What does it mean for a country to be Christian? Can you even call a country, ‘Christian’?
Well, a country doesn’t exist. It’s not a real thing; it’s just a thought we made up. So I guess a country could be Christian if we believed it was (depending on who we are).
That being said, a church with a membership of 750,000 goes a long way towards changing one’s thinking.
Of course, part of the change in thought (for me) is the nagging doubt that it is built on the back of a prosperity gospel.
Prosperity gospels are popular because
a) People really, really want to believe in them. (Heck, I’d love to believe in a prosperity gospel!)
and
b) They can be very hard to distinguish from the real thing.
Point A is straightforward, but B is interesting. I think B is so tricky because the language we use for stuff (Christianese) is so darn ambiguous, and the truth is aligned not along easily observable principles, but along spiritual ones.
There’s not a very good mapping between language and truth.
From the article,
“Jesus will give us spiritual blessing, and prosperity, and physical health,” [the pastor] says.
…
But I asked him whether he really meant that members of the church have improved physical health as a result of their faith?
“Many people still have problems, but many people overcome problems with faith,” he told me.
There’s some good stuff here.
Does Jesus give spiritual blessing? Absolutely.
Does Jesus give prosperity? Of a sort.
Does Jesus give physical health? Certainly he does.
Now comes to splitting-hair time, because you simply can’t deny the Gospel. When Jesus came to earth, many, many people flocked to him because he (physically) healed them. Afterwards, people flocked to his disciples for the same reason.
If you deny physical healing in the church today, you cut out a part of the Holy Spirit’s work, to your detriment and to the church’s detriment.
But not everyone receives physical healing.
Huh. What’s a senior pastor to say?
A similar thing happens with prosperity.
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.” — Luke 18:29-30
Notice a few things here
- Money is not mentioned
- People are mentioned
- The parallel passage in Mark talks about persecution
- Jesus is talking about a reward for sacrifice
But also notice the fascinating words in this age. So much of contemporary Christianity preaches hanging on ’til you die and the good stuff happens. Not here. Concrete promises for life.
If someone asks, “Why did Jesus come?” and you say,
“Because he loves you so much that he’ll never do anything on the following list for you:
- Stuff you can understand
- Stuff you can feel
- Stuff you can tell your friends about and have them believe you
- Stuff that makes a difference in your day today
- Stuff with tangible/permanent after-effects
“God is ineffable, so that should be the measuring stick of all your expectations.”
Hmm… Do I want that gospel?
So tell me, if a person is at peace, if they are productive, producing a thirty, sixty or hundred-fold return on investment… if they don’t have anxiety about anything, if they can afford to always be loving, caring, kind and gentle…
Are they prosperous?
If they can afford to always be loving, caring, kind and gentle…
Surely the No. One characteristic of the rich and famous, and those with fat Swiss bank accounts. I think not.
Some day when they have reached “the top” they may intend those luxuries but the top is elusive and the way up such a scramble.
Not so long ago, The Prayer of Jabez was making the rounds. When I protested at the fellowship I attended, I was instructed in “spiritualizing” the prayer. But in the lives of the people who tried this, I found a lot of “Bait and Switch.” They may have started looking for a spiritual understanding of the prayer, but somehow they were gradually switched over to a version of the prosperity gospel. sigh
I think The Prayer of Jabez is the perfect Nail Soup.
The value being, of course, not the nail but the potatoes, carrots, onions, salt, etc. etc. People have concocted a whole lot of Good Stuff around the prayer that has nothing to do with the prayer itself. And this stuff *is* Good Stuff because it coincidentally has a valid basis elsewhere.
People have to concoct stuff, of course, because there’s not a whole lot of goodness to be extracted from a nail. Some – not much.
Of course, when people take their task too seriously… they say, “This is Nail soup so I must flavour it accordingly.”
And because the recipe advertises itself as “Nail Soup” they run with it and throw in screws and bedsprings and old razor blades and other assorted scrap.
When you’re forced to innovate, all bets are off.
Unfortunately, the language around soup is so shoddy that when people gather to talk about the soup they made on the weekend, one man’s prosperity potato is another man’s prosperity tire iron.
One eats well and the other complains of indigestion and the traveler who stopped by their village hears their disagreement and says, “I’ll stay the night in the next town.”
“And I’ll have a sandwich.”
Of course, the only kind of sandwich the next town offers is a knuckle sandwich, but he doesn’t know that yet. But he will soon. And then he’ll have to have to come back and have the soup because he won’t have any teeth. And we just hope he gets the right soup.
It’s kind of a watery metaphor. I don’t put much stock in it.
I love your metaphor!
I believe the original folk tale was about “Stone” soup, which is interesting in its own way because what father when asked for “bread” gives his child “a stone.”