The prosperity gospel has unfortunately become a well-liked, cheap pseudo-gospel all around the world, fooling countless proclaiming Christians by disguising itself and marketing itself as the real gospel. However, the heart of its message pumps theological implications that deny such similarities with the gospel of Christ. In fact, the prosperity gospel could be referred to as the gospel of wealth and health—a belief system which subserviates Jesus to being our accomplice to gaining those things, among many others.
Since when did God become a servant to further accomplishing our own idolatry? Since when did God become a vending machine, such that if we hit the right spiritual buttons, He’ll give us what we really want? Surely God does not gladly work to attain for us our idols that He died to save us from all along. More than anything—out of His grace—hopefully God will lovingly strip out of our hands everything we have held on to more dearly than Him.
The prosperity gospel says God is the means to achieving selfish, worldly ends. The prosperity gospel says the good news is that God can get us all the earthly treasure we want if we just trust His ability to do so. This approach practically reduces God to being our stepping stool that allows us to reach all we want to gain in life. That God is the gateway towards something greater, more desirable.
The gospel says God is the good news—the means and the ends towards giving us the greatest gift: Himself. He, Jesus, is the means towards giving us the greatest end of all joy–God–through reconciliation with Himself.
He reconciles us to the “fullness” and “forever” dimensions of His love—the immeasurable height, depth, length, and width of His love.
The prosperity gospel encourages you to invest your life in the fleeting nature of money and comfort that are limited to time and jeopardized by circumstance.
The prosperity gospel says God will help you serve your own sin: the love of world, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (I Jn 2:15-17). The gospel says God will help you get back to Him, the source from whom all good things flow (James 1:17).
The prosperity gospel drives you deeper into sin and worldliness. The gospel liberates you from it.
The prosperity gospel says life is about you and your happiness. The gospel says life is about God’s glory—the fount of all joy.
The prosperity gospel is about building a kingdom on earth. The gospel is about building a kingdom in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy.
The prosperity gospel is about your wallet and 401(k). The gospel is about God’s heart.
The prosperity gospel is about your merit being exchanged for your blessing—your “good” deeds being transacted for luxurious goods. The gospel is about Christ’s righteousness being exchanged for our sin—our penalty being traded for His perfection—His merit and immortality for our treason and immorality.
The prosperity gospel declares us lords with God at our service. The gospel declares us righteous sons with God as our Father and Lord who served us.
The prosperity gospel calls us to worship Jesus for what he can get us (what we really worship). The gospel calls us to worship Jesus for who he is. The gospel frees us from the hollowness of worshipping infinitely inferior things, and in that freedom, to be awakened to worship the superior One who alone can superiorly fulfill our soul.
The former theology breeds hollow egotism, nasty arrogance, self-entitlement, and worldly indulgence. The latter theology breeds deep humility, great awe, radical sacrifice, and fiery mission. One theology glamorizes worldliness and sin; the other absorbs sin and displaces it with something, Someone greater.
“Is what you’re living for worth Jesus dying for?”
Money as THE functional god
Jesus warns us about the nature of our relationship to money: “You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matt 6:24b). It is interesting to note that Jesus does not say, “God and sin”, or “God and sex”, or “God and health”, or “God and fame”. Instead, He specifies “God and Money”, probably emphasizing that money can easily be our functional god that we place our faith in, lean our weight upon, and depend on to give us all the things that only God can truly give us—security, validation, identity, satisfaction, and rest. Jesus knows not merely the danger of trusting in the fluxivity of wealth, but also the tragic act it entails to the human soul: filling it with something inferior to what it was designed to exist upon.
“But God loves us, and therefore will give us what we really want” Objection
I am sure people have said in resentful resistance to this stance against the prosperity gospel that “God loves us and therefore will get us what we really want”. Yet, if we say this, we are basically saying that 1) we know what is better for ourselves than God does, 2) God does not consider idolatry as a grievous matter, thus implying that 3) He is not the best thing to offer us—that He must offer us something apparently better than Himself—health and wealth, and therefore we must conclude that 4) God doesn’t really love us if he is committed to giving to us something other than what is ultimately best for us (anything but Himself).
