I must first preface this essay with saying I wrote this very quickly... I only have a week left, and I'm getting tired!!! There is much more to be said on the subject but I hope this is a sufficient "taste" for now.
2 Peter Application Essay
False teachings are rampant throughout the world today, just as they were at the time of Peter writing this letter. However, what is even worse is that these false teachings creep into the church and masquerade as being Christian doctrines from the Bible. The false teaching that I am going to focus on in this essay is most commonly known as “the prosperity gospel.” Though those who preach it or adhere to it do not label it, one can see the influence of such teaching throughout many church denominations, but especially Pentecostal or Charismatic churches. As a part of YWAM, an interdenominational and international Christian missions organization, I have had the honor, privilege, and challenge of working with people who have different views than me on many areas of Christianity, yet all share common beliefs in the foundational truths of the Gospel. And with traveling to many different countries with equally varying cultures and working with various denominations in those countries, I have seen the influence of this teaching at times. My heart’s intention in addressing this false teaching is not to call out or label any particular person, denomination, or ministry, but rather expose the wrong thinking of this teaching itself as I compare it to what I view as the standard for truth, the Bible in context.
So what is the prosperity gospel? It is also known as Prosperity Theology, the Word of Faith, Wealth and Health, or Name it and Claim it, and by my own summary definition, it is any teaching that says if believers have “enough” faith, they will have physical safety and health and material or financial success. Though as we see Prosperity Theology today is a fairly recent teaching of American Protestant Origin, ideas that we can somehow manipulate God to give us what we want (namely, material wealth and physical health) have been around since the fall of man and were present in pagan worship mindsets since the ancient world until today. I have seen the prosperity gospel preached on a certain American TV station that is broadcast in the Pacific, teaching Fijians surrounding a TV in the sugar town of Lautoka that if they just “sow a seed” and have faith, God will release their healing, God will bless them financially, and they will have happiness. Likewise, I have heard an islander pastor in a particular village preach this same concept to his congregation, with the testimony of how he received a brand new truck from his church denomination’s leaders in the USA because he had faith, while the church members listening to his sermon walked to church that morning, as the buses don’t run on Sundays. Perhaps they just don’t have enough faith, for if they did, by their pastor’s logic, they would also have cars.
This teaching that God will bless us physically or materially if we have enough faith is not only contradictory to the teaching of Scripture, but the danger is it appears to be Biblical, because it stems from the truth that God is the God of Life and Jesus did come to give us abundant life. But did he have BMWs and perfect physical health in mind when speaking of that abundant life? I don’t think so… he wouldn’t have promised suffering if he did. God doesn’t promise material wealth or physical health 100% of the time. If you read the whole Bible, you will see stories where God healed (Naaman the Syrian in the Old Testament, Blind, Lepers, and a Hemorrhaging woman in the New Testament) and stories where his people suffered and even died (Job, John the Baptist, the Apostles throughout Acts.) You will see stories where God provided finances miraculously (oil and flour that didn’t run out until a famine was over, a coin in a fish’s mouth), and times where Jesus honored those who gave everything with no promise of recompense (the woman with the alabaster box of perfume, the woman who gave two small coins which were all she had.) …So what are people to do when they pray with all the faith they have, they fast, they tithe, they give out of their need, just as those who teach the prosperity gospel told them, and then God doesn’t give them what they were seeking him for? If they believe that it was based on their faith, they will walk in self-condemnation and guilt for not having enough faith. Or worse, they will turn away from God because everything they knew about him turned out to be false. I spoke with a friend last year that used to consider himself a Christian but would rather call himself Agnostic now. He had been very involved in a church that preached that if you have enough faith, God will heal you physically, or those for whom you pray. He prayed for his mother who was fighting cancer and was very sick. He fasted, he tithed, he anointed her with oil and had the elders of his church lay hands on her and pray for her. But she still died. Because of this false teaching of the prosperity gospel, he completely missed God’s heart and is still in a lot of pain from a church that didn’t know how to associate with him, a failed believer in their eyes. On the other hand, much more recently I have watched my cousin and her husband go through the death of their nine-year-old son to Leukemia. Still heartbroken and grieving, their faith is as strong as ever (even if they don’t feel like it right now.) What is the difference? This family knew from the start that God’s promises for life were eternal promises, not just for the here and now. They held on to those promises even for the last three years of battling this horrid cancer and watching their beloved son die. Is God still the life-giver? Yes! Is he still the source of hope? Yes!
I wish I had more time and more pages to use to write of all the stories from the Old Testament where people tried to manipulate God with their worship, but he said he didn’t want their worship if it was empty… many of the prophets spoke against this mindset that God existed for the sake of people’s comfort and happiness. And I wish I could tell you everywhere in the New Testament where Jesus and his Apostles did not promise an easy life, but promised that God would be with them in whatever they went through. I think I would end up using the entire Bible, because it ALL speaks against the prosperity gospel, if you read it in context of course. But that is the problem of the prosperity doctrine… it doesn’t take into consideration the context of these scriptures, but uses them to fit into it’s teaching.
At the end of the matter, I just want to say, I don’t believe people who teach prosperity theology are all intentionally false teachers, and I don’t lump them all together. There are those who promise financial success if you will just give to their ministry which obviously raise red flags of heresy, but then there are those who just want people to live their lives fully for God, and they truly believe that means being healthy and wealthy. My stomach churns as I listen to those of the first group, but my heart hurts for those of the second… both are missing out on God himself, and the fact that the greatest wealth we could possibly have is having a relationship with God. If they could only see this, they would see that true prosperity already belongs to those who simply love Jesus and believe in him, no matter their income or health, no matter if they drive a Benz or walk several kilometers for water each day, no matter if they never face losing loved ones or have lost their entire family.
Oh God, please help us to grow in our knowledge of Your truth and communicate that truth alone. Help us to examine our lives and our motives in seeking you. Thank you for the abundant life we have simply because we know you and are known by you.
Here we are! Photo taken today at YWAM LA by Jennifer Kwan.