Tag Archive for: success

Unmasking the Prosperity Gospel

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Author: Robert G. Coleman

About two and a half decades ago, the popular Christian message that one often heard in Ghana was about salvation, and this was traditionally presented as relating to sin, righteousness and eternal life. The call then was “Repent and accept Jesus and you will be saved.” Today, in many places, salvation is presented as an experience with Jesus Christ that will give us the tools and power to be successful in life, enable us rub shoulders with rich non-Christians and make us happy. In addition, the understanding of the word “faith” has also been changed. Faith used to be seen as a living trust in God so that even when things did not go well, we still trusted in the Lord. Today, faith is understood in many quarters as a power or force that is used to get anything we want. This modern interpretation of the gospel is what theologians call the Prosperity Gospel.

This gospel may be presented in different forms and even with different words, depending on who is preaching it, but the core of the message is that Jesus died so that the one who believes in him will become materially or financially wealthy and will never fall sick. Some of this gospel’s oft-used vocabularies include “sow a seed,” “abundance,” “breakthrough,” “anointing for success,” “inheritance,” “prophesy into your life,” “you are destined for greatness,” “claim it by faith,” “positive confession,” etc. Another unique thing about this gospel is that it thrives on changing or playing with the meaning of particular words. The meanings of scriptural verses are often twisted in order to present a semblance of biblical grounding for the prosperity gospel’s non-biblical message.

He Became Poor So That You Might Be Rich

Prosperity preachers usually tell their hearers that God wants them to be rich or to have material abundance. It is not uncommon to hear them use a verse like 2 Corinthians 8:9 which teaches that Jesus became poor so that those who believe in him might be rich. But did the author, Apostle Paul, actually mean that Jesus’ agenda for his followers was to make them rich materially or financially? Ironically, the reason why Paul even brought up this issue was because he was seeking for donations to help the believers in Judea, who were in need. Now think about it, if believers in Christ are automatically to be materially rich just because Jesus “became poor,” as it were, then why were the believers in Judea so in need that Paul had to get the assistance of the churches in Macedonia and Corinth (2 Cor. 8:1-4, 8-15). If it was case that the believers in Judea had failed to “claim their inheritance or birthright,” as the prosperity gospel language goes, all Paul needed to do was to tell them to either “claim it by faith” or “prophesy it into their lives,” but he did not do this because this was not the kind of Christianity he was preaching. It is also worth noting that the apostle made particular mention of the fact that the churches in Macedonia gave generously “even though they are very poor” (vs. 2 GNB) and he meant this in terms of material wealth (vs. 3).

In verse 9 however, when he uses the word “rich” he does not imply financial or material wealth. The context bears witness. He clearly states what he means by “rich” in verse 7 of the same passage: “You are so rich in all you have: in faith, speech, and knowledge, in your eagerness to help and in your love for us.” GNB. There is no mention, literal or implied, of material riches here. Indeed if by “rich” Paul had meant material or financial riches then his actions would be either a joke or an insult to the Judea believers, on whose behalf he was asking for donations, because they would already be materially rich by virtue of Christ having “become poor.” But the prosperity preachers have a different agenda: they want the believer in Christ to see riches as a birthright, something to be grasped, something the Christian is entitled to. But this only leads many believers to disillusionment, because when God has not promised something and you force yourself to believe that he has, disappointment is inevitable in the long run.

The Blessing Of Abraham

It is also common to hear prosperity preachers make reference to the blessing of Abraham in the book of Genesis, in the Old Testament. At the same time these preachers are inclined to use Galatians 3:29, in the New Testament, which says that “If you belong to Christ then you are the descendants of Abraham and will receive what God has promised” (GNB) to explain why they believe a Christian ought to be materially rich and fulfilled as Abraham was. A successful linking of this passage in Galatians to the Genesis narrative about Abraham’s blessings seems to provide a solid foundation for preaching material prosperity in the Church today. But there are some important things to note here.

What really is the blessing of Abraham? Abraham is called blessed in Galatians not because he received prosperity or material wealth or good health. Instead he is called blessed because he believed God and God accepted him, on the basis of his faith, as righteous (Gal. 3:6). It is this “righteous” status that the apostle Paul has in mind when he says that all who believe are blessed as Abraham was (Gal 3:9). Any person who believes in Jesus today is blessed because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. Galatians 3:13&14 explains: “But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, ‘Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God’s curse. Christ did this in order that the blessing which God promised Abraham might be given to the Gentiles by means of Christ Jesus, so that through faith we might receive the Spirit promised by God.” GNB [Emphasis mine]

Paul’s meaning of “God’s promise to Abraham” is very clear. He does not have in his mind any idea about Abraham’s material blessing nor does he allow room for extending the meaning of this phrase beyond Abraham’s spiritual blessing of righteousness to include “everything” (Gen. 24:1) else in Abraham’s life, like the prosperity preachers like to do. The promise of blessing for the whole human race through Abraham, according to the Spirit-filled Apostle Paul is spiritual not worldly – it is the receipt of the Spirit promised by God. Interestingly, the author of Galatians, Apostle Paul, whose words prosperity preachers like to use to justify their material wealth preaching, actually wrote disapprovingly about people who try to interpret the Christian faith materialistically in 1 Timothy 6:5-12 saying:

“…They think that religion is a way to become rich. Well, religion does make us very rich, if we are satisfied with what we have. What did we bring into the world? Nothing! What can we take out of the world? Nothing! So then, if we have food and clothes that should be enough for us. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and are caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a source of all kinds of evil. Some have been so eager to have it that they have wandered away from the faith and have broken their hearts with many sorrows. But you, man of God, avoid all these things. Strive for righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Run your best in the race of faith, and win eternal life for yourself; for it was to this life that God called you when you firmly professed your faith before many witnesses.”(GNB) [Emphasis mine].

Paul lifts the attention of his readers from the material to what really matters – the fruits of the Holy Spirit: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

Sickness

Typical prosperity gospel does not allow room for a believer to get sick. It claims that a Christian, full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit and who has favour from the Lord simply cannot get sick; Jesus has redeemed the believer from every disease. Thus if you get sick it must be because of your sin or unfaithfulness. But as if to refute the prosperity gospel on this particular point, the Bible contains a record of several godly men (both those who can be described as physical seeds of Abraham and those who are spiritual seeds of Abraham) who suffered sickness yet the Scriptures put no blame on them: Elisha, a man with the “double portion anointing” died of a fatal disease (2 Kings 13:14); King Hezekiah, a man described as one who did what was pleasing to the Lord (2 Kings 18:3), actually got sick and almost died (2 Kings 20:1); Timothy, Apostle Paul’s son in the faith, had frequent stomach problems (1 Tim 5:23); Trophimus, one of the early Christians, was left in Miletus by Paul because he was ill (2 Tim 4:20); Epaphroditus, Paul’s fellow worker in the faith, fell ill and almost died (Philippians 2:25-30); the great Apostle Paul himself got ill physically (Gal 4:13). If the Prosperity preachers’ teaching is true then we must question whether the apostle Paul (whose letters we consider as part of Scripture) and his colleagues in the early church, who got sick, were truly the seeds of Abraham or even Christians at all.

Conclusion

In a developing country like Ghana, where many people struggle financially and with health issues, and where a lot of young people are upwardly mobile, the Prosperity Gospel sounds appealing and inspiring. But it would be in our interest to heed the warnings of Scripture and also the warning of Jim Bakker, the former American prosperity preacher, whose ministry was hit by financial scandals in the 1980s and was subsequently imprisoned. From prison, he repentantly wrote in a letter saying: “It’s time the call from the pulpit be changed from ‘Who wants a life of pleasure and good things, new homes, cars, material possessions etc?’ to ‘Who will come forward to accept Jesus Christ and the fellowship of his suffering?’ … I believe the heart of God is grieved when we cannot delay self-gratification for earthly things in exchange for life in eternity with Him.” Having deceived masses of people, Jim Bakker finally saw the light. I hope the prosperity preachers of our day and their sympathizers will also come to the same realization before it is too late. C. H. Spurgeon once insightfully noted that, “The old covenant was a covenant of prosperity. The new covenant is a covenant of adversity whereby we are being weaned from this present world and made meet for the world to come.”

While Biblical Christianity does not teach believers to actively seek poverty or sickness, it does warn against seeking worldly riches (2 Tim. 6:9&10) and worldly fulfilment (Matt. 16:26) and also entreats Christians to pray for the sick and care for the poor, both within the Church and outside of it. In the Christian life, whatever the believer does, he is to work at it with all his heart as though he were working for God and not for human beings (Col. 3:23). Hard work is encouraged. In the end, however, whether a believer becomes rich or poor or in-between, sick or healthy, the important thing is to have a living trust in Jesus. Faith, in the Christian sense, is a confidence in Jesus Christ and in his power so that even when his power does not take away the unpleasantness you face in this world, your confidence in him remains because of who Jesus is. He is a loving God who can be trusted to always do what is good for those who belong to him.

Jai ho – reflections from the “Slumdog” Millionaire

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The question of life’s origin, its purpose and its end vis-à-vis the occurrences of evil, pain and inexplicable happenings continue to plague mankind. They are the questions to which we never seem to find satisfactory answers. All the philosophical and Christian answers seem satisfactory until one is suddenly shaken by the reality of the death of their two-year old son or the rape of their sixteen year old daughter. One is compelled to want justice and justifiably so. Questions begin to plague the mind.

On a Friday night recently, I visited one of my friends and these thoughts came to me again as we spent some delightful two hours watching the Slumdog Millionaire. While I had heard about how interesting this three-year old movie was, I had for some reason not watched it until he recommended it. With eager interest we watched it in one sitting, a feat I’d deemed myself almost incapable of!

 

The story revolves around Jamal and his brother Salim who lose their mother while relatively young. Their life becomes the typical orphan story. They struggle through life doing “odd” jobs, all the while trying to keep body and soul together. Salim represents the more aggressive and ruthless character whereas Jamal was the docile, collected one.

What struck me was not their penury or even their distinct characters or their plight but the “Who wants to be a millionaire” show on which Jamal was a contestant. Jamal, an archetype of a slum-dweller (“slumdog”) was being asked questions that the educated or sophisticated were supposed to know. And yet, this slum-material was sailing right through much to the shock and chagrin of the show’s host.

Unable to believe that someone like Jamal could be answering these questions, the host had Jamal arrested and brutally tortured in the hope of finding out how it is that someone could answer such questions with correctness. Jamal’s ability to answer those questions was rooted in the experiences he had gone through in life.

Scene after scene, we were led to retrospectively see aspects of Jamal’s life that left impressions that were the answers to the questions he was now being presented with. Whether it was the autograph he signed while he was literally covered in human excreta or the $100 bill he gave to a beggar friend, the answers to those questions were a very part of his experiences in life. The story goes on to end with Jamal winning the grand prize having answered all the questions with one or two guesses. The pauper is now a millionaire!

It was this show (in the movie) that got me thinking. Could Jamal honestly say that as he went through those horrifying experiences in life, someway, somehow he believed them to be good or to have some good end? How did he bear the loss of his mother, the (temporary) loss of the girl he loved, the brutal gorging out of the eyes of some his friends due to the avarice of one man and the increasing hardening of his brother? Evidently, these are tragic events that shake the life of a young.

Our life’s experiences seem so similar. Quite often tragedies happen in such rapid succession that we do not see the possibility of meaning or value emerging from such pain. As is humorously quipped, “he who feels it knows it.” The pain that many have had to bear cannot in many circumstances be described by words. Somehow, words lose their inability to express some depths of pain.

From the standpoint of being a winner and a millionaire, Jamal Malik, could possibly look at all those losses and begin to see some value to all that pain. In this case, it might be the financial gain. Life had somehow placated him for all the sorrow.

Methinks that the story of life, particularly for those who walk in a belief in the Christian God is no different. Jamal may have been hapless through his bitter experiences but we can have faith. If we have entrusted our lives to God, we can be certain that His promise to bring us into eternal life and the mansions His father has for us are as true now as they were when He made that promise. (John 14:1-4)

We are finite and do not see the end from the beginning but our walk of faith must lead us to trust that God is with us, even in the midst of paucity and the most debilitating circumstances. If your life is entrusted to God, you can be certain He is superintending the entire process and it will turn out for your good if you walk closely in His will.

My mind is firmly drawn to the book of Hebrews and more especially the 11th chapter where the “Hall of Faith” lists those who believed God and literally took Him at His word. Though none of them received what was promised (Heb 11:39), they held on to God.

While faith has been held out by many “mega” preachers, prophets, archbishops and bishops as the means to receive the fullness of life (material wealth) from God, I find an entirely different story in Hebrews. To many of them, unpleasant experiences like Jamal’s cannot characterize the life of one who follows God. It is as though they have never read the life of Jesus or of Paul or Wesley or Spurgeon. They doubt the Potter’s ability to take even pain to establish His purposes.

Many of them, like a great majority of us are myopic in our perception. Quite often, we cannot see beyond our present the pain. As we writhe in it particularly that which results from obedience to God and integrity, we wonder where God is. He has promised never to leave us nor forsake us.

In Hebrews 11:32-40, the author records the horrific experiences that many saints of old had to endure because of their faith in God. It was not a pleasant ride and yet they kept their hope and trust in God. Somehow their eyes remained fixed as they “looked forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)

Jamal’s (financial) reward at the end of a life of pain and difficulty should give us an indication of the faithful God who is able to keep His promises of reward at the end. Somehow all these experiences if taken with the trust and witness of the Spirit as God’s will will elicit His thunderous “well done.” I am not asking you to resign yourself to a life of laziness, indiscipline and despair, but to resign your life to the Father’s will. I am not asking you to also get into doing things just for the reward or the mansions in glory.

Donnie McClurkin sings a useful reminder:

I’m not thinking about the sights,

I won’t be there to enjoy the view,

I think heaven will be alright;

As long as there’s You!

The writer of this brilliant movie sought to provide some meaning to all the pain that had characterized this young lad’s earlier life. Somehow in the crevices of his mind a financial reward seemed enough to placate Jamal. Somehow, that idea seems rife among many of us today. It is the idea that there is a financial reward that will be able to make up for all the pain that has plagued our earthly existence.

In seeking to answer that question of life ourselves, we wear ourselves thin to “make it” so we can somehow belong only to realize that all our successes have left us with deeper chasms in our hearts. Life becomes devoid of meaning and we seem to have laboured in vain. Blaise Pascal reminds us “there is a God shaped vacuum in our hearts that can only be filled by a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ.”

And so today, I want to commend this Jesus to you. Your life may have been wrecked by experiences too tragic to recount and yet even in those circumstances God is able to turn it around. He sees the end from the beginning and if you can entrust your life to Him, He will give you Himself and much more at the end.

Why not begin now to admit that your quest to find meaning and answers without Him has failed? Cast yourself at His feet to save you and give you strength to know and live His will. To all who profess Him and pursue Him, rewards without measure await you. Seek Him while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near and abandon yourself to Him. It matters not which slum you emerged from, He will give you the riches which are found in Christ if you obey Him. Selah!!

 

Sept 9, 2011
1410GMT

Winning isn’t everything

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Driving along in my jalopy one Friday, my thoughts were far apart; on one hand I was thinking about the air conditioner my jalopy badly needed and the dust that this arid road was blowing in with all these impatient 4-wheelers whisking past and on the other hand I was just thinking about how much rest I needed following what had been a rather stressful week. There were several other peripheral thoughts. I was tuned in to BBC on the radio, a new habit I was forming. It was Qaddafi making the news again. Was it news at all?
The panellists on “World have Your say” were discussing Mariah Carey’s performance for the Qaddafi’s and some money London School of Economics is to have received and the PhD his son is to have obtained from there. Having heard Qaddafi for nearly two weeks, I wanted to change stations. The University of California professor or some other panellist, opined that when profit is cardinal in our dealings with others, things are bound to go wrong. I was stunned for a moment that even from a possible secular source they were concluding that profit isn’t everything.

There were varied opinions from those who sent text messages in and those who wrote on the Facebook wall. Some thought it was no big deal for Mariah Carey and her bunch of musical friends to have received cash from Qaddafi. Others thought they shouldn’t have. Someone asked that if we’re to deal with only those of integrity/good morals there would probably be no one to deal it. That, for me, was a deep question but more importantly to me, that nagging thought remained: when profit is key, things will likely go wrong.

The idea of profit flung my mind rapidly to my own employers and the business environment in general. I asked myself, is profit king? Is making returns the cardinal thing? Any attempt to answer that question is probably tantamount to career suicide so I will leave that to your good selves to decide. Are we willing to tell the customer the absolute truth if it means losing them? Are we willing to pay employees a fair wage even if it means less profit over all? As a business man, is profit the main thing? As a company is profit the main thing? As an individual, is profit and progress the key thing? Might I propose that something can go and will go awry?

From the cradle, we’re conditioned to be competitive. Win at sports, win in class, win some awards, get into the school play, read more books, get more games, etc. Our net worth, for many of us, becomes tied to the number of abbreviations after our name, the schools we’ve been to, the cars we drive, the neighbourhood we live in, etc. We jump on to life’s treadmill running with as much energy as we have failing to realize we’re headed nowhere. Our lives become subject to figures, statistics and terms like EBIDTA, GDP and the associated financial jargons. But is winning really everything? Is being the number one company, the number one this and that really all that matters?

Recently, a court in South Africa ruled that miners could sue their companies for lung infections/disease. Can the management of AngloGold Ashanti which was named in the news item and other mining companies say they were oblivious to the risks? Can other company’s whose staff are exposed to varying risks honestly say they do not know the dangers to which they expose their staff? When companies downsize and smaller numbers do work meant for more, do they not know the adverse health risks? For many, profit is king.  Evidently, something other than the person is central and this has horrid implications.

As for companies, many if not most of them are less likely to change and it’s quite likely they will continue playing ostrich so far as the lives of their employees are concerned. Forget all those employee sessions where they promise heaven year after year. The question comes down to a personal one: is winning everything to you? Is being number one, on top, being seen, being heard, being read, being known the driving impetus of your life? It is quite likely that you are headed for a cataclysmic crash, one that may not be evident to all externally. When your world implodes it eventually shows.

I asked a female friend of mine the other day: if you were a manager in a “fairly good” company and had a decent place to live, a decent car to drive and could pay your bills with some money to spare, would you take up the Senior Managerial position or Directorship if it meant less time with the children, twice the among of current travel and less time with your hubby. Her response was tantamount to “why not?” What she was saying was that if she had worked hard and long enough, she deserved it as much as anyone else. I wondered whether she saw the entire picture or perspective, but to her winning was key. Are we any different?

We graduate from school with high hopes of “making it” or becoming a “success,” whatever those terms mean. We scramble for the few jobs available and well with God’s providence, we land one. Our lives become simplified (or so we think) and we join the polygamous throng – we make the job the second wife. We wear ourselves thin to rise up the ladder while complaining how meagre our salaries are all through. Is this all there is to life?

Sometimes human beings can be quite mysterious. Several years later we find a drug addict in our home or some nymphomaniac and we wonder to ourselves “what happened?” I bought you this and that and took you to the best of schools. Genevieve, you had LCDs, dSTv, BBC, CNN and every mod-con, how in the world could you mess up? Some years ago, our fathers could not be ancestors unless they had good homes and children known for their decorum. Apparently, modernization has changed a lot. Will you even qualify as an ancestor? Is this your story?

At life’s centre isn’t money but people. When a boss disregards the legitimate needs of his employees or even more cogently his wife and children, that’s a recipe for disaster. We keep whining about social vices, increasing crime, homosexuality, online fraud, teenage pregnancy, abortions, etc. but have we stopped to ask ourselves, how did we arrive here? There are as many answers as there are people but I want to point us to two.

Some time ago, sociologists used to tell us that the home was the primary agent ofsocialization. I dare say that now it is the peer (in most cases). We have the Internet with its allies Facebook and Twitter, SMS, satellite TV and Nigerian movies socializing our children. When you don’t know what your kids are doing on the Internet or what they’re viewing on their cell phones don’t wake up surprised that your 15 year old is sexually active. The family is one place we should look to finding answers. When all we’re concerned about is going up, we neglect these children who need direction. We neglect wives and husbands who need attention and dare I say, when the family begins to crumble, society will in consequence crumble. How could I forget music and the arts? What would have been considered socially abhorrent just a decade ago is so warmly embraced as entertainment. Andrew Fletcher is right: “let me write the songs of a nation and I do not care who writes its laws.”

Evidently, it is not enough to end there ̶at the family. I am a Christian and can only propose what I know: that a living relationship with Christ which pans out in a Biblically-modelled fatherhood and family is our only hope for survival. Stronger Bible-based families lead to stronger Churches and stronger impact on societies. I’m no scholar of world religions but I’m yet to find a religious tradition that abhors family and the responsibility a father has to wife/wives and children. I recall a discussion with a Muslim colleague who explained that Allah granted additional wives only if the man could take care of them. I’ll avoid the excursus into polygamy and Muslim marriage. The question is, is care ONLY about putting food on the table or it is about helping shape another generation of people who will be useful to society and impact it positively?

At this writing, Qaddafi is clinging unrelentingly to power when others have fallen. Young men and women are dying out of what has been called Sudden Adult Death Syndrome and employers almost gleefully bury them oblivious or rather pretentiously blind-eyed to how their need to be number one is killing our nations’ futures. When “me” rather than “we” (us) is important we tread this road. When profit and gaining is king, we cut corners, sell our consciences and throw away our integrity so we can make progress.

I’ve yet to see a person on their death bed who has asked for their certificate from Yale, Oxford or Princeton. Quite often, people are caught in the euphoria of their hope beyond the grave or in the morbid fear of what awaits them beyond those moments. You will find some seeking some peace through a preacher or Imam or spiritual man/woman and still others trying to make peace with those they have offended. Eventually it boils down to relationship – either to the divine in the hereafter or to those they are leaving behind.

I have no angst about people climbing up the professional ladder and those other things. However when they neglect their families and what is most important – family, friends, people – and turn around to criticize society, I believe I am- we are-rightfully irked. We cannot cause a thing and turn around to criticize society for creating these problems.

I believe we have some lessons to learn from all thathas gone on around us – Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. Am I advocating some kind of revolution? Partially so. When employers begin to realize we value ourselves beyond the machinery we’ve almost been reduced to, they will change. When employees make a statement about their values and collectively and peacefully communicate it that may turn the tide around.

Each day that we rise, we will be confronted with the opportunity to be better fathers, better mothers, betters brothers/sisters, better guardians and it will not be because we have made more cash than the day before but because we have spent time of worth touching the lives of those we love. The best legacy you can leave your children is knowing their worth and might I add in Christ, a worth devoid of competition, struggling and rivalry; a worth independent of their doing but inherent in their being – their creation in the “Imago Deo” – the image of God.

As you enter a new day and week, are you going to jump on life’s performance treadmill running everywhere and yet arriving nowhere or you’re going to stop and consider the things that truly matter – GOD, family, friends and life itself? In the end, winning isn’t everything.

March 6, 2011

1744GMT