Prosperity
The Miracle
I wanted to be home by 8pm so I threw everything in my bag and flew out the door. The lift came straight away. Is God being good to me? As you walk down the long, straight pathway to Anzac Parade from the University of New South Wales, you see the lights change green three times. The trick is to get there just in time for a green light so that you can walk straight across to the buses. If you arrive and it turns red you might see one of the buses you want to catch come and go on the other side of the road. But this evening, I got there just as the lights changed green—God must want me to get home in time.
But then the wait began. There was no bus for 20 minutes and no amount of sighing and foot shuffling did any good. Was God really being good to me in getting the light to change green as I arrived? I still had to wait 20 minutes on the other side! Maybe I had been premature in thinking he was helping me to get home. Now I was going to miss the train that would get me home by 8pm. Was it my sin in wasting those two minutes before I left? Was God punishing me for my laziness by not allowing me to get the train?
But wait! A miracle! The bus trip was speedier than I expected and I arrived just in time to get that train. God was being good to me after all!
Exactly How Good is God, Anyway?
I hope that the story above demonstrates the foolishness of judging God's goodness by circumstantial “signs”. These are little things but we are quick to interpret the good things as signs of God's favour and the bad things as signs of God's displeasure or even signs of his absence. There are many people who will tell us today that God is just waiting to bless us with wealth, success, happiness—in a word, prosperity—if we'll only let him. Like the Pentecostal movement itself, this kind of teaching is big time in the United States of America. I'm guessing it's not so hot in Ethiopia.
One of the most popular manifestations of the prosperity doctrine is found in a book called The Prayer of Jabez. If you haven't heard of it you probably didn't go to a Christian bookshop last year. It is based on the following verse:
Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!” And God granted what he asked. 1 Chron. 4:10 (ESV)
The millions of people who have bought this book (including non-Christians) have been deceived into thinking that if they pray this prayer, they too will have “enlarged borders” and will be free from harm. (See the amusing satire, The Mantra of Jabez.)
Why do people teach this? Why are so many Christians convinced that God's desire for us is wealth, financial security, big cars, big houses and big investments? Well, like many destructive heresies it comes from a misunderstanding of the Old Testament and its relationship to the New.
God's Promises to Israel
When God gave the law to the Israelites in the Wilderness they were refugees from Egypt. Wealthy refugees, perhaps, having plundered the Egyptians, but as yet they had no land and therefore little financial security. But, through Moses, God told them:
[T]here will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess—if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today. Deut. 15:4-5 (ESV)
God told them that he was going to give them land and that if they obey him no one will be poor. But this is only half the story:
See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. Deut. 30:15-20 (ESV)
Clearly, God is giving them a choice.
- Choose life: obey him and prosper, or,
- Choose death: disobey him and be destroyed.
For them the choice was simple, isn't it the same for us? If we obey God won't we receive a raise and a new wardrobe? No, there are at least two problems with this conclusion.
Problem #1: The Wicked
Even in the days of the Old Testament, there was a confounding reality that the prophet Jeremiah was aware of and questioned God about:
Righteous are you, O Lord, when I complain to you;
yet I would plead my case before you.
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
You plant them, and they take root;
they grow and produce fruit;
you are near in their mouth
and far from their heart.
But you, O Lord, know me;
you see me, and test my heart toward you.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter,
and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Jeremiah 12:1-3 (ESV)
Jeremiah, along with many of the prophets looked around and saw that the wicked in Israel prospered. This was not right: God had promised that obedience would bring blessing and disobedience would bring destruction. Jeremiah called on God to fulfill his promise and “set them apart for the day of slaughter.”
We see the same thing today. Those who disobey God have the biggest houses, the best paid jobs, and the harbour views. And yet, in many countries, Christians are poor and starving while their corrupt governments steal and become wealthy. It is not right and it teaches us two important truths:
- You can't tell who is blessed and who is not by looking at a person's possessions. Today, like in Israel, the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer. In America after September 11th, Jeremiah's words rang true: “you are near in their mouth and far from their heart.”
- As long as this world continues, injustice will prevail. The wicked will enjoy the great gifts of God's creation and will trample the righteous. But when this world is destroyed, the fortunes will be reversed. The Apostle Peter says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you...” 1 Peter 5:6 (ESV)
Problem #2: The Lives of the Apostles
The Apostles had the astounding privelege of living with God himself. They saw Jesus, they heard him teach, they loved him and he loved them. They received the Holy Spirit permanently. They were entrusted with the gospel, the good news of salvation and they took it too the ends of the earth.
Why didn't these men end up living in mansions on the seven hills of Rome? Surely these men were blessed by God and yet their financial achievements were pathetic. Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul (yes, he is being sarcastic):
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. 1 Corinthians 4:8-13 (ESV)
The scum of the earth? The refuse of all things? Come on Paul, you need to get comfortable around money (see the first article); you need to break that poverty thinking. Poorly dressed! You sure aren't going to fit in here.
Blessings worth having
As I said at the beginning, those who advocate prosperity for Christians fail to understand the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. It is true that God promised material wealth to his people in the Old Testament, even if it wasn't always black and white concerning who was blessed and who wasn't. But in the New Testament we are promised something much better:
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Hebrews 4:8-10 (ESV)
Joshua was the man who led the people of Israel into the promised land where God promised them great blessings. Great among these great blessings was the promise of rest—rest from the persecution of the cruel masters in Egypt, rest from war, and freedom to serve their God. But God spoke of another day. As wonderful as his gifts to Israel were, something more wonderful is coming: new heavens and a new earth in which we will live with God. The Israelites received a piece of land and the security that comes with it. But their rest was temporary. Right now, a war is being fought over that same piece of land and is difficult to imagine there ever being peace in that land. But listen to the much greater blessings that are ours:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. Ephes. 1:3-10 (ESV)
It is easy to skip over the constant refrain, “in Christ”, and “in him”, but it is the most important of all. It is when we are “in Christ”, when we have accepted his offer of salvation and been united with him, that we can enjoy the only blessings worth having.
What we want
We want money because we want freedom. We want the freedom to eat. The freedom to eat exactly what we desire and as much of it as we want. We buy music because we want to hear that particular configuration of chords with that particular drum beat at whatever moment we choose. We want the freedom to live where we want with the best view and the most tasteful furniture. No one item of furniture may clash with any other item. But we find that these things are completely useless to us when we understand the reality of God's eternal blessings. At the end of the age, the incomparable riches of Christ will take our breath away as the goods we collected on earth are completely destroyed.
May our desires be changed. May our hearts not run after cars, houses, stereos, clothes, whatever material things ensare us. May we desire the riches of God's much greater blessings and await them patiently.
Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. James 1:9-11 (ESV)
Yes, Ben is angry about the prosperity doctrine.
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