Let’s talk about why the Prosperity Gospel is evil

I’ve recently watched two videos on YouTube about the Prosperity Gospel. And I thought that I would finally start writing a post about the Prosperity Gospel, and why it is so evil.

Disclaimer:  This is going to likely be a complicated post for me to write. What makes it all the more complicated is that on one hand I have categorically denounced the Prosperity Gospel for myself. On the other hand I’m still a little bit Prosperity Gospel, in ways which I will describe below.
I was brought up in faith which gradually veered towards the Prosperity Gospel. I briefly bought into it until I started reading the Bible for myself, in earnest, and I realised that “TPG” is completely different from what the Bible actually says…and I chose to go with what the Bible says. Here’s the thing:  I believe that the Prosperity Gospel continues to be popular even with seasoned, experienced Christians who really should know better, for this simple reason:  it preaches what many of us wish that the Bible actually said!  It promises a life of ease and comfort right down here on earth, if only we would discover the “keys”, or the “secret steps to unleashing divine breakthrough” where the real Bible unexcitingly promises instead persecution and suffering.  It caters to our longings, which is why I believe, week in, week out, educated Christians who can read the Bible for themselves go to these churches and greedily lap up the lies promoted to them by these charlatans.  But the Bible simply does not say these things.  As Christians, we have to choose whether to go along with the gratifying lies of these people, or with the more difficult truths of the Bible.

A little bit Prosperity Gospel myself?
Here is the thing which I have somehow failed to admit in all my years of writing this blog:  that I am a little bit Prosperity Gospel myself. Even as I have been condemning these peddlers of the Prosperity Gospel.  What I mean is this:  I wholeheartedly believe in:
– supernatural financial provision
– supernatural healing
– strong relationships

I believe that the Bible does indeed make abundant provisions for these things. What I don’t believe in is the approach to these things and the emphasis that is given to them in the Prosperity Gospel, and how these things are acquired.  I believe that this is the reason why these concepts are so problematic in TPG – because they pull on concepts which are genuinely Biblical, but they twist and distort these genuinely Biblical concepts and teachings out of all recognition, and give them an emphasis which is out of all proportion, to make it look as if the Gospel is actually all about getting prosperity as an end in itself, rather than prosperity being a tool to service the spreading of the Gospel.  One big thing is that these false prophets make these promises conditional on my giving God enough money, through their ministry, and I emphatically denounce that thinking wholeheartedly.

An overview:  I am going to try to give a brief overview of the Christian Gospel, and what it means to be a Christian.
Let’s start with the very beginning:  the very centre of the Christian Gospel is God. Life revolves around God. Everything is about Him.
God created the human race to live in relationship with Him.  This still involved everything revolving around Him.
Humanity sinned against God, collectively and individually. At this point, our lives stopped revolving around God and started revolving around ourselves.
To remedy that, God sent Jesus down to reconcile the human race individually and collectively to him.
Now that we are Christians, our eyes have been opened, and we resume revolving our lives around God. Furthermore, as Christians, we are to live our lives not for down here but with a view to Heaven. Our earthly lives are now to be dedicated to the worship of God, the service of other people, both within the church and outside it, and telling other people about Jesus, so that they too might embrace a relationship with God.

That is it in a nutshell. For something to represent true Christian faith, it has to fit within that framework.
The Prosperity Gospel is not true Christianity because it fails to fit within that framework.
– Firstly, it unsubtly endorses the idea that our lives should continue to revolve around ourselves. People and proponents of TPG will never spell this out but within the Prosperity Gospel context, God is all but reduced to a genie, an almost superfluous character on the edges of the story who exists only to grant our requests. Perhaps it is hard for people deep in the Prosperity Gospel to even realise this.  However, if you have been steeped in the Prosperity Gospel as deeply as I have, over time you might come to see that this assertion is true.
Honestly, I was shocked when I once heard the Easter message being interpreted in one of these churches. “This Easter, may you arise, may your dreams be resurrected!”  The Easter story is not about my financial rising, or the resurrection of my career dreams!  Rather the Easter story is about Jesus!  Seriously, can we not let Jesus have even Easter any more, and squarely put the  focus a hundred per cent on Him?!

The Prosperity Gospel skews our focus. Instead of living humble lives to focus on God and serving other people, now our focus is on our own material prosperity, now, here on earth.  In these prosperity churches, there is scarcely any talk about serving other people. Rather it is endlessly about “how you can be blessed”.  We all know that time is money. But time is also prayer, time is also service. If you are using every waking moment to dream up ways of making money, then what time does that leave to invest in serving others?

The Prosperity Gospel completely jars with the actual Bible. Firstly, the pursuit of material wealth is hugely frowned down upon in the Bible. For instance, Paul says that the love of money is the root of all evil. I learned this phrase in Greek for my exams at uni, and I can still recite it more or less
“he philarguria [whatever the Greek for “root” is which I have forgotten just now – radix?] panton ton kakon estin”.  Paul talks negatively about people who peddle the word of God for profit. In the New Testament, the believers are called to lives of simplicity, so that they would have more time to focus on living for God and offering service to other people.

Secondly if you watch one of these Prosperity Gospel sermons, everything seems to be about giving and being blessed. Literally everything is about this. And giving seeds.  Yet the New Testament does not talk about this in the slightest. If you read the New Testament, then you will see that the emphasis there is all about the expressions of Christlike character that we as Christians are supposed to demonstrate, loving our enemies, loving one another, submitting to the Bible. So what these prosperity gospel churches focus on is not what the Bible focuses on.

Selling Miracles:  If you listen to these Prosperity Gospel preachers, they will act as if they are capable of performing miracles, as long as you as the person requiring the miracle, are willing and able to give a sufficiently large financial blessing in return for your miracle. So in essence they are selling miracles. This is so unbiblical I don’t even know where to begin. What is absolutely clear is that neither Jesus, nor the Apostles, nor anyone else in the Bible ever accepted money for the sake of performing a miracle. When Simon the magician tried to offer money to receive the gift of performing miracles he was rebuked, and his name has given itself to the practice of “simony”, that is the practice of selling church offices or spiritual power. And all rightly so, of course, otherwise it is like saying that God and His power are for sale. God and His power are so big and so spectacular that of course He has to transcend money! Of course His power has to be freely available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay! If God and His power truly were subject to money, then that would mean that the power of money was greater than God.  How can that make sense when we are talking about an all-powerful God?

Emulating Christ? Some of the Prosperity Gospel preachers try to argue that Jesus was rich, and the disciples were wealthy businessmen. And yet what in the Bible could possibly give that suggestion? Nowhere in the Bible does it talk about Jesus and His followers living luxurious and lavish lives. And yet many prosperity preachers do live lavish and luxurious lives. Part of being a Christian is about emulating the lifestyle of Christ. How can you claim to be a follower of Christ if He lived and preached a life of simplicity (which is not synonymous with poverty, or destitution) and you instead live a life of unquantifiable excess? How can you claim to be walking with the heart of Christ if He cared so much about poor people, and yet your excess wealth could help so many people to escape from poverty, and yet you keep it all to yourself?
One thing about prosperity gospel advocates is that their thinking can be so binary. If you are not advocating lavish and ostentatious wealth, then instead you must be insisting on abject poverty! Is there not a middle ground? How about the lives of Jesus and the disciples, where their material needs appear to have been met, even while they lived lives of simplicity focused on serving people around them?

So when these people try to pretend that what they are preaching is Bible truth, it is a complete lie, and utterly transparent.  And yet people continue to line up to attend these ministries, to willingly be fleeced. This goes to show how gullible we as human beings are capable of being. Including yours truly, who to her shame recently attended a Prosperity Gospel church, and even gave my own money even while seeing right through everything.

My own prosperity gospel leanings:
I myself aspire to be successful. I hope that that success comes with financial success.
Yet I have determined that I am not going to make money through the Gospel. Trying to make money through the Gospel seems essentially like cheapening it, from my perspective.
Secondly, even if and hopefully when I am successful, it is my determination to live a simple life.  I cannot imagine living a life of luxury while people around me are starving, or somewhere in the world people are starving. A relevant question is where to draw the line?  Because of cause, to a certain extent I already am living a life of sumptuous luxury, relative to so many people on earth, even if not nearly at the level of prosperity gospel preachers. Furthermore, I own many many many items, far more than I actually “need”.

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