So many people discount Christianity as fluffy nonsense that’s “okay for you, but not for me,” or as a harsh legalism that commands its followers to hate the gays, adulterers, liberals, and anyone who doesn’t spend Sunday mornings in a pew. Many factors contribute to a culture hostile to Christianity. Non-Christians cite our hypocrisy, our stance on evolution, religious wars, unsatisfactory proof of God, etc. One criticism in particular is piercingly accurate and has been bothering me a lot lately: the inadequacy of the cheesy motivational crap that many peddle as the Gospel.

Walk into a Christian bookstore or even the book aisle at Sam’s Club and take a look for yourself at what passes for “Christian” literature. It’s Your Time: Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams, and Increase in God’s Favor- a bestseller by Joel Osteen, the acclaimed Your Best Life Now author who promises that if you simply have enough faith, God is obligated to give you the desires of your heart.*

Your best life now? Really? Tell that to Christians in Sudan facing intensely violent government sanctioned and implemented persecution, Iranian pastors who have been jailed and separated from their families for their faith, “untouchable” believers fighting starvation in the slums of Mumbai. Pastor Osteen, something tells me you couldn’t look a Christian in the eye in the final moments of a life deteriorated by a long battle with cancer and say “if you had just had more faith, God wouldn’t have allowed this to happen to you.”

This shiny happy Christian ruse has to stop. Even if you’re not in the midst of heavy persecution, weeping over the loss of your child to a miscarriage, or facing a struggle as dramatic as these right now, this perversion of Christianity is deeply unsatisfying. Where does it leave you when you’re trapped in a porn addiction that spirals out of control more and more each surreptitiously indulgent night, or when you finally succumb to your boyfriend’s physical demands only to hear the words “I just don’t think this is going to work out” as he walks out the door for the last time? Does this mean God has given up on you since your faith is lacking and you just cannot manage to rein in your sin?

How do you reconcile the prosperity gospel with the evils and injustices done to you? What about when you’ve been raped repeatedly and intimidated into silence by your neighbor for six years, or when your dad’s alcohol problem culminates in you lying in a bloody crumpled heap in the corner after one of his rages? You’ve asked a thousand times for God to come to your rescue and you are trying as hard as you can to live your life for Christ and yet here you are slowly suffocating under a heavy cloud of debilitating depression.

Sin affects each of us both through the sin of others and through the consequences of our own sin. Our world is utterly corrupt and grows uglier by the day as it succumbs to spiritual entropy and decay. But for the believer, sin plays a very important role in our growth. Sin’s effects refine us, draw us closer to God and the community of believers around the world, and they provide a clear and constant reminder that this place is not our home.

So, Joel Osteen and company: stop cheapening Christianity. “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”…which may include cancer instead of a promotion at work. A severe gambling addiction instead of immediate victory over greed. The Christian life is not pretty; it’s raw and real and it isn’t a sugary sweet optimism without basis in reality. It is not always marked primarily by worldly success and it shouldn’t be. But it is full of hope. Life on earth may really suck sometimes, but we live it in service of the God who bought us eternal life. And the eternity spent with him will overshadow the ugliest and most persistent pain that we could ever experience here on earth.

“If you are a Christian, this life is as close to hell as you will ever experience. And if you are a non-Christian, this life is as close to heaven as you will ever experience.” – Mark Driscoll

*Osteen is most definitely not alone, however, he is a rather glaring example.