The Prosperity "Gospel" and the Economy

The Prosperity "Gospel" is the belief that the amount of blessing in your life (how much money you have and how healthy you are) is directly proportional to your efforts on behalf of the Kingdom. Faith, prayer, giving. The more you do, the more "blessed" you will be. I honestly have no idea why they utilize the word "gospel." Perhaps they believe that the good news is not that Christ came to the world as savior, but that you will now probably get to own a Ferrari. A clearly erroneous, heretical teaching, it is ruining many parts of Christendom and is most popular in places where people are the poorest. For example, a friend told me that when he was in Africa, he had two TV channels in his hotel. One of them was TBN. Truly horrifying.

And it's possible that this teaching has contributed to the financial mess today. Time ran an article a few days ago on the Prosperity "Gospel" and the subprime crisis. The author writes:

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise — that God will "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

The article does not make obvious a direct correlation, and yet you can't help but believe the thesis prima facie. If you believe the Prosperity Gospel, you believe that you are deserving of great financial and physiological blessing based not on God's plan for you, but on your work for God. What's more, because God does not work within the confines of any human system, the blessing owed to you will most likely come miraculously. That is, prosperity from God will likely be "too good to be true." And what do you think subprime mortgages are? Too good to be true. Pray for those people who mistakenly entered into these despicable loans and that they discover and lean on the real Gospel.

Read the whole Time article. It is worth your time. On a related note, check out this editorial in the WSJ today called "Not Everyone Should Own a Home."

HT: Z