As we head into Thanksgiving (for USAians), lots of people are focusing on things to be thankful for. There’s nothing wrong with that – not at all! But there’s also a lot of crap that we shouldn’t be thankful for.
Prosperity Theology (aka “health and wealth theology”) is one of them.
Advocates of this doctrine – sometimes called the “Prosperity Gospel” – is entirely made up of dupes and the greedy who prey upon them. BAR NONE.
The quick version of this bullshirt preaching is simple: The more faithful you are (and the more you give to preachers who spout this carp), the better off you are physically, mentally, and financially. To quote Wikipedia:
Prosperity theology views the Bible as a contract between God and humans: if humans have faith in God, he will deliver security and prosperity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
This idea is forking evil. I cannot stress this enough. It is blaming the victim writ large. Bad things happening to you? This worldview claims it’s your fault – you’re not faithful enough, you’re not praying hard enough, and you’re definitely not giving enough money to those preaching the prosperity gospel.
How horrific an idea is that? It’s the ultimate predatory scam: if results don’t match expectations, it’s still the fault of the sick, poor, and disadvantaged. This kind of thinking destroys people and destroys faith.
And yet it’s a major movement, with some of the major movers and shakers including names you’ve probably heard of, including Oral Roberts, the Swaggarts, T. D. Jakes, Guillermo Maldonado, Joel Osteen, and Paula White.
What’s worse, is that it doesn’t even mesh with the Bible. Like, at all.
Aside from the Gospels and Acts (y’know, where the Son of God and His most faithful get killed for believing), there’s the entire book of Job.
If you’re unfamiliar, this book in the Old Testament outlines a bet between God and Satan that a prosperous and faithful man (Job) will renounce his faith in God if he loses everything. God agrees to the bet, then begins to systematically destroy Job’s wealth and slaughters Job’s family until Job is left penniless. Job’s “friends” sound like prosperity preachers themselves. Instead of rallying around their friend, they insinuate that Job must have been sinful to deserve such punishment.
Except that’s not the case. Job remains faithful throughout, eventually having a new family and new wealth granted to him by God after the bet is over [1].
This entire book of the Bible is expressly a rebuttal of prosperity theology. There is no way that someone claiming to be a Christian preacher would be unaware of this book in the Bible and the message it contains. Yet they still preach the opposite, not caring that it goes against the very faith they claim to spread.
And that’s why I say that everyone involved with prosperity theology is either duped or an evil greedy fartwaffle deliberately preying upon others.
Prosperity theology, you are something that no-one should be grateful for.
Where’s the Inquisition when you need them?
Featured Photo by Stephen Radford on Unsplash
(PS – I love that the featured photo has the book of Ecclesiastes showing. “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?”)
[1] There’s issues with the way that God “answers” Job’s questions about why this happened to him – and it paints God as a bit of a dick. I mean, if nothing else, “Hey, I killed your old wife and kids, so here’s a new wife and kids,” (Job 42:12-17) is amazingly clueless.