Selfish Christianity

Cred where cred is due…Co-heir sparked my thoughts with what he wrote here…and this post below is what came out. 🙂

I’ve mentioned numerous times here that my rather broad church background (from liturgical to evangelical to charismatic) includes my family’s involvement in the Word of Faith movement–which for some is associated not so much with the concept of faith it teaches as the “prosperity gospel” it promotes. This particular message receives a great deal of flack, and is caricatured as a grouping of well-dressed preachers who support their extravagant lifestyles by talking people into giving their money to them–citing Scripture to say that God will return their donations 100-fold.

My purpose here isn’t to defend the excesses so many of us have seen; they are bad, and they are coming to light. (A major scandal in my own town about this kind of thing has resulted in major reform at a local Christian university in the past couple of years.) The only thing I would say is that our criticisms of any doctrine or camp need to be fair and as accurate as possible. When I hear someone blasting the prosperity doctrine because of the excesses of people who preach it, rather than talking about whether the doctrine itself is correct and why…it loses credibility for me. That’s like saying the entire gospel is bogus because you know a Christian who is a hypocrite; it’s the same screwy logic, just aimed at a particular part of the gospel.

(In fairness to Co-heir, I’m not offended by what he wrote, because he did include some substance in his post in talking about this, and I agree with his conclusions. I just know a lot of people who rail against things without substantial reason, and I don’t find that helpful in ascertaining the truth.)

Behind the scandals and injustices that do exist, there is the underlying question that the prosperity message addresses: Does God want us to prosper? And if we consider this, it raises other questions, like: What is prosperity? How do we know if we are prospering? Is it all about money or things?

Truth be told, I find overdrawn conclusions on both sides of this issue, and both sides “proof-text” and stretch the Scripture to back their own belief. I’ve heard prosperity preachers tell their congregations that God wants all of them to be millionaires, and I find that to be a huge stretch. On the other hand, I don’t see any substantial proof in the Bible that God wants us all to be poor, either. Some of the greatest men of faith in the Bible were also some of the wealthiest; Abraham was among the richest men of his time. So was Job–twice. 😉 So while I don’t think God’s primary aim is to make us all rich by men’s standards, neither do I believe lack is something that gives Him glory.

All that said…Jesus said we would know a tree by its fruit, and granted, that’s a huge part of unraveling this issue. The excesses of the prosperity preachers is definitely fruit; but it’s actually a small part of the fruit. In my view, there is a wider, more damaging result to the way this message has been presented, if not the message itself. My greatest criticism of the Word of Faith movement and the prosperity message is that they have produced a generation of self-centered, materialistic Christians. We’ve focused so much on how God wants us to prosper, how God wants us to have our material needs met, that our faith has become all about us.

In fairness…I’ve personally heard some of these preachers address this issue and try to say that prosperity isn’t all about us and our needs, but about being a blessing to the world. But honestly, I haven’t seen that take root. Instead, the same preachers who say these things will stir up their people at offering time with promises of breakthrough and wealth, appealing to the basest instincts of our greed. Our offering becomes our investment, not in the gospel, but in ourselves.

This is not the way I see the New Testament church described. Yes, I see the part about how there was “no lack among them” in Jerusalem, and the Scripture where John said, “I desire above all things that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.” But I also see in the hearts of the early believers such a passion for Jesus and for the world to benefit from His coming, that they were willing to lay down their very lives and give little or no thought to their own comforts. They lived unto a higher Kingdom, and sought that Kingdom first, as Jesus taught us to do. I submit that they were prospering, but prosperity took a much different form than everyone just sitting around concerned about their personal needs. Their priorities were much different than ours, and the things they cared about, that made them happy on the inside, were of a much different caliber.

Ours has become a very selfish Christianity. We might say we care for the world and have compassion for the “lost”, but for so many of us, our focus is still on what we need, what we want–and not just concerning material things. We come to our church meetings with anticipation of our weekly spiritual “jump-start”, how God will meet us and bless us, what we can get out of the service. For many of us, even if we share our faith with others, the underlying agenda is that we come away feeling good about what a good Christian we are–not a genuine, selfless compassion for the person we’re sharing with. So much of what we do is still all about us; we’ve become terribly self-addicted as a people.

Yeah, I know it hurts. I’m pointing the other four fingers right back at me. Get over it. It’s the truth, and we know it.

This, to me is the fruit. The prosperity message hasn’t been the sole reason for our selfish Christianity, but I think it’s pretty obvious that it has fed into our selfishness, and justified it, made it stronger. This tells me that either this teaching must be outright error at worst, or unbalanced at best, not taking into account the whole counsel of Scripture.

If you ask me to choose between the two options…I believe it is unbalanced. I think it is just as much unbalanced to say God wants you wealthy as to say God wants you poor or doesn’t care whether you pay your bills. The whole reason we have that argument going on is that we have missed the point. Certainly I believe God wants to address our physical and material needs. (What loving parent wouldn’t?) It’s just not all there is to it. The prosperity/poverty debate itself distracts us, and turns our focus away from the weightier matters. Christ is on a mission; He’s invited us to be a part of it. The adventure is not without risk, but carries great reward. The material things, if anything, should be a means to a greater end.

So…does God want us to prosper? I believe He does, and I think Scripture confirms that. I just think our selfish Christianity has clouded the issue of what true prosperity is and what it looks like. I think this isn’t about deciding whether God wants us to be rich or to be poor. I think it’s when we lay aside our selfish Christianity and truly run after Christ that we will re-learn the truth about the abundant life Jesus said He came to give us.