Does God want you to be rich? Actually, that is not MY
question; it comes from TIME magazine(1) a few weeks ago. The
cover story asks precisely that and notes that a growing number
of Protestant evangelists raise a joyful YES in response.
Listen:
When George Adams lost his job at an Ohio tile factory
last October, the most practical thing he did, he
thinks, was go to a new church, even though he had to
move his wife and four preteen boys to Conroe, a suburb
of Houston, to do it. Conroe, you see, is not far from
Lakewood, the home church of megapastor and best-selling author Joel Osteen.
Osteen's relentlessly upbeat television sermons had
helped Adams, 49, get through the hard times, and now
Adams was expecting the smiling, Texas-twanged 43-year-old to help boost him back toward success. And Osteen
did. Inspired by the preacher's insistence that one of
God's top priorities is to shower blessings on
Christians in this lifetime--and by the corollary
assumption that one of the worst things a person can do
is to expect anything less--Adams marched into Gullo
Ford in Conroe looking for work. He didn't have entry-level aspirations: "God has showed me that he doesn't
want me to be a run-of-the-mill person," he explains.
He demanded to know what the dealership's top salesmen
made--and got the job. Banishing all doubt--"You can't
sell a $40,000-to-$50,000 car with menial thoughts"--Adams took four days to retail his first vehicle, a
Ford F-150 Lariat with leather interior. He knew that
many fellow salesmen don't notch their first score
until their second week. "Right now, I'm above
average!" he exclaims. "It's a new day God has given
me! I'm on my way to a six-figure income!"...
"I'm dreaming big--because all of heaven is dreaming
big," Adams continues. "Jesus died for our sins. That
was the best gift God could give us," he says. "But we
have something else. Because I want to follow Jesus
and do what he ordained, God wants to support us. It's
Joel Osteen's ministry that told me. Why would an
awesome and mighty God want anything less for his
children?"
What do you think? The article clearly notes that this is
NOT all the gospels say about money. It notes Jesus' references
to self-denial(2) and his question asking, "What good will it be
for [someone] if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his
soul?"(3) But a growing number of Christians like George Adams,
want to restate the question and ask, "Why not gain the whole
world plus my soul?" This is not a brand new phenomenon. The
Pentecostal televangelists of the 80's preached a gospel of
"Health and Wealth," or "Name It and Claim It," or some such
appellation. It is "Prosperity Theology" - in a nutshell, it
suggests that a God who loves you does not want you to be broke,
and its signature verse could be John 10:10: "I have come that
they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."
Sounds very appealing. In a TIME poll, 17% of Christians
surveyed said they believed precisely that, while a full 61%
believed that God wants people to be prosperous. And 31% agreed
that if you give your money to God, God will bless you with more
money.
I doubt that that would have been the thinking of the young
man in our lesson this morning. He was apparently a pretty sharp
fellow, a first-in-the-class, wildly successful, model citizen
type, even sincerely religious - the kind that Galilean mothers
would want their babies to look up to. He came running. He
threw himself at Jesus' feet. "Good teacher!" he began.
Quickly Jesus answered back, "No flattery! Don't call me
good! Keep that word for God!" It is almost as if Jesus were
trying to curb his enthusiasm.
"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit
adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not
defraud, honor your father and mother.'"
"Teacher, all these I have kept since I was a boy."
Jesus looked at him and loved him. Something must have been
very winsome about this fellow because this is the only place in
the synoptic gospels that indicates Jesus' love for an
individual. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything
you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. Then come, follow me."
Of all the texts about discipleship that we find in the
pages of scripture, none of them is quite as clear as this one
that respectability is not the whole story. Jesus quoted the
commandments which were the basis of the decent life. Without
hesitation the young man said he had kept them all. He had never
harmed anyone. Wonderful. But what GOOD had he done? Well...
Then the word says, "At this the man's face fell. He went away
sad, because he had great wealth."
So the TIME magazine question comes again: "Does God Want
You To Be Rich?" Well, apparently, the answer for this young
fellow is NO.
This Prosperity Gospel movement has bothered a number of
prominent pastors and theologians. Rick Warren, who is the
pastor of another mega-church in southern California and the
author of the wildly popular book, The Purpose Driven Life, finds
the very basis of Prosperity laughable. "This idea that God
wants everybody to be wealthy?", he snorts. "There is a word for
that: baloney. It's creating a false idol. You don't measure
your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of
faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn't
everyone in the church a millionaire?"
Well, scripture has the answer to that. Right here in this
lesson. "Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, 'How
hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!' The
disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again,
'Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of God.'"
By the way, I am sure you have heard a fair amount of
preaching through the years explaining that "camel through the
eye of a needle" phrase. One is that the "Needle's Eye" was the
name of a small gate into the city of Jerusalem, the way one had
to enter after the main gates were closed. In order for someone
to get a camel through this small gate, the camel would have to
be unloaded and bow down to get through the small door. Sounds
good, but unfortunately, there is no evidence that such a small
door was ever called "the needle's eye." One commentator says,
"...worse than the lack of evidence for this conjecture is its
effect in actually undermining the point of the proverb. That
which Jesus presented as ludicrously impossible is turned into a
remote possibility: the rich person, given sufficient unloading
and humility, might just possibly be able to squeeze in. That
was not what Jesus' proverb meant, and it was not how the
disciples understood it."(4)
According to the text, they were "amazed" to hear what Jesus
said. After all, their culture assumed that the wealthy were
closer to God and their wealth was a visible expression of God's
pleasure with them. For that matter, they had learned early on
that those who kept the commandments were God's special friends.
But the young man who seemed to be the perfect candidate, based
on his wealth and his faithful obedience, was now no longer here.
The disciples' question to Jesus makes sense. "Who then can
be saved?"
"Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is
impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.'"
So the question of the morning returns: "Does God Want You
To Be Rich?" Well, if it takes nothing less than a miracle from
heaven to get a rich person into the kingdom, what do you think
the answer is?
The TIME article again:
"Jesus' words about money don't make us very
comfortable, and people don't want to hear about it,"
notes Collin Hansen, an editor at the evangelical
monthly Christianity Today. Pastors are happy to
discuss from the pulpit hot-button topics like sex and
even politics. But the relative absence of sermons
about money--which the Bible mentions several thousand
times--is one of the more stunning omissions in
American religion, especially among its white middle-class precincts. Princeton University sociologist
Robert Wuthnow says much of the U.S. church "talks
about giving but does not talk about the broader
financial concerns people have, or the pressures at
work. There has long been a taboo on talking candidly
about money."
Sad but true. We ought to preach more about money if for no
other reason than to keep folks from being misguided by some of
this unbiblical justification of our culture's take-no-prisoners
pursuit of prosperity. STUFF does not equate to happiness.
Do you remember the name H. Ross Perot? That's right, the
billionaire who ran for president as an independent in 1992.
Fortune magazine once quoted him as saying, "Guys, just remember,
if you get lucky, if you make a lot of money, if you get out and
buy a lot of stuff--it's gonna break. You got your biggest,
fanciest mansion in the world. It has air conditioning. It's
got a pool. Just think of all the pumps that are going to go
out. Or go to a yacht basin any place in the world. Nobody is
smiling, and I'll tell you why. Something broke that morning.
The generator's out; the microwave oven doesn't work...Things
just don't mean happiness."(5)
Harvard Medical School psychologist Steven Berglas has
written a book called The Success Syndrome. He has found that
individuals who in his word "suffer" from success have arrogance
and a sense of aloneness. Insider trader Dennis Levine was asked
by his wife why he needed the money from insider trading and he
really had no answer. Levine says that when his income was
$100,000, he hungered for $200,000, and when he was making $1
million, he hungered for $3 million. Berglas says that oddly
enough people who find that $200,000 did not make them happy
never asked themselves why they thought $300,000 would make them
happy.(6)
Last week, the program Marketplace(7) on National Public Radio
had an intriguing story. Ihsan Khan was raised by subsistence
farmers in a hut in the impoverished Himalayan town of Battagram.
But when he was 18, he scored his first break: a visa to America.
He went to Chicago and later, Washington, D.C. For the next
twenty years, he scraped together a living as a security guard
and a cab driver. And then, one night, he had a very American
dream. He says, "This was something that I saw too many
beautiful things. Like rubies, diamonds...And then I'm speaking
to a lot of people, way too big of a crowd. And then this
number: 246 1725. Powerball 31. He played those numbers for ten
years. And then it paid off - the Pakistani taxi driver hit a
$55 million Powerball jackpot. When he found out, he gave one
last cab ride...for free. Then he bought himself a Mercedes 600,
and a couple million dollar mansions, one in Virginia and one in
Islamabad.
Khan's next move was less predictable. He went back to his
hometown and ran for mayor. His electoral opponents tried to cut
him down by dubbing him the "American Dollar Man." But, if
anything, the dollar value helped and he was elected last
October.
Two days later, a devastating earthquake hit Pakistan. It
killed 3,000 citizens of Battagram. Mayor Khan rose to the
occasion. He was able to bypass the government's inefficient
bureaucracy by dipping directly into his jackpot. He handed out
$300,000 worth of medicine and roofing materials. Khan went to a
camp for earthquake survivors in Battagram. He is not happy with
the thin plastic sheets that serve as home for the thousands
stranded here. But other than giving away cash, he is powerless
to improve things. So it frustrates him when earthquake victims
demand more help. As Khan tries to leave the camp, he is
literally mobbed by survivors. One man blocks him from getting
into his Landcruiser. He asks, "What's the government going to
give us when we go back?" Kahn responds: food, shelter, stove,
blanket, mattresses. The man is not satisfied.
Khan says that before he was a multimillionaire mayor, he
did not think much of welfare. But now that he is loaded, he
says he has realized two things about money: that everyone is
greedy for it, and that it cannot always fix everything.
So, one more time: Does God Want You To Be Rich? You can
answer for yourself. I will leave you with the answer of one
Bonnie Jean Comazzi of Sonora, California whose letter to the
editor in response to the article reads, "Without a doubt, God
wants us to enjoy abundance. But [God] wants us to be rich in
love, mercy, forgiveness, hope and faith. Earthly riches are
temporary. Godly riches are eternal."(8)
Amen!
1. Article by David Van Biema & Jeff Chu, September 18, 2006, pp. 48-56
2. Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23
3. Matthew 16:26; Mark 8:26; Luke 9:25
4. Brian Stoffregen via Ecunet, "Gospel Notes for Next Sunday," #13334, 10/8/06
5. http://www.esermons.com/theWeeklyDetails.asp?weekly_id=714
6. ibid.
7. 10/5/06
8. TIME, 10/8/06, p. 10
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