Prosperity/Gospel
Deuteronomy 30:9-10
“For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, when you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
The prosperity movement, as it’s often called, is running rampant in the Western World. Generally speaking, prosperity teachers condense Christianity into a form of materialism, espousing that God’s fundamental work in our lives is a social advancement rather than a sanctifying one. Some teach that poverty and sickness are equivocal to the seven deadly sins. Others teach projectionism, that if we just took seriously God’s vision for our success and manifested it out into the world, willing ourselves to accomplish it as it were, then we’d get what we desire out of life. Yet, so often, teachings like these, though grounded to some degree in biblical doctrine, crucially overlook the significance of Christ’s call to ‘carry your cross,’ as well as the apostolic teaching that suffering, while not God’s greatest good for us, produces in us character and hope and endurance. Such teaching also misses this central paradox of Christian prosperity: that we share in Christ’s sufferings for the joy set before us—i.e. for the beauty that God is raising out of the ashes. Without the centrality of a self-sacrificing Savior at enmity with the devil and the world, and of our call to likewise carry a cross, Christianity becomes a religious form of insider trading, leading proselytes to come to Christ not for everlasting redemption but for a better 401k.
Nevertheless, while we condemn these errors, we must be cautious not to eradicate the truth that undergirds them. And the truth is clear from Deuteronomy 30:9-10: “For the LORD takes delight in prospering you … when you obey His word.” Our Heavenly Father does not delight in our cancers and conflicts and job losses and abuses and flus, but He delights in the glory He’s producing through them. That’s why Paul can be just as content in a Roman prison cell as in a Corinthian revival meeting. He understands, as should we, that in Christ Jesus even Roman crosses can’t stand in the way of everlasting prosperity. Quite the opposite, in fact—they’re often the door.