Lakewood Church

(Joel and Victoria Osteen’s megachurch)

The recent controversy over Joel and Victoria Osteen has put these megachurch preachers back in the spotlight. This time, it was because Victoria said:

I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God—I mean, that’s one way to look at it—we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we’re happy. That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?

This wasn’t spoken by someone on the fringes of Evangelicalism. The Osteens run the largest megachurch in the United States, with over 40,000 weekly members (and millions more tuning in), bringing in an estimated $75,000,000 a year. That’s in addition to the tens of millions that Joel has made selling books: his Your Best Life Now sold some seven million copies .

And why are millions of people clamoring to follow the Osteens? Because these two are the most successful peddlers of what’s known as the “Prosperity Gospel.” Here’s how they describe the “Prosperity Gospel” on their website:

So many people are confused about what the Bible means by prosperity. Prosperity isn’t just about money. It’s about having health and peace in your mind. It’s being able to sleep at night and having good relationships. There are many things that money cannot buy that represent prosperity, but having monetary provision is also a part of prosperity. You’ll never find one place in the Scripture where we are supposed to drag around not having enough, not able to afford what we want, and living off the leftovers of others . No, we were created to be the head and not the tail! Jesus came that we might live an abundant life!

It turns out, when you replace this:

with this:

…people love you for it. The Osteens have gotten rich and successful off of telling people what they want to hear: namely, that God wants them to be rich and successful. And then, they’ve pointed to all of their extravagant wealth and success as proof of their “Gospel.”

All of this success has come at a price: to achieve it, they have had to pervert and sell out the Gospel. My original idea was to analyze the Prosperity Gospel point-by-point, to show how it puts us, rather than God, at the center of Christianity; how it prostitutes the Gospel in service of Mammon; and how it misrepresents the very Scriptures that it cites as support.

All of this seemed too small, though. If you’ve ever actually read the Bible, or even if you simply know the basics of the history of the Jews, of Jesus Christ, and of the Christians, then you should be able to see that the Prosperity Gospel is very nearly the antithesis of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. Consider.

I. The Prosperity Gospel v. Israel

Nicholas Poussin, Gideon’s Battle Against the Midianites (1626)

God chose Israel precisely because it was so small and weak. The survival of the Jewish people is literally a miracle, given that so much of their history has been spent surrounded by people who wanted to kill them. But the constant temptation for Israel was to rely on their own strength, or on powerful political alliances, rather than trusting in God. In response to this, God would sometimes force Israel to be weak, just so that they could see that it is He, and not they, who are responsible for their survival. My favorite example of this is from Judges 7:2-7, before Gideon leads the Israelites into battle against the Midianite army:

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Mid′ianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’ Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home.’” And Gideon tested them; twenty-two thousand returned, and ten thousand remained.

And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; take them down to the water and I will test them for you there; and he of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall go with you,’ shall go with you; and any of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall not go with you,’ shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water; and the Lord said to Gideon, “ Every one that laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself ; likewise every one that kneels down to drink.” And the number of those that lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.

And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will deliver you, and give the Mid′ianites into your hand; and let all the others go every man to his home.”

So, just to ensure that Israel didn’t think that they had won the battle by their own power, God reduces their army from 30,000 troops to 300, and those 300 are, to put it nicely, quirky.

The Jews were not always happy about this arrangement. While moderns have the problem of evil, “why do bad things happen to good people?” the Jewish concern was just the opposite: “why do good things happen to bad people?” Call it the problem of prosperity. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “ Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive? ” (Jeremiah 12:1).

Jacob Matham, Avarice (1587) The Psalms in particular are full of the Jews’ grappling with this problem of prosperity. For example, in Psalm 73:3-7, Asaph admits:

For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as other men are; they are not stricken like other men. Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out with fatness, their hearts overflow with follies.

In other words, the threefold prosperity that the Osteens describe — wealth, health, and freedom from trouble — is a great description of the wicked and arrogant. The Psalmist comes to recognize that all of this prosperity is fleeting and pointless, and that the wicked enjoy it only briefly on their way to destruction (Psalm 73:16-19).

By the light of the Holy Spirit, the Jews came to see that the prosperity that they envied wasn’t actually a blessing, but a curse. Even saintly men like Abraham and Lot had to part company, “for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together” (Genesis 13:6). Such prosperity also provokes jealousy and greed, and most disturbingly, causes the greedy to hunger for money and worldly security, rather than hungering after God and eternal salvation.

In this way, the inspired authors show that the poor man who trusts in the Lord is on the road to eternal bliss with Him, while the rich man who trusts in himself (or in his wealth, or his skills, etc.) is poised to accumulate a fortune of no use to him when he dies. “ Man cannot abide in his pomp, he is like the beasts that perish ” (Psalm 49:12, 20). That’s why it’s most fitting that Joel Osteen’s book is entitled Your Best Life Now, because that’s exactly the case for the greedy: they briefly enjoy worldly pleasures, before spending all of eternity in the fires of Hell.

It’s for this reason that the prophet Habakkuk prays (Habakkuk 3:7-8),

Though the fig tree do not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

In other words, we shouldn’t rejoice in God because He’s given us nice things or because we think we can get nice things out of Him this way (although, obviously, it’s good to thank Him for those things He’s given us). We should rejoice in Him because He’s God, and because He’s extended His hand of salvation, even if we’ve got absolutely nothing else going for us, and even if God decides to give us nothing but failure and trial.