Okay, it’s really not that complicated. Prosperity Theology is wrong. It has no place in the Christian tradition, and is as much a heresy as the selective literalism (fundamentalism) of the radicalized right. In order to preach prosperity theology you must avoid Jesus, avoid the Acts of the Apostles or Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, you have to reach back to the Hebrew Testament, abandoning the Gospel. This is important, because our scriptures contain an evolving understanding of humankind’s relationship with the divine, with our place before our Creator. The earliest theologies encoded in the Hebrew Scriptures were henotheistic (multiple gods, but the tribe only had one god) and equated faithful duty to the tribe’s God as a requirement for worldly success. If Israel was faithful, it would be a militarily strong and rich nation (we see the modern version of this primitive theology in Fred Phelps and his hatemongers from Westboro Baptist). And when Israel was not strong and rich, when there were famines and invasions, the logical explanation was to be found in covenant breaking by the people. And, of course, let us not forget that guilt was passed on from generation to generation, not just in the collective, but to the individual. A child could be punished for the sins of the parent, for generations even, guilt transferred up and down the generations.
By the time of the Exile this theology had already changed dramatically. The theological trajectory of the major prophets came to understand God as a single and good being, what we might loosely label “ethical monotheism.†They also moved away from collective guilt to individual accountability. No longer would a child be punished for the sins of the parent. Even the strong connection between faithful adherence to the covenant and worldly success softened, as it became clear that some individuals behaved faithfully and still suffered in this life.
In Jesus’ earthly ministry we see a complete dismantling of these early theologies. Blood guilt is gone (though it is re-introduced in the form of “original sin†centuries later) and faith no longer means worldly success. In fact, the Gospels make clear that many will suffer for their faith!
None of this should come as a shock to the average Mainline Protestant. We may not be as skilled as we might like at following the trajectory, at sorting through the scripture with its diversity of belief and disorder, but we know that Jesus never promises Simon Peter a mansion and jewels. But many Christians have been following the prosperity heresy in recent years, and the greatest huckster leading people away from Christ has been Joel Osteen. Continue reading “Selling Snake Oil”