrong, of extravagance and prosperity.
Our Complicated Relationship with Prosperity
Evangelicalism is a conflicted marketplace when it comes to
prosperity. On the one hand, our suburban megachurches (not
exactly known for frugality or architectural sparseness)
continue to grow and reproduce while we prop up our subculture’s
own version of internet influencers and self-help gurus by
making their channels popular, their books bestsellers, and
their brands lucrative.
On the other hand, we also enjoy scoffing at some of these
folks’ obsession with image and unabashed displays of luxury.
The Instagram account PreachersNSneakers—which features photos
of well-known Christian spokespeople sporting expensive tennis
shoes, ostensibly for the purpose of exposing their
inappropriate extravagance—is just one example. And of course
many evangelicals find the long-tenured cast of characters in
the “health and wealth” movement a reliable stock for sarcasm
and critique.
Americans are obsessed with money, and they’re obsessed with
those who are thought to have too much of it. And American
Christians are no exception. Perhaps there’s a double-mindedness
at play here.
To be clear, the prosperity gospel—a theology of a Protestant
subculture largely occupied by (but not limited to) Pentecostal
and charismatic believers that posits financial blessings and
physical health are God’s will for the faithful—is an especially
pernicious plague in the world, now fully exported and a global
affront to true Christianity. And its problems aren’t merely
theological. The prosperity gospel movement exploits the poor
and many others in ways implicit and explicit that often cross
fully into the category of spiritual abuse.
When we couple this very real religious epidemic with wider (but
also very real) concerns about social justice, income
disparities, economic disadvantage, and the like,
evangelicalism’s money problem makes total sense. Prosperity
theology—“health and wealth,” “name it and claim it,” and so
on—turns God’s commands into formulas and faithful obedience
into a kind of magic. The prosperity gospel twists biblical
concepts into a counterintuitive mix of superstition and
pragmatism. This heterodoxy ought to be rejected wholesale.
But what if our rightful concern with the prosperity gospel and
our honest zeal against it has created a scorched-earth policy
regarding money and material blessings that is, in its own way,
problematic?
The Biblical Balance on Wealth
Are God’s provisions only to be thought of in purely spiritual
terms—that is, are we to reject any material prosperity as not
one of God’s blessings? Could our reaction to the prosperity
gospel’s errors cause us to miss biblical truth about God’s
provision?
The Bible, of course, says a multitude of things about money and
material possessions, but Christian thinking on the subject
these days appears to be somewhat selective. For instance, we
all know that the love of money is an idolatry that leads to
ruin (Ecc. 5:10; Matt. 6:24; 1 Tim. 6:10; Heb. 13:5). Paul names
love of money in the same list of shameful immoralities that
includes abuse and brutality (2 Tim. 3:2–5). Jesus also warns
about riches constantly. The wealthy, it would seem, are at a
significant disadvantage when it comes to perceiving his glory
and the eternal riches of the kingdom (Mark 10:25).
But the Bible also has plenty of positive things to say about
wealth—not about the love of it or the finding of one’s
satisfaction in it, obviously, but simply about the fact of it.
In the Old Testament in particular, we find ample evidence of
financial and material provision being viewed as part of God’s
blessings. The Wisdom Literature especially seems to regard
wealth as (often) the result of good stewardship, hard work, and
faithful diligence. Proverbs 12:27 is just one example: “Whoever
is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will
get precious wealth” (ESV). Riches are also held out very often
metaphorically as a reward for faithfulness (Ps. 112:3; Prov.
14:24; Is. 60:5).
Job is an obvious example of a very rich man who is nevertheless
regarded as righteous (Job 1:1–3). After he has undergone his
unfathomable suffering, his restoration includes the reward of
double his previous fortune. This comes from the hand of the
Lord himself (42:10).
In the New Testament, where the warnings about riches seem to
come more urgently, we nevertheless encounter wealthy people who
support the ministry of Christ and his disciples. Joseph of
Arimathea, who possessed a family tomb he offered to hold the
body of the crucified Jesus and is identified as “a rich man” in
Matthew 27:57, is just one example. A group of women financially
supported Christ’s ministry out of their abundance, as well
(Luke 8:3). And Lydia and other wealthy patrons helped sponsor
the early church’s apostolic missionary efforts.
The problem with the prosperity gospel, then, appears not to be
about prosperity per se. The spiritual dysfunction of this
theology is largely about pragmatism, a turning of biblical
principles into dubious formulas for wealth and accumulation. It
is one thing to think of riches and material possessions as
God’s blessings. It’s another thing entirely to think of them as
God’s debt to our faithfulness (or to consider the lack of
riches as an indicator of unfaithfulness).
Certainly the language of reward in the Scriptures may
complicate the thinking here. When we come across verses about
asking and receiving, we must take care not to misinterpret them
as being about individualistic fulfillment or remove them from
their spiritual and kingdom contexts. Similarly, passages on
sowing and reaping or returns on investments often lend
themselves to immediate financial or personal application, when
their primary thrust is often about spiritual interest, heavenly
rewards, or the stewardship of souls.
We can know that finances are not an automatic or reliable
reward for faithfulness simply because there are too many of the
faithful poor in the Scriptures! We can and should repudiate any
theology that posits material goods as owed to anybody. And we
can and should repudiate any vision of material goods that
promotes greed, envy, vanity, and immodesty, not to mention
stinginess or exploitation of the poor. The potential for sin is
not in the money itself, but in how we think about it and what
we may do with it.
How a Poverty of Thinking Impacts Our Churches
As church leaders, our vision of money—especially how we talk
about it—has deep implications for our personal discipleship and
the discipleship culture of our churches. What do we stand to
lose, for instance, if in our rejection of the prosperity
gospel, we unintentionally create a kind of shame around
receiving such provision?
We could inadvertently deincentivize generosity among those in
our midst who have more than others. If maintaining wealth is
itself cast as greedy or otherwise sinful, we may be telling the
wealthier among us that the church and its mission are not the
place in which to invest one’s wealth, that their stewardship
ought to be channeled elsewhere.
Consider: What do our better-resourced congregants think when we
create unbiblical categories of sin around money and
possessions? Will they feel unwelcome, ashamed, or even
alienated from the values of the church? If we cultivate an
unhealthy stigma around wealth, our wealthier members may have
second thoughts about financial support of the church, opting
instead to support charities and organizations that cheerfully
receive their cheerful generosity.
Or they may even disengage from church altogether. If a church
operates with a shame culture around money, it may ironically
promote self-indulgence and self-interest in disengaged
wealthier congregants, creating deep detrimental impacts on
mission support and benevolence needs.
Think, too, of those in lower-income areas where successful
businesses lead to job creation and other cascading effects of
social uplift. By shaming wealth, the church may be confusing
budding entrepreneurs and defusing the kind of passion that can
have long-lasting, systemic improvements in contexts that most
need them.
Additionally, casting a vision of money or material possessions
as themselves sinful borders on a kind of Gnosticism that works
against the real-world spirituality of the Scriptures.
It is much better instead to speak of money as a tool. Tools can
help or harm. Many people in our world have been harmed by
deformed thinking about and demonic use of this tool. But many
others have been helped. To borrow a phrase from Martin Luther,
let us take great care in our overcorrection, then, not to fall
off the horse on the other side.
The evangelical problem with money can be remedied with a
careful and biblical call for vigilance and balance, for grace
and clarity. Pastors ought to remind their congregations—and
themselves!—about the dangers of riches, about the particular
vulnerabilities endemic to those who enjoy more of material
provisions than others. As it traffics in self-interest and a
kind of pragmatic legalism, the prosperity gospel is always
lying in wait outside the doors of our hearts, so we need to
teach biblical truth and encourage biblical wisdom in these
matters at every turn.
But we ought not act out the now-clichéd misremembering of 1
Timothy 6:10, that “money is the root of all evil.” Along with
sober-mindedness, encourage wholehearted generosity. Appeal to
those who have much to remember in every way those who have
little. To remember the poor is part of our fidelity to the
gospel, in fact (Gal. 2:10). Every good gift comes from God.
Nothing is to be rejected if it can be received with
thanksgiving. Let us not dishonor the Giver by deeming any of
his blessings as unacceptable.
Jared C. Wilson is assistant professor of pastoral ministry at
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, director of the
Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church, and cohost
of CT’s The Art of Pastoring podcast.
#Post#: 35735--------------------------------------------------
Re: God wants you to prosper
By: patrick jane Date: November 16, 2021, 5:59 pm
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUVf25Y6P18
#Post#: 37194--------------------------------------------------
Re: God wants you to prosper
By: patrick jane Date: February 8, 2022, 11:40 pm
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4GYTSfqLTk
#Post#: 39534--------------------------------------------------
Re: God wants you to prosper
By: patrick jane Date: May 16, 2022, 10:29 pm
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGAM-N4tayU
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