Prosperity Theology: The Gospel of Wealth
Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother. COTTON MATHER
The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standards. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
A “man of God” stands before his audiences and rebukes the “spirit of poverty,” assuring them of material prosperity. He sends a Christmas letter concerning “the urgent need you have to get into true biblical prosperity as the wise men did. The money they brought literally met the financial needs of Mary, Joseph, and the child in that desperate hour.” By sending money to this evangelist in his desperate hour, according to the letter, one may expect to become materially prosperous, just like the wise men who gave generously to the baby Jesus.
This man represents a large and visible segment of American evangelicalism that subscribes to what is called “prosperity theology,” or the “health and wealth gospel.” This worldview thrives, in churches and in parachurch ministries, only because such men have willing supporters, eager to get their share of the prosperity pie. This chapter isn’t about some position “out there” in the world, but “in here” in the Church. It addresses the attitudes and lifestyles of millions of mainstream Christians who, to varying degrees and sometimes without realizing it, have bought into the lie of prosperity theology.
The Old Testament and Prosperity
What makes every heresy dangerous is an element of truth. Without a sugarcoating of truth, the lies would never be swallowed. The portion of truth that makes prosperity theology credible is that some Old Testament passages link material prosperity with God’s blessing. For instance, God gave material wealth to Abraham (Genesis 13:1-7), Isaac (Genesis 26:12-14), Jacob (Genesis 30:43), Joseph (Genesis 39:2-6), Solomon (1 Kings 3:13), and Job (Job 42:10-17) because he approved of them. He promised the Israelites he would reward them materially for faithful financial giving (Deuteronomy 15:10; Proverbs 3:9-10; 11:25; Malachi 3:8-12).
In Deuteronomy 28:1-13, God tells the Israelites that he would reward their obedience by giving them children, crops, livestock, and victory over their enemies, but he also tacks on fifty-four more verses describing the curses that would come upon the nation if they didn’t obey him—including diseases, heat and drought, military defeat, boils, tumors, madness, and blindness. The teaching is double-edged: prosperity for obedience, adversity for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:14-68).
The Old Testament also warns against the dangers of wealth—especially the possibility that in our prosperity we may forget the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:7-18). Furthermore, the Bible recognizes frequent exceptions to the prosperity/adversity doctrine, noting that the wicked often prosper more than the righteous. The psalmist said, “I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree in its native soil” (Psalm 37:35), and “I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. . . . This is what the wicked are like—always carefree, they increase in wealth” (Psalm 73:3, 12). Solomon saw “a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness” (Ecclesiastes 7:15). Jeremiah, a righteous man who lived in constant adversity, framed the question this way: “You are always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (Jeremiah 12:1).
Are material wealth, achievement, fame, victory, or success reliable indicators of God’s reward or approval? If so, then he is an evil God, for history is full of successful madmen and prosperous despots. Was God on the side of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and other prosperous butchers of history during their rise to power and at the apex of their regimes when they were surrounded by material wealth? Is God also on the side of wealthy cultists, dishonest business executives, and immoral rock stars? If wealth is a dependable sign of God’s approval and lack of wealth shows his disapproval, then Jesus and Paul were on God’s blacklist, and drug dealers and embezzlers are the apple of his eye.
Many in Old and New Testament times believed in a direct cause-and-effect relationship between righteousness and prosperity on the one hand, and sin and adversity on the other. Health and wealth meant that God approved; sickness and poverty meant he did not. Job’s “comforters” thought there must be hidden sin in his life to account for his loss of prosperity, but they were wrong. God approved of Job (Job 1:8; 42:7), yet he permitted Satan to destroy everything of earthly value that Job possessed.
The well-to-do Pharisees lived and breathed a prosperity theology, labeling everyone beneath their social caste as “sinners” (Luke 15:1-2; John 9:34). Christ’s disciples betrayed their own assumptions when they asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus responded by saying their presupposition was entirely wrong: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, . . . but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:3). In other words, God had a higher purpose for this man’s adversity that simply didn’t fit in the neat little categories of “Do good and you’ll be well off” and “Do bad and you’ll suffer.”
Consider their response when Christ told his disciples, “It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:23-24). When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25).
Why the astonishment? It was because they were accustomed to thinking of wealth as a sign of God’s approval. If the wealthy, of whom God obviously approves (why else would he make them wealthy?), have a hard time going to heaven, how could the poor (whom God obviously disdains) ever make it? The disciples hadn’t yet grasped the significance of their Lord’s lifestyle. The one whose Father said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17, NKJV) was the same Son of Man who didn’t have a place to lay his head and owned nothing but a robe and sandals (Matthew 8:20).
Jesus said of his Father, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). God extends common grace to all. The air breathed by every person—sinner or saint—is God’s gift, regardless of the person’s morality. What we call prosperity is often incidental: An evil person may have good soil and a large crop, while the good person has poor soil and a small crop. As Christ’s account of the rich man and Lazarus demonstrates, an evil person may live a long life, suffer little, and prosper, while the righteous person may have life cut short, suffer considerably, and live in poverty (Luke 16:19-31). Jesus says things will be turned around in eternity, but often not until then (Luke 6:20-25).
The New Testament goes one step further. Not only may the righteous suffer despite their righteousness, but often they will suffer because of their righteousness. “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). The early Christians continually suffered for their faith and were assured that “your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings” (1 Peter 5:9). A materialistic world system, with its emphasis on personal peace and prosperity, does not look with favor upon a true disciple of Christ (John 15:18-20).
These examples from Scripture should disturb any of us whose goal is to be hailed a success by the standards of this world. If we fit in so well with the world, is it because we are living by the world’s standards, not Christ’s?
Live like the King’s Kid?
There’s great irony in a popular saying heard in “health and wealth” circles: “Live like a King’s kid.” The “King’s kid” was Jesus, who lived a life exactly opposite of what is meant by the phrase today. The King we serve was stripped down for battle. At the end of the age he will don the royal robes of victory, and so will his faithful servants with him; but now is the time for battle garb, not regalia.
How did the King send his “kid” into this world? Born in lowly Bethlehem, raised in despised Nazareth, part of a pious but poor family that offered two doves because they couldn’t afford a lamb (Leviticus 12:6-8; Luke 2:22-24), Christ wandered the countryside dependent on others to open their homes, because he didn’t have one of his own. “Live like a king’s kid”? Whatever king’s kid the prosperity proponents are speaking of, it obviously isn’t Jesus!
Prosperity theology sees as our model the ascended heavenly Lord rather than the descended earthly servant. Jesus warned his disciples not to follow a lordship model, but his own servant model (Mark 10:42-45). In this life, we are to share in his cross—in the next life we will share in his crown (2 Timothy 2:12).
In verses you’ll never see embroidered, framed, or posted on refrigerators, the King promised persecution, betrayal, flogging, and being dragged before courts and tried for our faith (Matthew 10:16-20). He warned, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33) and said, “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).
This is not the stuff of which prosperity sermons are made.
Other than the life and teachings of Christ, the most powerful refutation of prosperity theology can be seen in the life and writings of Paul. As the health gospel tries to experience the full redemption of the body in this life, so the wealth gospel tries to experience heaven’s rewards on earth. Because these are two inseparable sides of the prosperity gospel coin, we’ll look at Paul’s life in terms of health and wealth and other trappings of success.
Raised a Pharisee and therefore a believer in prosperity theology, Paul was one of those who could not believe that Jesus was Messiah, because of Jesus’ obvious lack of success. God’s disapproval of the man Jesus was surely self-evident in his questionable parentage, his disreputable place of upbringing, his lack of formal education, his poverty, and above all, his shameful death. But when Paul bowed his knee to the Carpenter from Galilee, he forever turned his back on prosperity theology. As his Lord said, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:16).
In his letter to the Philippians—written from a prison, not a plush office or the Rome Marriott—Paul says, “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him” (Philippians 1:29). He depicts Christ as the suffering Servant, whose prosperity came after his life on this earth, not during it (Philippians 2:5-11). Had Jesus laid claim to prosperity in this life, there would have been no crucifixion, no atonement, no gospel, and no hope for any of us.
In Philippians 3, Paul discusses his credentials of success, his diplomas, and awards. These he once highly valued, but now he says, “Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). Actually, this translation is too delicate. Paul did not call his credentials and possessions “rubbish,” but dung. Excrement. That’s how he viewed the things he once valued, when stacking them up against Christ. Contrast that with today’s prosperity preachers, their heavy jewelry swaying as they strut across the stage.
As a result of following Christ, Paul lost everything. What little money and possessions might have passed through his hands he considered a loss. He describes his daily adversity, persecution for Christ, and nearness to death (2 Corinthians 4:7-12). Two chapters later, Paul refers to his troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, riots, sleepless nights, and hunger, as well as the experience of nearly dying, and being sorrowful and poor (2 Corinthians 6:3-10).
Perhaps the most graphic portrayal of Paul’s life comes later in the same letter:
I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? (2 Corinthians 11:23-29)
Paul seems to make a case for what might be called “adversity theology,” or the “sickness and poverty gospel.” I wonder if in his dreams the apostle ever heard a faint chorus of voices from the future saying, “Paul, you don’t have to live like this—why don’t you trust God and live like a king’s kid?” The truth is, Paul heard some of these voices in his own day. In fact, Paul had to defend himself against the “super apostles,” well-off ministers who berated him because he couldn’t claim their wealth and prestige (1 Corinthians 4:8-13). He said to them, “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings” (1 Corinthians 4:8). He added, “We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!” (1 Corinthians 4:10). Paul faced off with these prosperity preachers, pointing out that they’d jumped the gun on reigning with Christ by living now as kings rather than as servants. Paul’s point is clear: Don’t try to reign prematurely! Dress like a servant. Let God put robes of honor on you when he brings you to his kingdom. Don’t put them on yourself now!
After explaining that God had given him some special revelations, Paul adds:
To keep me from becoming conceited . . . there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
Paul knew that God had a definite purpose in his illness or disability. We don’t know what the disease was, but among other things it apparently caused his deteriorating eyesight (Galatians 6:11). His affliction, Paul said, was “given” to him in order to keep him from being conceited.
Moreover, God had a specific purpose for not removing the disease—to teach Paul that God’s grace was sufficient. Paul wasn’t to trust in his own strength but in God’s. His disease was a day-by-day reminder of his need to trust in the Lord rather than his own gifts and accomplishments.
A physician sponsors a frequent ad on our local Christian radio station. He says, “Helping you get well is all that matters.” Well, actually, it isn’t—there’s a great deal more that matters, and a great deal that matters more! I speak as an insulin-dependent diabetic who has seen God do greater things through my sickness than through my health.
Instead of assuming that God wants us healthy, we need to realize that he may accomplish higher purposes through our sickness than through our health. We may pray for healing when we’re sick, which is exactly what Paul did. But notice that he prayed only three times. When God chose not to heal him, he didn’t “name it and claim it” and demand that God heal him. Instead, he acknowledged God’s spiritual purpose in his adversity.
Today’s health and wealth preachers bypass the rest of this passage and say, “Paul called this disease a ‘messenger of Satan.’ It’s from the devil, not God. The devil wants us sick, but God wants us well.” Yes, Paul called the ailment a messenger of Satan. But God is bigger than all, and Satan is just one more agent he can use to accomplish his own purpose. After all, whose purpose and plan is the passage talking about? Satan would never give anyone something to keep him from being conceited. God is the one who intended the disease for Paul’s good. It wasn’t Satan but God who refused to remove the disease, despite Paul’s pleadings.
If you’ve prayed for healing and not received it, take heart—you’re in good company! Not only was Paul himself not healed, but he also had to leave Trophimus in Miletus because of sickness (2 Timothy 4:20). His beloved friend Epaphroditus was gravely ill (Philippians 2:24-30). His son in the faith, Timothy, had frequent stomach disorders, for which Paul didn’t tell him to “claim healing” but to drink a little wine for medicinal purposes (1 Timothy 5:23). Those who claim “anyone with enough faith can be healed” apparently have greater faith than Paul and his missionary associates.
Like many of God’s servants in the early Church, Paul was neither healthy nor wealthy. It’s clear that God didn’t intend for him to be healthy or wealthy. Paul is now enjoying perfect health and wealth for all eternity. But when he was on this earth, it was God’s higher plan that for much of his life he would be poor and sick.
When Paul was taken in chains from his filthy Roman dungeon and beheaded at the order of the opulent madman Nero, two representatives of humanity faced off, one of the best and one of the worst. One lived for prosperity on earth, the other didn’t. One now lives in prosperity in heaven, the other doesn’t. We remember both men for what they truly were, which is why we name our sons Paul and our dogs Nero.
The New Testament Understanding of Wealth
How can we explain the apparent contradiction between the words and lifestyle of Jesus and the apostles, and the Old Testament prosperity passages? The answer lies in the fundamental differences between the Old and New Covenants, which we will explore further in chapter 11. For now, suffice it to say that the New Testament reflects a fundamental change in its understanding of true wealth.
In the New Testament, the Greek word ploutos is used six times for material riches put to evil purposes (Matthew 13:22; Mark 4:19; Luke 8:14; 1 Timothy 6:17; James 5:2; Revelation 18:17). Yet the same word is used eleven times in the positive sense, each time referring to spiritual, not material, riches (Romans 11:33; Ephesians 1:18; Philippians 4:19; Colossians 1:27). Once we experience those riches, we find them so profoundly satisfying that we can never again elevate earthly and material riches to the place of importance they once held.
Didn’t Christ Promise Prosperity in This Life?
The most popular New Testament proof text for prosperity theology comes on the heels of Christ’s disciples pointing out that they had left everything behind to follow him:
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30)
Referring to this passage in a letter to his supporters, a famous evangelist said, “To my knowledge, God’s people have never received their hundredfold return. It’s been there in God’s Reward System, but never understood or received—until now!”
According to this man and other prosperity preachers, the people of God can now tap into what Jesus intended from the beginning—that all his followers would be materially prosperous in this life.
But is this really what Jesus meant?
First, no matter what Jesus was saying in these passages, it surely does not contradict Scripture’s direct teaching and repeated example that followers of Christ will often—indeed usually—not be wealthy in this life. This was undeniably true of the apostles, who were the ones to whom Jesus was speaking.
Second, almost none of those who claim the benefits of this passage have actually fulfilled the conditions of the promise. Unlike the disciples, they haven’t given up their material goods or left their families to follow Christ.
Third, the phrase “in this present age” does indeed refer to this world, but in what sense does it mean we are to receive “many times” or “a hundred times” as much in terms of homes, brothers, sisters, parents, children, and fields? The only words of a material nature are fields and possibly homes. Yet even the word for home (oikia) may mean not the house itself but the household or inhabitants of the house—that is, the family (Matthew 12:25; John 4:53; 1 Corinthians 16:15).
Even if Christ was referring to a physical house, is he promising that all believers who give up the roof over their head will literally own many other houses in this life? Clearly not, because everything we know about the apostles to whom he was speaking, from biblical and extrabiblical sources, suggests none of them were wealthy. To put it in terms that proponents of a health and wealth gospel would understand, none of the apostles owned a Jerusalem condo, a split-level in suburban Bethany, a cabin in the mountains at Carmel, or a summer beach house near Caesarea. Indeed, if the hundredfold blessing was a literal promise of houses, those receiving it would have to own a hundred houses, and a hundred fields, not just a measly half dozen or so.
If Jesus literally meant to say that the faithful believer would own large numbers of homes and fields, did he also mean to say that the disciples would have a hundred children and that hundreds of older folks would become their literal parents? Obviously not!
Christ was saying that those who would follow him, in leaving behind what was theirs, would become part of the larger family of faith, where relationships are deep and possessions are freely shared. Everywhere the apostles went they would find “homes” that were theirs for as long as they wished to stay, meals prepared from the harvest of the “fields” freely shared with them. They would have “brothers” and “sisters” to fellowship with, “parents” to give them wisdom and guidance and love, and “children” who would learn at their feet, and whom they would guide into Christlikeness. This same rich reservoir of relationships and possessions is available today to all who will follow the Lord. I’ve experienced it myself and likely you have too.
Paul had no permanent home (though his prison cells nearly qualified), no fields, no close family, and no literal offspring, but he proudly called Timothy, the Thessalonians, and others his beloved children. After acknowledging his lack of health and wealth, Paul demonstrated the real meaning of Mark 10:29-30 (and the parallel passage in Luke 18:29-30) by describing himself as “having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:10). Paradoxically, Paul “had it all” while possessing very little.
Finally, it’s striking that the prosperity preachers who quote Mark 10:30 almost never comment on the phrase “and with them, persecutions.” When was the last time you heard a sermon on God’s promise of hundredfold persecutions?
I’m not suggesting that no New Testament promises of blessing apply in a literal, material way. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). Both Scripture and experience demonstrate God’s frequent material blessing upon those who generously share what he has entrusted to them. I am a firm believer in this. In refuting the excesses of prosperity theology, I don’t minimize the fact that God is a giver by nature, that he loves to give to his children, and that he rewards our generosity. Often those rewards may include financial and material blessings. (We’ll take a closer look at this topic in chapter 13.)
When God Prospers Us, Why?
I have no argument with anyone who says that God often chooses to prosper his people in material ways. But the great question is this: “Why does he prosper us?” When he blesses us financially, what does he expect us to do with the abundance?
Health and wealth preachers suggest that we may do whatever we please with God’s provision. We may buy beautiful homes and cars, take dream vacations, and live in wealth and prosperity—as long as we give God the credit. Whether God wants the credit for some of these lifestyles is another question. Some prosperity preachers go so far as to say that God expects us—or even commands us—to live in luxury, in order that we would not be “bad witnesses” by appearing to be poor! By this standard, Jesus and Paul were terrible witnesses. It seems as if these preachers would have us believe that Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have lots of money and fabulous possessions.” (To see what Jesus actually said, read John 13:35.)
In the context of financial giving Paul says, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need [not want], you will abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). In other words, Paul says that God provides us with abundance precisely so we can use it to do good works. He also said that the God who “supplies seed to the sower” will “increase your store of seed” (2 Corinthians 9:10). Why? So we can stockpile seed or eat it? No, so we can scatter it, spread it out, so it can produce life and bear fruit. Why does God make many of us rich? We don’t have to wonder, because Scripture directly answers the question: “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God” (2 Corinthians 9:11, italics mine). God entrusts riches to us not so we can keep them, but so that we can generously give. Paul made this same point earlier:
Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality. (2 Corinthians 8:13-14)
This passage argues against the notion that we who have more than enough should store up as much as possible for the future, so we’ll never have to rely on the gifts of others. That may fit our individualistic spirit of American pride, but it doesn’t fit the teaching of Scripture. We’re told to give of our plenty now, realizing that someday—perhaps even partly because we’ve given to others—we will be in a position to receive from others. Maybe that would be healthy for both others and us. Giving away money puts us in a position of financial weakness. We don’t like that—we prefer being in a position of financial strength. But giving away our excess does something for us that keeping or spending it doesn’t. It makes us dependent on God, and keeps us open to the possibility that at some point we may need to depend on others, just as they are currently depending on us.
Our ministry has the privilege of giving away my book royalties to support worthy ministries. In a year when we’d been able to give away more than one hundred thousand dollars in the first five months, suddenly we had a shortfall in our revenues. We had to make some quick and significant cutbacks. The next thing we knew, one of the missions organizations we regularly support sent us $500. This was the first time I’d ever received a financial gift from a missions organization! For a moment it felt very uncomfortable. Then I smiled, realizing what a blessing it was to us and to them. They moved from recipient to donor, and we moved from donor to recipient, exactly as 2 Corinthians 8:13-14 describes.
It’s fun to have our prayers answered. And it’s fun to be the answer to someone else’s prayer. I recently recommended to a group of ministry CEOs that they choose several other ministries and make periodic gifts to them. We can say “we’re not in competition” with other ministries, but nothing tests that sentiment—and nothing actually cultivates cooperation—like choosing to give other ministries what we could have spent or saved for ourselves.
God has richly blessed us financially not so that we can show ourselves to be his children by living above the standards of others, but so that we can show ourselves to be his children by coming down a few rungs on the ladder of affluence and bringing others up a few rungs, that there might be true, from-the-heart equality.
God could have distributed goods equally in the first place, but he wants to rely on his people to share freely in his name. He wants us to be the conduit through which he meets the needs of others for whom he cared enough to die.
John Piper identifies the purpose of God’s abundant provision:
God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man’s business so he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached peoples can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world’s population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.46
Prosperity theology encourages spending on ourselves. But this not only forges the chains of materialism for us, it constitutes a lost opportunity to give to what could count for eternity. Christ said, “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). If you and your children were hungry, what would you want prosperous Christians to do for you? If your answer is that you’d want them to share from their abundance, then say no to prosperity theology, obey Christ, and share your abundance with others.
How different John Wesley sounded than today’s prosperity preachers:
Do not you know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud your Lord, by applying it to any other purpose? 47
God the Great Genie
Teaching the “seed faith” and “hundredfold return” principles, one pastor triumphantly told of a woman in his church whose still-new car was about to be repossessed. As an act of faith, claiming God’s “promise” of a hundredfold return, she put $20 in the offering. Sure enough, the next day she received $2,000 in the mail and was able to catch up on her payments, keep her car, and gain some extra spending money.
That’s a nice testimony, but it raises some questions. Did it occur to the woman (or the pastor) that perhaps she should not have gone into debt in the first place, that her beautiful car might be a luxury God didn’t approve of, or that God might want her to give up her car and invest the $2,000 in his kingdom (and not expect a check in the mail for $200,000 to compensate her for doing so)? It apparently didn’t occur to them that many unrighteous people also received checks in the mail that day, while many righteous people didn’t.
Prosperity teaching raises the very question that Satan asked God: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9). Though Job’s faith was proved genuine, many other people are less interested in God himself than in the fringe benefits we claim that he offers. The world comes to a prosperous Church with mixed motives. As Sir Robert L’Estrange, a seventeenth-century British journalist, observed, “He that serves God for money will serve the devil for better wages.”48
The central problem with the health-and-wealth gospel is that it’s man-centered, not God-centered. When approached from a “prosperity” posture, prayer degenerates into coercion, by which we “name it and claim it,” pulling God’s leash until he follows our whims. We attempt to arm-twist the Almighty into increasing our comforts and underwriting lifestyles about which we’ve not bothered to consult him in the first place.
“Faith” becomes a crowbar to break down the door of God’s reluctance, rather than a humble attempt to lay hold of his willingness. When we claim the blood of Christ, believing that God must take away this illness or handicap or financial hardship, are we asking him to remove the very things he has put into our lives to make us more Christlike?
We treat God as an object, a tool, a means to an end. God’s blessing on financial giving is turned into a money-back guarantee whereby he is obligated to do precisely what we want. A Florida man heard a pastor say that if the man gave a hundred dollars, God would give him a thousand dollars back. When the thousand never came, he filed a lawsuit against the church.
In prosperity theology, God is seen as a great no-lose lottery in the sky, a cosmic slot machine into which you put in a coin and pull the lever, then stick out your hat and catch the winnings while your “casino buddies” (or fellow Christians) whoop and holler (or say “Amen”) and wait their turn in line.
God’s reason for existing, apparently, is to give us what we want. If we had no needs, God would probably just disappear. After all, what purpose would he serve? This feeble theology reduces prayer to an endless “wish list” that we take before our Santa God. Many healthy and wealthy Christians view God as little more than a wish-granting fairy. We call him “Master” but treat him like a genie. Instead of rubbing a lamp, we quote a verse or say “Praise the Lord” three times, and presto-change-o, abracadabra, the smoky God with the funny hat and big biceps is indebted to act out the script we’ve written for him. Consider God’s role in relation to us in these words of a prominent preacher of prosperity: “Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system.”49
Who’s Working for Whom?
Our pragmatic use of God demonstrates a clear lack of interest in God himself. After all, who cares what a genie is like? Genies serve one purpose—to grant us our wishes and make us prosperous and happy. Instead of being the great subject of our faith, for many of us God is merely an object—which explains the glut of sermons, books, articles, seminars, and conversations about us and the dearth of those about God. He is introduced and dismissed at our convenience. “You can go now, God—I’ll call you back when I think of something else I want.”
The Bible shows us a very different picture of God, in which he is central, his glory is the focal point of the universe, and his sovereign purpose entitles him to do what he wills, even when it violates what we want and expect.
When righteous Job lost everything, even his own sons and daughters, he fell to the ground and worshiped God, saying, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” We’re told, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:21-22).
In contrast, when advocates of a prosperity gospel lose their health and wealth, they often lose their faith. They conclude that they must have committed some unknown sin. If they could only find it and confess it, they would get their health and wealth back. The only other alternative is that God’s promises are not true, that God is undependable, or that he’s forsaken them. Job’s wife said, “Curse God and die.” Job’s response was a simple question that exposes the shallowness of prosperity theology: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:9-10).
What We’re Saying to the World
When unbelievers witnessed the generosity of the early Christians, they saw how they loved one another and cared for each other. As a consequence, these believers were “enjoying the favor of all the people.” There was something attractive about running counterculture to the self-centered prosperity theology that dominated Jerusalem’s religious landscape. Not coincidently, many came to faith partly through the power and integrity of this refreshing alternative to materialism: “The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:45-47, italics mine).
This is in stark contrast to the health and wealth gospel featured on some Christian television programs, which most unbelievers see as self-serving hucksterism. Unfortunately, they’re often right. This baptized materialism does not draw the world to Christ. On the contrary, it pushes the world away from him. In fact, the only unbelievers who are drawn to the Church by prosperity theology are drawn for all the wrong reasons.
Prosperity and Provincialism
I’ve thought a lot about prosperity theology. I thought about it as I walked through the streets of Cairo’s Garbage Village, shaking the grimy hands of Christians living in abject poverty. I thought about it when I worshiped alongside faithful believers on a rough backless bench in a dirt-floor church in Kenya. I thought about it again when I sat in a dim room with pastors behind the Iron Curtain. I thought of it when I walked down muddy backstreets in Cambodia and squeezed into tiny homes in China. I thought about it as I was flown across the United States, put up in a plush hotel room, and picked up in a limousine that drove me to a Christian television studio for a twenty-minute interview.
I’ve thought about prosperity theology and Scripture enough to reach a conclusion about what God thinks of it. Although some have tried to justify their prosperity theology by using isolated proof texts, in reality it is the product of the materialistic and success-driven psychology that dominates industrialized nations. The health-and-wealth gospel will thrive in North America, Western Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and other economically progressive countries. But where does it fit in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Laos, Haiti, or Afghanistan? Far from being a reflection of biblical teaching, prosperity theology is a product of our place and time, a reflection of our materialism and self-absorption.
My novel Safely Home is the story of a U.S. businessman and his Chinese roommate who graduated from Harvard together twenty-five years before. They haven’t communicated with each other for two decades but are suddenly reunited in China. The one who has followed Christ is experiencing adversity and joy. The one who turned from Christ is experiencing prosperity and emptiness. The contrast between these two old friends is the contrast between biblical Christianity and prosperity theology.
My novel is, of course, a work of fiction, but a similar contrast can be seen in the real-life testimonies of two men:
In America, a sharp-looking businessman stands up at a luncheon to give his testimony: “Before I knew Christ, I had nothing. My business was in bankruptcy, my health was ruined, I’d lost the respect of the community, and I’d almost lost my family. Then I accepted Christ. He took me out of bankruptcy and now my business has tripled its profits. My blood pressure has dropped to normal and I feel better than I’ve felt in years. Best of all, my wife and children have come back, and we’re a family again. God is good—praise the Lord!”
In China, a disheveled former university professor gives his testimony: “Before I met Christ, I had everything. I made a large salary, lived in a nice house, enjoyed good health, was highly respected for my credentials and profession, and had a good marriage and a beautiful son. Then I accepted Christ as my Savior and Lord. As a result, I lost my post at the university, lost my beautiful house and car, and spent five years in prison. Now I work for a subsistence wage at a factory. I live with pain in my neck, which was broken in prison. My wife rejected me because of my conversion. She took my son away and I haven’t seen him for ten years. But God is good, and I praise him for his faithfulness.”
Both men are sincere Christians. One gives thanks because of what he’s gained. The other gives thanks in spite of what he’s lost.
Material blessings and restored families are definitely worth being thankful for. The brother in China would be grateful to have them again; indeed, he gives heartfelt thanks each day for the little he does have. And while the American brother is certainly right to give thanks, he and the rest of us must be careful to sort out how much of what he has experienced is part of the gospel and how much is not. For any gospel that is more true in America than in China is not the true gospel.
And whether a message be proclaimed by an angel, a television evangelist, a pastor, or a fund-raising letter, Scripture makes clear what our response must be to any gospel other than the true one:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:6-10)