"Name-It-and-Claim-It"
I have to admit that I’m tired of the health and wealth preachers and their greed making a buck of the backs of those weak in faith. I am going to cite ten (4) of their blatant lies in this post and dismantle them. For far too long many have just given these snakes the slide in the Pentecostal/Charismatic faith without rebuking them. This is often because these prosperity peddlers are adept at circling around Scripture wording in a way that seems to justify their unbiblical behavior. They’ll do this while simultaneously keeping their detractors at bay through semantic gymnastics and verbal contortionism. They manipulate Scripture to be interpreted two different ways in parallel by changing the nouns being acted upon. Where a passage is implying a believer will be rich in grace, faith or well-being, they construe it to mean material goods or riches. It’s semantic wordplay that creates a pseudo-truth. It’s true, but used in the wrong context or against the wrong nominative in a statement. In short it’s intellectually dishonest and disgusting.
No more…it’s time to put an end to it at least on my Social Media pages. I hope some that are on my Facebook page actually read this as it is long overdue. I will try and keep these as succinct as possible so not to confuse these statements or go off on lengthy diatribes. The people that push this crooked theology makes all of the goo Christians look like hypocritical greedy idiots. Thanks, but I can mess up the image of myself with non-Christians on my own, I don’t need help doing that.
I will also mention (5) further myths about money pushed by those on the opposite end of the spectrum who will have Christians believe that all Christians should be ascetic and poor struggling from check to check. This is a sin also and isn’t fair to those who have indeed worked hard to support those they love and care about. The gist of this post and the next is that the extremes is not where God and God’s word resides on these issues. It’s in the middle most times and it is moderation and humility that are the key to God’s economy.
Prosperity Lie One: If you just trust and have faith in God, he will give you *all the desires of your heart."
Psalm 37:4-5 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.
What the Scripture in question actually says is delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. This saying has nothing necessarily to do with economic prosperity. The desire of the heart referred to here is God. If you delight in God he will bless you with more of the divine presence is all the psalmist has in view. Will this bring riches? Possibly but unlikely…what does the preponderance of Scripture show about the lives of believers? We see struggling and perseverance in humility. In this misinterpretation of Scripture we see the exchange of the divine proper noun God with an ordinary noun.
Prosperity Lie Two: If you "seek first the kingdom," then God will give you all the things you long for. Again, this is a profound misreading of what the biblical text says. The entire time Jesus in Matthew 6:25-34 has been talking about the basic necessities in life, food, clothing, and the like. He tells his disciples they should not be anxious even about the necessities in life, not least because God knows we need such things to survive. Instead of anxiousness we are to seek first the kingdom, and then these necessities will be added to us. There is nothing in this context pertaining to wealth or anything like it. He refers only to basic food, drink and clothing. In fact if one reads this properly it is obliquely warning the reader that at times…things will be scarce and hard to come by. Just the opposite of prosperity.
Prosperity Lie Three: If you tithe, then God will necessarily bless you far more than you have given. This presumption is usually based on sayings like Matthew’s "Ask and it will be given to you" (Matt. 7:7). Again the context here is that of asking for a basic necessities like bread or a fish to eat! Jesus reassures us that when we seek such things from God, he is able to provide. This does indicate that God enjoys blessing those who seek him and his aid in these matters. It does suggest that God has an infinite store of such things, one that never runs out so there is some truth to the saying, "you have not because you ask not" when it comes to basic necessities. But texts like this say nothing about a quid pro quo, or a reciprocity cycle with God. The proverbial this-for-that or the idea that God is some form of cosmic vending machine.
Besides, blessings of God are generally not material ones in any case. And the notion that we can put God in our debt, so that he is bound by promissory note to give us “this” because we gave him “that” is simply false. God's gifts are free and gracious, not things owed to someone operating out of a misguided theology of reciprocity. That is just idiotic man-made thinking, not divine economy.
Prosperity Lie Four: If we are just sincere enough in our asking, or simply pray long and fervently enough, God is bound to give us what we ask for. This type of statement I find the most disgusting as it leads others to believe they are somehow not praying enough or are somehow inferior to those that are blessed with material goods. The whole approach to prayer as a means of haggling with God who seems somehow reluctant to help is so off base it’s laughable. This is entirely false on both sides of the equation. First of all, we can't make God an offer he can't refuse, no matter how nicely or insistently we ask. God is independent and needs nothing from mankind. Why not?
Second, God is obligated only to do what he has already promised to do, and even then it will depend on whether or not the thing in question was part of a conditional promise. Only God with His divine word can bind God to a contract/covenant. When God begins a promise along the lines of ‘if my people who are called by my name will repent and turn to me, then...”. Its conditional upon man and man obeying. If we don't fulfill our half of the conditional statement God is under no obligation to fulfill his half. Ever.
Prosperity Lie Five: As the examples of Solomon and others in the old Testament show, God has no problems with a Christian being wealthy. This is just wrong. In the first place, Christians are not under the old covenant, and the New Testament has a much stricter and higher standard for what counts as a godly life when it comes to material things. Secondly, even in Proverbs and elsewhere in the Old Testament critiques of kings like Solomon, who ape the emperors and kings of the ancient Near East with respect to wealth and opulence, indicate that this was never a good thing. It even caused Solomon to compromise his biblical integrity marrying foreign wives and chasing foreign gods. He would later go on to write about these failures and saw them all as vanity, foolishness and chasing the wind (Ecclesiastes).
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