gospel: thrive; flourish = prosperity? huh?!?

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
Deuteronomy 29:29

“Mysterious ways,” they say. That’s how God works. And it is certainly interesting the way that works. A few examples of creative work in His people are: the Israelites, that is, God’s chosen people, were sent into generations of captivity in Egypt just so that they could be delivered from it – and then there’s the whole parting of the Red Sea thing. Job, a faithful and righteous man lost all his possessions and his health, just so that his faith could be tested and refined. Isaiah ran around naked like a wild man for three years simply to prove a point to Cush and Egypt, and Ezekiel lied down on his sides for over a year as a symbol of punishment for Israel and Judah. Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of their own property in order to donate most of the proceeds to the work of the church leaders, but were stricken down dead because they didn’t give it all away. And there are so many more.

Often times, we don’t know what God is doing or is going to do. It’s His little secret, He doesn’t have to tell us, as He has the right to have those secrets. But the things we do know, the things we have already witnessed from Him, are ours. They are His precedent to us. We can have them, use them, and learn about the character of our God from them. The most important question to ask as the revealed will of God unfolds in our world is, “Why?” It is not the “Why?” that questions God and challenges His infinite wisdom in the way He rules all things. Rather, it is the “Why?” that longs for a deeper meaning and begs for an elaboration on the things that He’s doing and His reasons for doing them. The tone of the question asked is crucial.

The following has already been revealed, and may shed some light on some of God’s “secret things”.

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.

And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you.
Deuteronomy 7:6-15

Ah, what hope and what despair! Hope for the one who obeys and despair for the one who rebels. The hopeful part is the piece that makes our hearts feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It makes us smile because it is happy and comfortable and we get a bunch of stuff. But it may be strange for some to hear that God “repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” When asking the “Why?” question, there are typically two drastically different responses: for the one who obeys God, it is, “God, I trust you, so would you show me what you’re doing?” but for the one who rebels against God, it is, “God, how could you, a good and loving God, let things like this happen to good people?” The first response enables the questioner to possess a patient, hopeful serenity that the second questioner may never attain. Instead, the second questioner may wrestle with anger and resentment toward God. But this ought not be a surprise to us, since every person, regardless of his or her present spiritual condition, at one time has rebelled against God and perhaps asked similar questions full of anger and resentment. It is only by the grace of God alone that the aim of questioning, for some of us, has become different.

It’s far more interesting to me, however, to observe how this plays out in the Western church. The Trinity Broadcasting Network, commonly known as TBN, includes some programming that is often a grossly blasphemous portrayal of the Biblical lifestyle and it honestly makes me sick. By in large, born out of an increasing desire to be entertained through television programming, there is an interesting movement within the church that expects a sort of blessing from God that He owes us. Exploding in the 1980s with the gaining popularity of televangelists, countless people have heard sayings like, “If you’re faithful in giving me your money, God will bless you with a new house, a better car, and your dream career.” In other words, if you pay your “church rent” on time every Sunday, you’ll get rich. It’s the easy-to-understand version of the gospel. It holds all the comfort for which we so deeply long. Well, that sounds like the most ridiculous, counterintuitive thing I’ve ever heard! If we give our money away, doesn’t that mean we are less rich?

This is called the prosperity gospel. The "prosperity gospel" is the teaching that God will reward signs of faith with health and wealth. It is also called "word faith," "name-it-and-claim-it," "health and wealth gospel" and "positive confession." It is most often found among more fundamentalist and evangelical churches, but in the last decade or so has begun spreading among Hispanic and African-American congregations.

Another aspect of this type of teaching is the inherent do-it-yourself mentality. At some point along the way, as if the Gospel could not speak for itself, some so-called Christian leaders got sidetracked and felt the need to “market” Christianity, so that it could be more user-friendly. “Of course,” the underlying idea was, “we consumerist Americans are so independent of anything outside ourselves, we can do anything—alone. We don’t need X’s help to do Y. Why would we need anyone else’s help? That’s absurd!” Now, I can see the value of living an upright life in the sight of God and working hard to get all your stuff together. We don’t want to misrepresent Jesus by living sloppy lives that reflect poor stewardship with what He’s already given us. But it seems that there has been a widespread abandonment of John the Baptist’s philosophy, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Caused by the increasing value being placed on prosperity and success, there has been a lopsided, enormous demand for self-help services permeating the upper-middle class American culture. No longer do we need to be dependent on a God that can create the universe with a mere thought. He is no longer our ever-present help in time of need, because we don’t need help. In the old days of our spiritual forefathers, the Puritans, the people had a firm, solemn understanding that a sovereign God was to be trusted to accomplish all things according to His will, however He pleased. Man’s responsibility was to make much of God, and God’s responsibility was a divinely monergistic work for Him to accomplish that which He saw fit, and He didn’t need man’s assistance, as if God Almighty were somehow incompetent in some way to fulfill His job description. That trend faded into a synergistic philosophy that stated, “If you start the work, God will surely finish it.” Now, it is almost a humanly monergistic work that goes something like this: “I can do it. God wants to make much of me. He wants me to work hard enough to be a better person with a better life and better possessions. So here are my seven steps to help myself attain success and prosperity. God will surely bless that.” Bottom line: we have traded the truth of God for a lie and worshipped created things rather than the Creator (Romans 1:21-25).

Needless to say, I have a real problem with this so-called “health and wealth gospel.” My grandmother, who was a faithful follower of Jesus that donated her time and money to the benefit others out of the faith-filled goodness of her heart, never for the purpose of receiving anything in return, died a few years ago when cancer ravaged her body. When I asked the “Why?” question, by the grace of God, I remained hopeful in His perfect purposes for His people, and continued to trust Him as the giver and preserver of my grandmother’s life. If I had truly bought into this prosperity gospel, then I would have been faced with a huge dilemma in my grandmother’s situation: she was faithful for a long time, yet she was dying a slow death full of disease – “God, why is this happening to her? What are you doing? Because she has been faithful, aren’t you supposed to make her rich and healthy? Why aren’t you doing that, God? Better yet, why are you letting this happen to such a good person?”

I know a man that believes in this “name-it-and-claim it” approach, who has an interesting story. He is a good man, an older man, probably in his seventies. A couple of years ago, his niece was diagnosed with cancer. Of course, like any concerned follower of Jesus would do, he called upon his fellow believers to pray with him for her healing. Prayer for healing is a perfectly Biblical thing to do, and every believer ought to do it. But for this man and his equally faithful friends, they expected a complete and total physical healing before everything was said and done, without exception. “Wow,” I remember thinking to myself, “I didn’t know the Holy Spirit could be ordered around like that.” A few months later, she died, and the man was devastated. But I could see it coming. And now this man’s health is deteriorating. I hope that His hope remains in the Great Healer, but not as a comfortable quick healing fix, but as a protector and sustainer of everlasting life, not just this earthly life. God doesn’t HAVE to do this or that for anyone but Himself. He’s God. Of course, He knows our hopes and desires, our needs and pains, but it is His choice how He handles those things. And sometimes it’s a secret to us at the time, only to be revealed in hindsight. Other times, it’s a mystery that we may never uncover. Still other times, He shows us outright what He’s going to do even before He does it. Regardless of how God decides to handle the affairs of the universe, our will can never supercede His will, and never should we have the audacity to try ordering around our infinitely wise Creator. Never will the holy thoughts and perfect plans of God be thwarted.

The most appalling part of all this, though, is the fact that such teaching dilutes the real Gospel so much that it presents a miniscule depiction of the great significance of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Reducing the true Gospel to a system of self-promotion and material wealth is perhaps the most severe tragedy of all. When the Biblical version of the condition of a man’s soul is accurately conveyed, the situation in which we find ourselves is far greater than a mere poverty-prosperity paradigm. It is much more urgent, much more desperate.

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.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20

To reduce the Gospel down to material riches is to diminish its power. Deuteronomy 30 doesn’t seem to care much about money or material possessions. It’s about obedience, loyalty, allegiance, and honor – to God alone. The possession to which the Bible refers is the everlasting reward that God grants to His faithful people, not the transient, fading, unsatisfying riches of this world. These eternal possessions are things that cannot be taken away by the difficulties of this life or the enemies of God. It is an unshakable Kingdom that He rules, and a faithful covenant that He keeps. To imagine our reward as faithful followers of Jesus as temporal success and wealth in this life paints such a dull, boring picture of God’s power and grace. The eternal riches that await the Faithful far outweigh any sort of riches that can be accumulated in an infinite amount of lifetimes on earth. Moses spoke with great anticipation when the Israelites were approaching the Promised Land. But he never got to taste it. He did get to taste a land far greater than that. The abundant life within the heavenly land that we are to possess is too grand and great and deep and good for us to grasp with our tiny imaginations of the good places we think God has prepared for us with Him for eternity. And it doesn’t include lots of money, big houses, and fancy cars. No self-help seminars are necessary there – we have God’s help then. And He is the one that will cure every disease, wipe away every tear, and give the best gifts we could ever hope for! Prosperity is in the Gospel, but only at the expense of the blood of Jesus, only by the grace-filled faith given by Jesus, and only for the fame of Jesus.

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What's Our Response?

"Curse God and die" or "The LORD gives and the LORD takes away"? It is the crucial decision that we must make in response to tragedy. Consider the following situations...

A single mother of three earns a hard living as a teacher, often having a difficult time providing both the emotional support and financial support that her fatherless children require. At ten, seven, and five years old at the time of the divorce, many questions loomed over her at the daunting task of raising her children alone. But today, they are all adults and the personification of satisfying joy in her life. The oldest boy is a successful Boys' Basketball Coach and High School Math Teacher, the middle daughter is an incredible married mother of a beautiful one-year-old daughter, and the youngest boy is engaged to be married soon and plans on living a life of service in Africa for the rest of his life. She has reason to be proud: she has done a great job as "Mom." But all of a sudden, as she feels in perhaps the best physical shape in years, she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Why, O God, does this happen? She deserves better, doesn't she?

A faithful husband and father of three teenage boys is adored by his family. He loves his wife as God requires, he teaches his sons to follow Jesus, and displays the goodness of his God in all relationships. He leads Boy Scouts and camping trips with his sons and their friends. He handles the finances of a private American school in North Africa and leads his household well. He makes sure to take care of his wife, taking intentional time to spend alone with her. On top of all that, he's an athlete who runs and plays basketball -- in great shape for his age. And all of a sudden he has skin cancer. How could this happen to such a faithful father, husband, and worshipper of God? Or, rather, why would God allow such a tragedy happen to such a good person?

He was a wealthy family man with seven sons and three daughters, yet he shared his possessions graciously with his friends. Everyone thought him a great man in his day, as he made sure to put upright character and impeccable integrity at the top of his list of valued priorities. In his time and culture, he treated his servants remarkably well and made sure that his friends knew that they were valuable to him. Then one day, out of the blue, a band of violent rebels killed all of his servants, a wildfire burned up all his livestock, and a violent storm destroyed his house with all of his ten children inside. Everything was lost except his wife. Even as the man began to mourn his loss, he became ill with a great sickness, a skin disease that produced boils all over his body. Of all men, should God not reward this one above all? Why does punishment afflict this man instead? What a tragedy!

The preceding true stories are only a few examples of countless situations that seem to create a conflict within the hearts of many people wondering where God is in the midst of difficult circumstances such as these. The first story is the most recent: it is the story of my mother who was diagnosed with breast cancer this past week. The second story is of a friend of mine, Tony, who was diagnosed with skin cancer last month. And the final story is of Job, as described in the Bible.

In such situations, we are faced with a difficult decision to make. I have always observed that people could react in one of two ways regarding these tragedies of life. 1) Become angry with God that he would allow such an injustice to happen or 2) Turn to God as the only source of hope and comfort in such a great time of need. I have seen both take place right before my eyes. The first option is a miserable one to witness. The second option affects a demeanor in the person that is utterly indescribable in the awesomeness of it.

In the first two stories mentioned above, they are still dramas waiting to unfold in the multifaceted wisdom of God. In the final story, since it is a story that is now in the past, I believe we can learn from it.

So here's how it went down in the story of Job... After Job had lost all of his possessions and was now wallowing in the misery of his physical affliction as an outcast, his wife approached him: "Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”" Wow! What a response! A response like Job's receives commendation, as the writer of his biography states, "In all this Job did not sin with his lips." I cannot imagine how Job could have such a reaction to what had just become of his life, if it could still be called that. The only explanation is that the grace of God enabled him to make such remarks, since in and of himself, Job might seem incapable of such profound righteousness and wisdom. It would seem like his wife has a great argument -- but he didn't think so.

Even as Job went on to lament his predicament, and he received shoddy advice from his friends, never did he recant his trust in the sovereign goodness of God. Upon losing his family and possessions, perhaps the most profound and timely words were uttered from Job's lips: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." In other words, "no matter what happens to me, no matter what I gain or what I lose, I will praise God because He is worth it." Relative happiness or comfort was, to Job, of little consequence when it came to the ultimate, supreme, and absolute glory of God. God Almighty is to be blessed, regardless of the calamities that befall us.

I remember the choice that my friend, Shantra, made about a year ago when she was caring for her dying mother -- by all accounts, she blessed the name of the Lord, and it was counted to her as righteousness. Never did she sin with her lips, and God was certainly pleased, I'm sure. But now, at this very moment in my life, my family members and I have this very choice before us. So does Tony and his family, along with countless others who find themselves in similar situations. We must make this choice because a tragedy has befallen us. So I beg the question, What's our response? What choice will we make? My hope is that the same grace that God gave to Job he will also give to me and others like me, that we will bless the name of the Lord, regardless of the tragedies in our lives.

And may the healing of our God be infused into the ailing bodies of those battling life-threatening diseases. To Him be the glory forevermore!

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