The Banality of the "Prosperity Gospel"

In today’s New York Times we read, sadly, that the “prosperity gospel” is establishing “a foothold in New York City.” It’s sad because it is a false and misleading so-called “gospel.” And, it is a non-empowering, banal and trivial gospel.
The word “gospel” means, literally, “good news.” The real “good news” of the actual 4 Gospels is NOT about getting rich. It has never been about this. The prosperity “gospel” makes the mistake of selectively quoting certain Old Testament texts and ignoring the teachings of Jesus. Jesus speaks a lot about money and possessions, and his words are not favorably disposed towards them. In fact, money is viewed by Jesus as a “god” (“Mammon”) that will compete with him for ultimate allegiance.
Since September I have been reading, for my own devotional times, the 4 Gospels. I challenge anyone to read these essential Jesus documents and come up with a prosperity gospel. It is not only not there, it is spoken against.
"Prosperity gospel" teachers have acquiesced to American materialism. This is precisely the sort of thing that will cause us, for example, to lose opportunities to win Muslims for Christ. Muslim leaders who equate Christianity with Western materialistic values will only be more convinced that Christianity is really about this. This should cause all followers of the Real Jesus to be outraged as our Lord is misrepresented to the world.
I am currently working with a black scholar who is writing a book I consider to be prophetic. Her thesis is that the Black Church has lost its prophetic voice and sunk into the banality of prosperity teaching. In the 50’s and 60’s the Black Church was a true prophetic voice to a racist culture. Now, a lot of Black Churches have simply become that culture in the sense of being conformed to the standards of this world (Romans 12:1-2). By this I don’t mean that they are necessarily racist, but that the same spirit of world conformity that caused a lot of Christians to be passively racist now causes some Christians to passively conform to the money god.
Read the 4 Gospels for yourself. Discover the truth about the Real Jesus, who was radical and revolutionary and truly world-changing. Jesus is the Son of Man who said “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Why would one of his followers want to be rich if Jesus himself didn’t even have a place to lay his head?

The Westernization of Islam

As Muslim nations are exposed to Western culture Islam is diminished. Muslim clerics and scholars know this. Thus, for them, the great threat to Islam is not Christianity but Western culture. Or, it is Christianity-as-equivalent-to-Western culture. This is what we see happening in Istanbul. And by “Islam” I do not mean “nominal Islam” but the real thing, which in religion always includes passion, devotion, and belief. This places the world in the weird situation of Europe becoming Islamified and some Muslim countries becoming westernized. The advance of Islamic culture in Western Europe is real and, unless Europeans start becoming fruitful and seriously multiplying, this advance seems inexorable. On the other hand the advance of Western culture in certain Islamic nations is real and, unless these nations tighten their grip on this and begin banning the artifacts and music and trinkets of Western values, this advance seems inexorable. What does this mean for serious Christians (as opposed to nominal ones)? I think it means these two things: 1) Serious European Christians have an opportunity to reach immigrant Muslims for Christ by their love and witness; and 2) the doors are opening in those Muslim nations that allow Western stuff to get in. The basic problem will be dis-identifying Christianity with Western culture.

The Islamification of Western Civilization

Western civilization as we have known it is at risk. Why? Because Western civilizations are being “Islamified.” Mark Steyn, writing in The New Criterion, puts it this way: “The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birth rate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyper-rationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a twenty-first-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could only increase their numbers by conversion. The problem is that secondary- impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths—or, at any rate, virtues—and that’s why they’re proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.”
Steyn says that when Islamic jihadists try to go toe-to-toe against Western military might they lose. But as they are moving into Europe and America and having more babies than European types, over time they will win the war. Muslims “know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.”
Steyn writes: “We’re pretty much awash in resources, but we’re running out of people—the one truly indispensable resource, without which none of the others matter. Russia’s the most obvious example: it’s the largest country on earth, it’s full of natural resources, and yet it’s dying—its population is falling calamitously.”
“The hard data on babies around the western world is that they’re running out a lot faster than the oil is. “Replacement” fertility rate—i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller—is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?” The answer is: they are all Muslim countries.
“The world’s people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less “western.” Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)—or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the west: in the UK, more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.”
“Can these trends continue for another thirty years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: the grand buildings will still be standing but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.”
“What will London—or Paris, or Amsterdam—be like in the mid-Thirties? If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean the populace off their unsustainable thirty-five-hour weeks, retirement at sixty, etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?”

Islam in Istanbul

Istanbul is a sprawling city of 15 million people. It also has 2200 Islamic mosques. Five times a day the call to prayer sounds forth from the countless minarets. People assemble in the mosque courtyards to kneel, bow, and pray. But the young people of Istanbul are not among them. In talking with Dan and his team, their observation is that Turkish teens and young adults are not much interested in Islam. My brief 8-day observations are the same. Young Turks are interested in Western European and American things. Consumerism and style are the new religion. Look at the entrance to a mosque when prayer time is over and you’ll see mostly a bunch of old men exiting. In lieu of a dissipating Islamic spiritual presence in Istanbul there appears a dark spiritual vacuum, which will never be satisfied by Western materialism. Thus it is a time of great opportunity for the message of Christ to be available to the masses of youth who will eventually begin to seek out the deeper answers to life.

Istanbul & Philadelphia

I'm in Philadelphia this week working as Project Director for 13 doctoral students at Palmer Theological Seminary. I have 13 3-hour meetings where I meet with the students and evaluate their doctoral projects.

Linda, Josh and I returned last Thursday from 8 days in Istanbul, Turkey where we got to be with Dan. What an incredible trip, an incredible city! Great eating, saw ancient and modern things, shopped, the weather was warm (50s & 60s), did a lot of thinking, had several eye-opening moments, got a greater global perspective, finally read The Da Vinci Code (aarghh!!), road boats across the Straits of Bosphous, drank coffee in the best Starbuck's I've ever been in, ate real Turkish Delight, walked everywhere, rode in a taxi at 90+ mph, shopped at the enormous (3000+ stores under one roof) Grand Bazaar, stood in awe inside the Hagia Sophia, loved being with Dan's friend Allie, met the great members of his team, ate lunch with Jake & Katie Baker, watched sumo wrestling on Turkish tv, saw mosques everywhere, read a bio of Nietzsche & a bio of Wittgenstein, bought Linda perfume in Paris (at the airport), loved being with my family...

Darwinian Faith According to Tom Bethell

The Darwinian macro-evolutionary claim is that life came from non-life. I like the way Patrick Buchanan comments on this, using Tom Bethell’s book Politically Correct Guide to Science. He writes:
“If believing that Christ raised people from the dead is a matter of faith -- and it is -- is not the Darwinist claim that nature created life out of non-life a matter of faith? If it is science, why can't scientists replicate it in microcosm in a laboratory? If scientists know life came from matter and matter from non-matter, why don't they show us how this was done, instead of asserting it was done, and calling us names for not taking their claims on faith?”

Multiverse Theory & an Argument from Ignorance

Leonard Susskind, the inventor of string theory, is interviewed in New Scientist on the question "Is String Theory In Trouble." In the following interchange re. the anthropic principle Susskind uses an argument from ignorance.
The question is put to him: "Is it premature to invoke anthropic arguments - which assume that the conditions for life are extremely improbable - when we don't know how to define life?"
Susskind replies: "The logic of the anthropic principle requires the strong assumption that our kind of life is the only kind possible. Why should we presume that all life is like us - carbon-based, needs water, and so forth? How do we know that life cannot exist in radically different environments? If life could exist without galaxies, the argument that the cosmological constant seems improbably fine-tuned for life would lose all of its force. And we don't know that life of all kinds can't exist in a wide variety of circumstances, maybe in all circumstances. It a valid objection. But in my heart of hearts, I just don't believe that life could exist in the interior of a star, for instance, or in a black hole."
I have highlighted in bold his argument from ignorance. There is no evidence that non-carbon-based life does exist. Such non-existence threatens Susskind's multiverse theory and causes him to speculate. And notice how his final quote about his "heart of hearts" indicates his real doubt that non-carbon-based life does exist.

Henri Nouwen on Heaven and Hell: Part 2

I just received the new Nouwen e-letter. It's called "The Good News of Hell." Nouwen writes: "Is there a hell? The concepts of heaven and hell are as intimately connected as those of good and evil. When we are free to do good, we are also free to do evil; when we can say yes to God's love, the possibility of saying no also exists. Consequently, when there is heaven there also must be hell. All of these distinctions are made to safeguard the mystery that God wants to be loved by us in freedom. In this sense, strange as it may sound, the idea of hell is good news. Human beings are not robots or automatons who have no choices and who, whatever they do in life, end up in God's Kingdom. No, God loves us so much that God wants to be loved by us in return. And love cannot be forced; it has to be freely given. Hell is the bitter fruit of a final no to God."
I agree with Nouwen. The reasoning goes like this:
1) God is love. This means that God is, in his essence, love. God cannot not-love.
2) Love necessarily implies relationship.
3) To say that God loves us is to say that God wants us to love him back.
4) But love is not really "love" if not freely chosen. So, God gives us free will.
5) Free will is not really "free" if we cannot choose to not love God.
6) Because God is in his essence love, God cannot refuse us if we choose against him. To do this would be coercive, and love is not coercive.
7) Therefore persons who choose to not love God will receive the outcome of their choices, which is eternal separation from God. (Defined biblically as "hell.")

Heaven, Hell, & Free Will

I receive a daily thought from Henri Nouwen's writings. Today's thought is about heaven, hell, and the freedom to choose.
Nouwen writes: "Often hell is portrayed as a place of punishment and heaven as a place of reward. But this concept easily leads us to think about God as either a policeman, who tries to catch us when we make a mistake and send us to prison when our mistakes become too big, or a Santa Claus, who counts up all our good deeds and puts a reward in our stocking at the end of the year.God, however, is neither a policeman nor a Santa Claus. God does not send us to heaven or hell depending on how often we obey or disobey. God is love and only love. In God there is no hatred, desire for revenge, or pleasure in seeing us punished. God wants to forgive, heal, restore, show us endless mercy, and see us come home. But just as the father of the prodigal son let his son make his own decision God gives us the freedom to move away from God's love even at the risk of destroying ourselves. Hell is not God's choice. It is ours."
I agree with Nouwen's point. God honors our choices. If we choose to move away from God then God will not force us to be in relationship with him. God's love is not coercive.

Merton & Post-Christianity

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who never watched television and spent much of his time in the presence of God praying and listening. Because of his rigorous spiritual discipline, and his great cognitive and creative giftedness, God spoke many things to him, and people came to him from around the world seeking a word from God.
Consider this Merton quote, written many years ago, that is prophetic and was truly ahead of its time:
"We on the contrary live in an irreligious post-Christian world in which the Christian message has been repeated over and over until it has come to seem empty of all intelligible content to those whose ears close to the word of God even before it is uttered.  In their minds Christian is no longer identified with newness and change, but only with the static preservation of outworn structures.” - Merton - From Peace in the Post-Christian Era, by Thomas Merton.  Orbis Books; Maryknoll, New York. 2004. p.127-28.
What a sad and true indictment of many churches today.