Thursday, June 1, 2023

The "prosperity gospel"

Although this was originally published several years ago, I only came across it today and thought it worth sharing. From "5 Errors of the Prosperity Gospel" at 9Marks:

Over a century ago, speaking to the then-largest congregation in all Christendom, Charles Spurgeon said,
I believe that it is anti-Christian and unholy for any Christian to live with the object of accumulating wealth. You will say, “Are we not to strive all we can to get all the money we can?” You may do so. I cannot doubt but what, in so doing, you may do service to the cause of God. But what I said was that to live with the object of accumulating wealth is anti-Christian.
Over the years, however, the message being preached in some of the largest churches in the world has changed—indeed, a new gospel is being taught to many congregations today. ....
The five errors:
  1. The Abrahamic covenant is a means to material entitlement.
  2. Jesus’ atonement extends to the “sin” of material poverty.
  3. Christians give in order to gain material compensation from God.
  4. Faith is a self-generated spiritual force that leads to prosperity.
  5. Prayer is a tool to force God to grant prosperity.
Certainly prayers for personal blessing are not inherently wrong, but the prosperity gospel’s overemphasis upon man turns prayer into a tool believers can use to force God to grant their desires.

Within prosperity theology, man—not God—becomes the focal point of prayer. Curiously, prosperity preachers often ignore the second half of James’ teaching on prayer which reads, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (Jas. 4:3). God does not answer selfish requests that do not honor his name. ....

In light of Scripture, the prosperity gospel is fundamentally flawed. At bottom, the prosperity gospel is actually a false gospel because of its faulty view of the relationship between God and man. Simply put, if the prosperity gospel is true, grace is obsolete, God is irrelevant, and man is the measure of all things. Whether they are talking about the Abrahamic covenant, the atonement, giving, faith, or prayer, prosperity teachers turn the relationship between God and man into a quid pro quo transaction. As James R. Goff noted, God is “reduced to a kind of ‘cosmic bellhop’ attending to the needs and desires of his creation.” This is a wholly inadequate and unbiblical view of the relationship between God and man. (more, expanding on all of the "five errors")
David W. Jones, "5 Errors of the Prosperity Gospel," 9Marks, 1/15/2014.

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