The "Prosperity" Gospel

Does this philosophy have Christian origins? No, but it has infiltrated Christianity.

There are four principle beliefs in the “Christian” version of the Prosperity Gospel. I will demonstrate what they are and why they are not biblical, and, therefore, why they are not Christian at all.

The “God” of the Prosperity Gospel is radically different from the God of the biblical Gospel.

Belief One: God is a non-material, nonphysical power that you can tap into to change the material/physical world.

As Christians, we believe that God is revealed fully in Jesus Christ. However, this Prosperity Gospel has little to do with Jesus. It is completely metaphysical, a branch of philosophy having to do with the ultimate nature of reality.

 The Prosperity Gospel believes that humans may experience the divine realm through their own thought process, and in so doing actually change the material realm. It is a metaphysical philosophy of magical thinking.

For many Prosperity advocates, the acid test of their success - of how spiritual they are - is reflected in how healthy and wealthy they are.

The belief has as its basis an extreme individualism and self-determination, asserting that the divine operates non-relationally and impersonally. God becomes a universal force that we are said to be able to learn to possess and control. Thus it is the height of human pride.

The Prosperity Gospel has a parallel in religions of Indian origin, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Their notion of “karma” is compatible with the principles of this belief. Karma is their term for a cosmic law of reciprocity. Good deeds manifest good fortune. Bad deeds manifest bad fortune. Jesus, however, rejects any notion of karma, though we have no record he ever used the word. Someone interrupted Jesus while he was teaching to report an atrocity. Pilate’s men had killed some Galileans while they were worshiping. Jesus asked the crowd, “Do you think these men were worse sinners than all the other Galileans?” (Luke 13:2).

Jesus is being asked whether these men deserved what they got. Some reasoned that the catastrophe was God’s punishment. But Jesus answered his own question with an emphatic “No.” Then he brings up another incident. A tower fell on some workers at Siloam, which is an area around a pool in Jerusalem of Judea.

The historian Josephus reports that during Jesus’ lifetime an aqueduct was being built there with funds reportedly stolen from the temple treasury.

Perhaps the men working on the aqueduct, being paid from the stolen money, were crushed in a construction accident. Jesus asks, “Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 18:4) - meaning did they deserve it, and were they perhaps the recipients of God’s retribution for their sin against the temple?

Again Jesus says “No.”

What is really telling, however, in Jesus’ take on the men slaughtered by Pilate and the men crushed by the collapsing tower is his call to repentance. He warned the crowd of the peril of an unrepentant life. The word repent, metanoeo, means change-mind. Change your mind about what? Change your mind that God works like that! Jesus rejected karmic reciprocity. No, he said. Twice. Do not think like that about my heavenly Father. And do not judge people who experience misfortune. That is what I hear Jesus saying. He warned everyone in the crowd, and he warns you and me: If you keep thinking like that, then it applies to you, too. You will have to consider your misfortune as God’s retribution. You will have to condemn yourself.

The underlying moralism in the Prosperity Gospel is bleak. Misfortune in your life is the result of your thinking misfortune into your life. Your misfortune is your failure to block bad thoughts and think only good thoughts.

 Not unlike karma, this belief makes your fortune or misfortune the direct result of your individual intentional or inadvertent thoughts, words, or deeds. Notice that this philosophy leaves no room for accidents and, more alarmingly, leaves no room for grace. The last time I checked the Scriptures, Jesus allowed for accidents, and he was big on grace.

This denial of accidents and grace has an underlying legalism. God is seemingly reduced to a cosmic principle. God becomes a universal law of reciprocity. You get what you deserve, whether it is payoff or pay back. It is merely a cosmic mechanism whereby you determine your own fate. Health or sickness, wealth or poverty, good fortune or bad fortune, they are up to your own ability, your own thought process, your own religious efforts or lack thereof at tapping into “the divine.”

Another underlying legalism in the Prosperity Gospel is that God is bound by a law that regulates how he can and cannot communicate with us.

The Bible says that all things were made by the Word of God, Jesus Christ. (John 1:1-4; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2) He made our bodies with the capacity to see, hear, taste, touch and smell. He made the brain that generates our thoughts. God made the heavens and the earth and called them “good”.

The Bible, moreover, does not confirm God’s inability to breach the alleged material-spiritual divide. Quite the opposite. The Word of God became flesh. (John 1:14) The Greek word is sarx. Flesh is the ultimate in materiality. God became material.

Biblically, there is no alleged material-spiritual divide. Jesus’ incarnation as a human, his death in the flesh, and his resurrection in the body contradict the principle of exclusively non-material and non-intellectual revelation knowledge. The Bible insists that the one true revelation of God to the world was quite material.

This material-spiritual dualism, more resembles Plato’s philosophy and early Christian Gnosticism, with their body-spirit dualism, than the Bible. In Platonism and Gnosticism the body is bad and the spirit is good. The material is bad and the spiritual is good. The Prosperity Gospel’s first principle, is decidedly more pagan and Gnostic than Christian.

Belief Two: You have within you the power to force the non-material God to materialize what you want by claiming that it is yours.

The second principle of the Prosperity Gospel builds on its first principle. The second principle is about the power of your mind and mouth to change physical reality. “What I confess, I possess,” they say. “Believe it and receive it,” they say.

“Name it and claim it,” they say.

This belief entered the Christian Pentecostal movement of the early twentieth century through a movement called “Word Of Faith”. Word Of Faith became part of what is widely known as the Prosperity Gospel, enormously popular within charismatic Christianity. Word Of Faith is based on “What I confess, I possess” called “Positive Confession,” or alternatively, “The Law of Faith.” The term “Law of Faith” is itself an illustration of the logical contradictions within the Prosperity Gospel. It is contradictory to all logic and reason to turn faith into a law.

Word Of Faith teaches that you have the right to demand that God do what he promised. Because you demand it, God is obligated to give you what you want. We activate God, they say.

Well-known Word Of Faith proponents are the late Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. Proponents arising outside of Pentecostal circles are the late Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen.

Copeland calls this Law of Faith the “faith-force.” He teaches that “the spirit world” can be commanded to do our bidding. Faith, in Copeland’s theology, is a power principle that we command to control our physical reality.

Faith, as defined by the Bible, however, is trust and rest in the good news that our relationship with God is based on his goodness rather than our own. “Come to me and find rest for your souls,” he said. Biblical faith is not a law. Scriptural faith is not an impersonal cosmic principle to be manipulated for prosperity. It is, rather, simple trust in a personal God who dares to love in relationship.

Peale’s emphasis on positive imagery and self-affirmation, outlined in his 1952 classic text, The Power of Positive Thinking, is one of the most well-known, popularized versions of self-help teachings of our generation. His ideas fueled the messages of Schuller, Osteen and a host of others.

The legalistic lie behind the Prosperity Gospel is that God is transformed into a pawn to obey when we think - who must obey human commands. This false gospel has created a god who set up a legal, universal principle that says that he has to do it when humans say the right things.

This belief’s emphasis is on a positive attitude yielding positive results, and a negative attitude yielding negative results. Thinking positively is said to force God to yield positive results for you. According to this unbiblical teaching, the words you think and say have direct results in the physical world.

The proponents scour the Scriptures for verses that support their philosophy. And they are good at it. But the shotgun wedding is a bad one.

This belief defines God as a universal principle to be tapped and controlled by human thought. Word Of Faith defines faith in exactly the same way. The Bible, on the other hand, defines God as a Person (more specifically, three Persons who are one), not as a cosmic law-bound pawn. And the Bible defines faith as trust in that Person, not as a cosmic principle for manipulating the material world with words and thoughts.

Belief Three: You have within you the power to force the non-material God to heal your material body divinely.

Just as the second principle of the Prosperity Gospel grew out of its first principle, the third principle is founded on the second. If and when your body is sick, it teaches that your physical healing is a done deal. It is called “a faith-fact” by some of its proponents, who include the late Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), the late Kathryn Kuhlman, the late Oral Roberts and the well-known, very much alive Benny Hinn, among many others.

According to the Propserity Gospel, the ultimate test of your faith is to claim your healing complete when you are still experiencing symptoms. Any continuing symptoms, they say, are not real, but a trick of the devil to hinder your faith and steal your healing. The legalism should be obvious. According to the Prosperity Gospel, your physical well-being is entirely dependent on how well you manipulate God with the faith-force. If you really get healed or if you enjoy sustained health, it is due to your prowess at naming and claiming your healing. But if you get sick or stay sick, it is your fault. Your continuing sickness is explained as your lack of faith, unbelief or sin.

The Prosperity Gospel is the worst kind of fear-driven hamsterwheel because some even claim that “The Principle of Divine Healing” works in reverse, too. If you talk aloud to someone about the possibility of getting cancer, that might cause cancer. If you worry about it in your mind, you can actually call cancer into existence in your body. What a slavish, paranoid existence! Many so-called “faith-healers” have emphasized this principle and have been extremely successful in securing the funds for their broadcasts by taking up offerings prior to the healing portions of their “worship services.”

Again, in this “gospel,” God is a cosmic principle, a universal law, an invisible faith-force, one that you somehow “hear” non-sensually and non-intellectually, yet one that you control with your thoughts. If you claim yourself healed, (and perhaps also apply the power of the almighty dollar in the evangelist’s offering plate), then God must heal you.

Picture this god like a slot machine. The gambling addict is seated before it, putting in quarter after quarter while chanting, “I won. I won. I won.” No jackpot, but if he only believes what he is saying, it will have to happen in the material world, and the jackpot will have to come pouring out.

If the Prosperity Gospel is correct, all Christians have a right to be healed, and have the power to force God’s hand to heal them. But, in the Bible, Epaphroditus, Trophimus, Timothy and the Apostle Paul were all sick. Paul was chronically sick. Three times he prayed to the Lord to heal him, but the Lord said “No” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Was that a lack of faith on the part of Paul and these others? Was it their own fault that they were sick? Were they spiritually inadequate?

Belief Four: You have within you the power to force the non-material God to give you material wealth and money.

This fourth law or principle of the Prosperity Gospel, like the third, flows out of the second principle. The late Oral Roberts was, perhaps, the most famous proponent of this fourth principle. He coined the phrase “seed-faith giving.” We are back to god, the one-armed bandit. “Seed-faith giving” claims that if you give money or belongings “to God” (meaning to their ministries), then God is obligated to give you more money in return, thus blessing you with financial prosperity. Thus the name, “Prosperity Gospel.” It is a double-your-money-back guarantee - at least double. A ten-fold or even a onehundred fold return is sometimes promised.

Other popular and successful proponents of this principle are Robert Tilton, Paul and Jan Crouch, Rod Parsley, Mike Murdock and again Kenneth Copland (and wife, Gloria). There are many more. The Pentecostal Prosperity Gospel dominates cable broadcasting, so much so that this brand of “Christianity” might be presumed by the uninformed viewer to be representative of all Christian believers.

This fourth and final principle is more than a religious, legal trap. It is more than just another self-salvation program. It is a successful money-making scheme. Prosperity Gospel proponents promise people that they have the key to ending their financial woes. If the victims of Prosperity Gospel preachers will just let go of the money in their pockets, they arebassured God will automatically have to let go of the prosperity that is in God’s pocket for them. It is a principle of reciprocity that God is obligated to obey.

On the other hand, however, it is also your fault if you are in a financial crisis - not because you made mistakes, but because you failed to implement the “faith-force.” Or your sins have messed things up.

Let us say that you sent your last $100 to the televangelist, and that you did not get the $1,000 back from God that he guaranteed. Well, that is your fault. You sinned or lacked faith or were in some way spiritually deficient. It would have worked, they say, if there were not something seriously wrong with you. So get back on the hamster-wheel, try harder, pray longer, get all the sin out of your life, and send more money next time.

The Prosperity Gospel proclaims that the poor are not blessed. Far from it. It proclaims, “When you are not blessed, your misfortune is your fault and you deserve it.” The poor, according to the Prosperity Gospel, are self-cursed and God-abandoned. What a coldhearted message to the poor, the sick, and the otherwise unfortunate ones whom Jesus loved and embraced and blessed - “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).

In the Bible, we find Jesus warning about wealth and greed, we find Jesus showing concern for and solidarity with the poor and blessing them, and we find Paul hungry for lack of funds.

This Prosperity Gospel, with its four principles, has its parallels in Dianetics / Scientology made popular today by celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, in books like The Secret  Law of Attraction made popular by author Rhonda Byrne, and in other modern prosperity gimmicks like “The Law of Success” by Napoleon Hill, now available by infomercial for the low price of only $49.95.

These “secular” gimmicks promote the underlying belief that you have the power in your mind, in your mouth, or in your hand to get individual health, wealth and happiness - a belief in common with the Prosperity Gospel. You can manipulate a universal principle if you learn the trick. And the proponents of this secret will sell you the trick for a low, low, introductory price.

The four laws of the Prosperity Gospel utterly contradict the biblical gospel.

1. God is not a faceless, impersonal force locked away from the material world. In Jesus Christ we see the face of God, flesh and bone and blood, entering and embracing this material world personally, passionately, intimately, for the sake of a relationship of love with us.

2. Scriptural faith is not a force whereby we can command a non-material God to do our bidding in the material world. It is simple rest and trust in the good news that Jesus Christ has finished salvation for the world.

3. You cannot force a nonmaterial God to heal you by claiming yourself already healed. This is superstitious, magical thinking. It is oppressive, futile religion. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, a healer by all accounts in the Bible, suffered pain. God in the flesh experienced suffering in the material world. Likewise, his earliest followers suffered, some were sick, and some were even killed. What entitles Christ-followers an exemption today?

4. You can’t force a non-material God to make you rich in the material world by claiming that you possess riches. Again, this is magical thinking. It is radical individualism and materialism. And it is futile religion. Jesus had few possessions and little money, he warned about wealth and greed, and he loved and blessed the poor.

While the Prosperity Gospel promises escape from suffering, God in Christ and his cross moves into suffering. There is no escapism in the cross. God does not run from pain. In the cross, God enters raw pain, and he does so naked and vulnerable.

While the Prosperity Gospel promise is concerned exclusively with selfish, individual gain through magical thinking, God in Christ and his cross is concerned exclusively with radically humble self-giving and suffering for the sake of others.

In the same way that the Prosperity Gospel does not deal with sin or suffering, neither does it deal with death. You have to stop sinning, it says, using magical thinking to make you healthy and wealthy. You can end your suffering magically, it says, by thinking it away, too. But how do you think away death?

In contrast to the Prosperity Gospel, in the biblical gospel, specifically in the cross of Jesus Christ, God enters even death. He does not run away from death. He does not use magical thinking to avoid death. God the Son willingly lays down his life.

Could the “God” of the Prosperity Gospel and the God of the biblical gospel be any different? One is an impersonal principle, a faceless force, a cosmic law to be manipulated for individual profit. The other is a divine Person with a face - a dear friend, a willing servant, determined to face horrific suffering though scarred beyond recognition, determined to face death though he himself is life - all for the love of us.

Will you be manipulated by the cold, hands-off, run-from-pain, get-rich-quick “god” of the Prosperity Gospel? Or will you believe in and accept the warm, hands-on, walk-with-you-through-everything and run-from-nothing God of the biblical gospel?

To me, the choice is clear. But, tragically, my “Christian” cable television station schedule today tells me otherwise.