The Jesus of Suburbia
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Yes, I'm mooching off the song by Green Day, but they actually have a pretty good point.
I read a really good post today that broke an unspoken rule. It did the particularly nasty thing of naming the thing I'm afraid of (to borrow an idea from Atlas Shrugged). The Internet Monk said (or wrote) something that I know is true, but that I don't want to admit.
It's fun (and valid) to mock and say derisive things about fakers and frauds like Joel Osteen and other prosperity gospel preachers. The ones who mix the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo of a motivational speaker with biblical words and Christian themes. They describe an arrangement where God wants to make me happy, comfortable and rich - if only I'll follow His prescribed method of attaining said riches, comfort and happiness.
It's a fraud, of course - and one not wearing a particularly good disguise.
But that's where the problem starts. On some level that I don't like to visit very often, I've bought into the lie.
Michael puts it this way:
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.
Read the full post here. It's well worth your time - but when it hits too close to home, don't say I didn't warn you.
