Gospel of Wealth' Facing Scrutiny.

[Johnboy60]

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4057519

 

[Ave Maria]

The so called "prosperity Gospel" is nothing more than false doctrine and should be criticised.

 

[Morcova]

A fool and his money is quickly seperated.

 

[platzapS]

The so called "prosperity Gospel" is nothing more than false doctrine and should be criticised.

Jesus' messages can be interpreted lots of ways, from libertarian to socialist to communist, literalist, mystical, evangelical, hermetic and a host of other beliefs. But the prosperity gospel message is such an incredible misrepresentation of Jesus' teachings that it makes me, an atheist, angry. If the canonical gospels are right about anything at all in Jesus' teachings, that thing is that Jesus preached for the poor and criticized the materially rich.

"How can I get to heaven?"
Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.

The idea that Jesus' words can be twisted into an ideology promoting material gain and unabashed greed shows how powerful cognitive dissonance is. People want to be seen as Christians, and they want to be able to be greedy, so they accept the prosperity gospel even though any objective look at the real gospels shows the two ideas fundamentally opposed.

 

[UberLutheran]

Gee: so God the Cosmic ATM doesn't dispense money, wealth and prosperity when we request them?

One could end up thinking that God wanted more from us than "Gimme, gimme, gimme."

 

[BlackAndy]

People like this make it hard for missionaries, etc. to get money for the real work God wants us to do.

 

[simplicity]

It's a hard sell sometimes - that Christianity is not a path to riches. It's very much an investor's perspective to think that a small contribution from him today will pay off as huge compounded returns in the future.

I guess the harsh reality is that we just plain belong to God. House, car, family, bank accounts, Persian rugs, coffee supplies, whatever. It's not the master who owes the cash. The master handed over some cash. We earn interest for the master. He gets the cash and the interest.

Obviously the concept of rich rewards is inconsistent with most religions. I must say though there is great peace in accepting that material things have no inherent value. I don't actually own my pick-up truck. It belongs to the Creator.