511 The Prosperity Gospel
My great aunt Ethel was thrilled when she heard I had become a minister because the person she admired most on earth was a minister. Brother Oral. Oral Roberts, that is.
“Brother Oral is such a blessing to me. Look, he wrote me a letter just last week…” Aunt Ethel’s shaky hand showed me a “personalized” letter that no doubt went to 10’s of 1000’s of other Ethel’s across America. “And Brother Oral says that when I give my Seed Faith gift to God, God will bless me back. ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom,’” Aunt Ethel said quoting Luke 6:38 from her King James Version Bible.
From her meager fixed income, Aunt Ethel faithfully mailed Brother Oral $50 a month, every month, till the day she died in her trailer home none the richer. Thus was my introduction to the prosperity gospel.
The prosperity gospel is traces itself back a famous preacher in the early 1900’s named E.W. Kenyon – still known as “The Father of the Faith Movement.” But with the help of radio and television it was Brother Oral who first made the prosperity gospel wildly popular in America.
It makes sense that the prosperity gospel would hail from America. Simply take the American Dream (the main plank of which is prosperity) add a hand full of selected Bible passages and toss them into the blender with some brilliant, charismatic individuals and presto, the prosperity gospel.
And who doesn’t want to get richer? I do. It seems much of my whining in life comes from situations that hinder my prosperity instead of enhance it. Since all of us have at least a smidgen of Aunt Ethel’s material longing within, is it any wonder the prosperity gospel continues to attract countless adherents.
But there’s a problem with the prosperity gospel – besides the fact that it tends to make its spokespersons wealthier and their followers poorer. That is no doubt why several prosperity gospel ministries are currently undergoing a congressional investigation headed up by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. The senator is asking questions about the leader’s lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.
A larger problem is that the prosperity gospel focuses upon what we can get from God more than on how we can live for God. It makes promises that God can’t keep because they are promises that God didn’t make. It was Brother Oral who promised to make Aunt Ethel wealthy, not God.
There’s nothing evil about money and wealth, but God’s priority isn’t that we live affluent lives void of struggle and hardship. To the contrary, Jesus promised that, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus didn’t overcome the world by becoming a wealthy evangelist; he overcame by living a life of love, mercy, justice and compassion in the face of a world system that was totally opposite.
The prosperity gospel comes dangerously close to being the antithesis of Jesus’ gospel; for Jesus taught that the truly prosperous are those who know that an abundant life has little to do with money.
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