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What do Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and Jesse Duplantis have in common? They all promote a form of Christianity that preaches a good and easy life. Tim Staples breaks down the reasons why the prosperity gospel is dangerous and exposes the pitfalls of this theology.
Cy Kellet:
Tim Staples, Catholic Apologist, thanks for being with us.
Tim Staples:
It is great to be with you, Cy Kellet.
Cy Kellet:
I want to talk to you about the prosperity gospel. And this is something that really is big. The prosperity gospel is really big, and I do sometimes feel a pang of guilt that we don’t talk about it enough, because there is a cogent and very important Catholic response to it. But let me start with this. A lot of the scripture reads like the prosperity gospel, so it doesn’t seem entirely insane.
Tim Staples:
Yes. Yeah, exactly. If you read, especially much of the Old Testament, and we have to remember, the Kingdom of God in the Old Testament was almost entirely focused in this world. If you notice in the Old Testament, there is very much a this world focus. There’s very little about the next life. Well, why is that? Well, because there was very little revealed. Really it’s in Jesus Christ that we have revealed the reality of Heaven as the possession of God in the beatific vision, for example, which there was no concept of that in the Old Testament. There was little understanding of a sense of the communion of saints. Right? Even Heaven, hell, and yes, in Maccabees you see there’s a kind of purgatory, a place where purification is happening. But the place of the dead was understood as a sort of nebulous sort of existence, but again, very mysterious and not much is known about it. And therefore, it’s not spoken of. It’s very much focused in this world.
Tim Staples:
And so, the blessings, all the texts we could look at, just read the Psalms, of the blessings that God bestows upon people. “Blessed is the man who has this quiver full of children.” If you do right, God’s going to bless you with tons of children. Right? If you do well, God’s going to bless you with cattle. “And the cattle on a thousand hills belongs to the Lord.” Right? “And the Lord blesses those who obey him.” We could go to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30, where Moses lays it out. If you obey God’s laws, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to have cattle. You’re going to have boom, boom, boom. You’re going to have stuff. If you don’t, you’re going to die. Okay? But the focus is on this world.
Cy Kellet:
For the individual, but also for the collective.
Tim Staples:
The collective.
Cy Kellet:
The people, God’s people, God’s chosen people. Yeah.
Tim Staples:
Absolutely. And we should notice that even in the Old Testament, God throws a curve ball in there. Right? It’s called the Book of Job, where God reminds the Israelites, or I would say, reveals to Israel the fact that, “No, it’s not you put your quarter in here, you get your gumball. You say your prayers and keep the law, you get tons of cows and whatnot. Because God is a sovereign God, and He has a plan, as Job found out.” Job was the just man. And remember Job’s friends.
Tim Staples:
It’s hard for us to even fathom the power of that book in a Jewish culture that was very much focused on this world and the blessings of this life being a sign that you’re in a covenant relationship with God. And then you have this job story come along, where it’s not the devil who even has the idea of testing Job. Remember?
Cy Kellet:
Yeah.
Tim Staples:
It’s God who has the idea. Because Job chapter one, when the Lucifer is going up and he is what Revelation 12 would later reveal to be “the constant accuser of the brethren.” In fact, Revelation 12 is referring back to Job 1 where he refers to him as “the constant accuser of the brethren.” He’s going up before the throne of God, and he’s saying to God, he’s accusing this one and that one and this one. And of course, damnation is his goal for all of humanity, to be miserable like he is. Right? Misery loves company on steroids.
Cy Kellet:
It’s like socialism. Shared misery.
Tim Staples:
Sort of like socialism. Exactly. Not to get political here, but yes. Anyway, the point is, it’s God who says to Job, or God who says to the devil, “Have you considered my servant Job?” And of course, the devil says, “You’ve got a hedge around him. I can’t touch him. But if you remove that hedge, he will curse you to your face.” And God says, “Have at it. Go for it.”
Tim Staples:
And of course, the devil takes everything from him. And wait a minute. That’s not God blessing those who obey. And notice Job’s friends. It’s like, “Okay. Where’s your sin? Admit you’re a sinner, because obviously this is happening to you because you’ve sinned.” And Job, my goodness, what a righteous man he was. You know what I’d be saying. “You’re right, man. I’m a sinner.”
Cy Kellet:
Yeah. Right.
Tim Staples:
But there is an image of Christ in the person of Job here, because he is the righteous man. He is the just man. But God pours out or allows the devil to pour out judgment on him. And in the end, it’s not just for Job, but for his friends and for all of us. In fact, in the end, remember, his friends, God wouldn’t even hear their prayers. He says, “You tell Job to pray for you.” Right? It’s a powerful image of Christ and the community of saints and so forth.
Tim Staples:
But the bottom line is, it doesn’t fit into the narrative that you so often see in the Old Testament of material prosperity. So even in the Old Testament, we find that the prosperity gospel does not work. But when it comes to the New Covenant, here’s what I would like to do, Cy, is I’d like to do a couple of things. Number one, I’d like the folks to understand the foundation. Where did this come from? Other than, yeah, there’s an Old Testament reality here, then you can see how someone could be led too far in the direction of material prosperity being the sign of the Covenant. By the way, Calvinists famously, John Calvin and the Calvinists in general, swallowed this hook, line, and sinker, in as much as it’s material prosperity that’s the sign-
Cy Kellet:
The sign, yeah.
Tim Staples:
… of you’re one of the elect, hence Manifest Destiny, hence “look at these savage Indians.”
Cy Kellet:
Max Weber and capitalism being the consequence of this.
Tim Staples:
Absolutely.
Cy Kellet:
Of this Calvinism. Yeah.
Tim Staples:
That these Indians are running around in loincloths here. Kill them, exile them, whatever you want to do, because they’re not God’s people. All of that ties in here. But here I think is what a lot of Catholics do not know is the foundation, theologically speaking. And I can tell you as a former Assembly of God Youth Minister, to become a Senior Pastor in the Assembly of God, you’ve got to sign off on what’s called the 16 Tenets. It’s called the 16 Tenets or 16 Fundamentals of the Christian faith that all pastors in the Assembly of God have to sign off on.
Tim Staples:
Well, one of those 16 tenets is, to believe that when in Isaiah 53:3-5, quoted in 1 Peter 2:24, says of Christ and His atonement, “By His stripes we were healed.” Now, if you back up to verse 22, it says, “Christ, though He was the Son, He was beaten, He was tortured and so forth. And by His stripes,” I’m skipping down there to verse 24, “by His stripes, we were healed.” You and I, as Catholics, understand that this is speaking of Christ’s crucifixion and the entirety of His life and especially His passion, where He suffered for our salvation. Right?
Tim Staples:
Yeah.
Cy Kellet:
Well, from a Protestant perspective, classically, they get it wrong about this when it comes to salvation, because there is this belief among Protestants, follow me on this, Cy, this is about to get good right here.
Tim Staples:
Okay.
Cy Kellet:
All right? There’s a belief among Protestants that “by His stripes, we have been healed” means at the point of faith or if you’re a Calvinist, at the point God chooses you. But if you’re an evangelical, more along the lines of a Charles Stanley, Norman Geisler, at the point of faith, when you declare faith in God, God justifies you. “By His stripes, you were healed.” You are transformed entirely. Your sins are gone, past, present, and future. Right? Ah, a horrible heresy. Right? And it is a horrible heresy, because it leads to presumption and all sorts of problems.
Cy Kellet:
And of course, the Bible knows nothing of this, folks. 1 John 1:8-9 says, “If we say we have no sin, we are a liar, and truth is not in him. But if we confess our sin,” and that’s talking to Christians, “He is faithful and just to forgive us.” No. Our future sins aren’t forgiven. If we sin, we have to be forgiven. There’s so many biblical texts we could look at, Matthew 6:14, “If you don’t forgive your brother,” and he’s talking to Christians, folks, “if you don’t figure brother, neither will God forgive you.” We could go down the list of examples like this.
Cy Kellet:
I don’t care how born again you are or baptized, whatever. You don’t forgive your brother, you’re going to hell. Okay?
Tim Staples:
Yeah.
Cy Kellet:
Bottom line.
Tim Staples:
Right.
Cy Kellet:
You’re not going to be forgiven. Okay? And we can say, “Blessed all the merciful,” Matthew 5:9. So many other texts. “They will receive mercy.” If you want mercy, give mercy. If you don’t, you ain’t getting it. All right. So all of these we could look at and more help us to understand that no, “By His stripes we were healed” does not mean that it’s just one profession of faith. We are healed, all sins or forgiven, past, present, future. No. We enter into, through the merits of Christ, the infinite merits of Christ, we enter into a real living relationship with Jesus Christ through the sacraments.
Cy Kellet:
Baptism incorporates us into Jesus Christ, and then we walk as, 1 John 1:7 says, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light.” Right? We have fellowship with God or fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, continues to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Right? We’re walking with the Lord in an ongoing living, loving relationship. And if we endure in that relationship until the end, we will be safe, says Jesus in Matthew 10:22.
Cy Kellet:
So justification, salvation, redemption for us as Catholics, and from a biblical perspective, is a lifelong process. It’s not just a one time deal. Okay? Now that is a fatal flaw among, generally speaking, all Protestants. Not all, because you have Church of Christ and you have some that are Armenians, Armenians, meaning you can lose your salvation. They don’t have the full understanding, but they do have a closer understanding to this idea that no, it’s a lifetime relationship contingent on our cooperation. All right?
Cy Kellet:
But now, when it comes to the prosperity gospel, well, what happens is, and again, you see this in the Assemblies of God, in one of the 16 Fundamentals of the Faith, they teach that that text, 1 Peter 2:24, quoting Isaiah 53:3-5, especially verse five, “By His stripes we were healed” applies not only to our salvation, but to our physical healing Cy Kellet.
Tim Staples:
Yes.
Cy Kellet:
This became foundational to the Pentecostal movement that famously began in 1906 at the famous Azusa Street Revival that kind of gave birth to the Pentecostal movement in the United States, and it spread all over the world.
Cy Kellet:
So let me just understand something then, because then with the Joyce Myers and the Kenneth Copelands and the Joel Osteens of the world, if what they’re saying is that already He has healed your body, the consequence of that is that if you’re not healed, then that means what? You don’t have faith?
Tim Staples:
Amen.
Cy Kellet:
Okay. So now-
Tim Staples:
How do you know you’re saved then?
Cy Kellet:
How is that different from blaming the victim? Do you see what I’m saying? That’s like saying to the person with cancer, “You have cancer because of your lack of faith.”
Tim Staples:
Yeah. Yeah. You’re exactly right. And I’m going to share a story, a very painful story for me, having come out… And folks, I’ve come out of this tradition, but I have to say, even when I was still Assemblies of God, I kind of saw through it. And in a kind of odd sort of way, it actually played into my eventual conversion to the Catholic faith, because I had already seen there was a problem with this theology of the one time deal in Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24. And when my Catholic friend explained the truth of the nature of that text, it really clicked with me. Oh my gosh.
Tim Staples:
But here’s the bottom line. Okay, first of all, we know, the Bible is so plain, and one text that I like to use because it is so simple, is Romans 8:23, where St. Paul talks about in that text, how we, oh boy, can I relate to this, we groan together with all of creation. Right?
Cy Kellet:
Right, right.
Tim Staples:
Right? Awaiting what? The redemption of our bodies. Right? Our bodies are not redeemed yet. I’m looking at Cy Kellet right now. I know his body is not redeemed.
Cy Kellet:
A lot of people look and go, “That is clearly redeemed.” But they’re not right. It’s not.
Tim Staples:
It’s not. It’s not redeemed. Right. So our bodies are not redeemed yet, but the funny thing is, you could say that 1 Peter 2:24, “By His stripes you were healed” does apply to our entire person.
Cy Kellet:
Sure.
Tim Staples:
But the application of those graces, merited by Christ on the cross, happen over a lifetime. And in the case of the redemption of the body, it does not happen until the end of time. Now we do participate in that reality of “By His stripes we are healed” in the healing ministry that goes on in the church. We see that in Matthew 8, famously verses 14-17, where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law. The scriptures says there when He healed her, “that the scripture might be fulfilled,” which said and quotes Isaiah 53, the text that says “He bore our sins and our diseases. By His stripes we were healed.”
Tim Staples:
So there is an application here, but the problem is, that presumption that comes from the understanding, analogous to the Protestant who says, “My sins are forgiven, past, present, future, because the Bible says so, ‘By His stripes, I have already been healed.’ So I am justified. I am saved.” That leads to incredible presumption, when in fact, we have to fight the good fight in order to endure until enemy is saved.
Tim Staples:
Well, in the case of this healing, it is extremely dangerous. I’ll never forget, years back, I used to have a ministry when I was a Protestant, fire-breathing Pentecostal. I’m in the Marines. At one parish I went to, they gave me a church bus. It was actually a 16-seat van, and I used to bring Marines and sailors to church every Sunday. Right? I would evangelize on base, bring them in. “I don’t care if you’re hung over, we’re going to, not mass, church.” We called it church. “We’re going to church.”
Tim Staples:
Well, I would also drive on some occasions to crusades and things around other churches, if there were big events and whatnot. And so, there was a crusade at, and I remember it was the Eagle’s Nest Christian Fellowship. Pastor Gary Greenwald. It was a massive megachurch. And so, there was a healing sort of crusade. I think it was a Wednesday night. And so, I rounded up, and not just Marines and sailors, but also some we call townies.
Cy Kellet:
Oh, yeah.
Tim Staples:
We’d bring them, too. And there was this one girl, beautiful, one of the most beautiful women. This is one of those inside and out absolutely beautiful human beings, just the sweetest girl, totally caught up in the health and wealth gospel. But we go to the crusade and man, it was fired up and they’re preaching and shouting hallelujah and everybody got saved. And then there was the healing and people were having hands laid on him, fall out and all that. Well, she had gone forward and “got slain in the spirit” as we used to call it. Right?
Tim Staples:
So after the crusade, I get everybody in the van and I’m taking them home. And I noticed, let me just call her Cheryl. I don’t want to use her real name here. But she was all the way in the back in that 16-seat van. Actually, I think it was more than 16-seat. But anyway, a lot of folks could get in that van. She was in the back sleeping. So I purposely took everybody else home first. And so, I took her home last.
Tim Staples:
And when I got to her house, I said, and I’ll call her Cheryl, “Cheryl, you’re home. Wake up.” She didn’t move. “Cheryl, wake up.” I went back there, Cy, and I will never forget this. I went to shake her. I grabbed her shoulder like this to shake her, to wake her up. And she was ice cold and just dripping sweat. Right? And her head was on the seat in front of her, the back of the seat in front of her. And I shook her like this. And so I shook her harder and her head rolled back and her eyes rolled up in her head. And of course, I was a Pentecostal, so I started saying, “In the name of Jesus, you are healed. You demon of whatever come out of her.”
Cy Kellet:
Wow.
Tim Staples:
But very quickly, Cy, I realized, “This ain’t working. She’s not recovering.” I ran up to her house. I beat on the door. And it was late by that time. It was probably midnight or something. I’m banging on the door. She lived with her parents still. She was like 20 years old. And I’m banging on the door, and her mother comes to the door and I say, “I’m sorry, but Cheryl, I can’t wake her up. She’s passed out.” And her mother knew immediately. Cy, she was diabetic.
Cy Kellet:
Oh.
Tim Staples:
Her mother knew me. She went and got orange juice and put sugar in it and was stirring it up as we were running out to the van. And I pulled her head up again and she tried to get orange juice in her. She was too far gone. She was in a diabetic coma. And we got her to the emergency room, and thank God she lived. I found out she would later go blind.
Cy Kellet:
Oh, the poor woman.
Tim Staples:
But the reason why this happened is she got a hold of this prosperity health, wealth gospel that says, as Joel Osteen says, “This is my Bible. I have what it says I have. And among the blessings you have is material prosperity and-”
Cy Kellet:
Healing.
Tim Staples:
… healing.” And you know what she said? In her mind, and she told me this later. She said she heard the preacher preach. “If you’re healed, why are you taking medicine?”
Cy Kellet:
Oh, lord.
Tim Staples:
“Sick people take medicine. You’re healed. The Word of God says. So if you take medicine, that’s a lack of faith. You’re healed.” You don’t have to wonder when you profess faith in Jesus, “Are my sins gone? They’re gone.” They say in the same way, “Your healing is gone.” Folks, this is extremely dangerous. And I say this, the health and wealth gospel in general is dangerous. The Protestant doctrine of “once saved, always saved” is extremely dangerous. That’s really the foundation that leads to this other.
Tim Staples:
But here’s the bottom line. Once you go in this direction of prosperity, it’s incredible. And I know, because I was there for a time when I was in the Assembly of God. When you see verses of scripture like 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Christ, though He was rich, He was made poor that we might be made rich in Him.” Oh, baby. That’s pocket book time right there. And of course, that’s not speaking of pocket books, though God does bless whom He wills. And many of us do experience material prosperity and whatnot.
Tim Staples:
The New Testament gives you a stern warning if you’re one of those who are materially prosperous, because Jesus says, “Very few of them will make it to heaven.” The New Testament is very clear. “Blessed are the poor.” And I know I used to say, “Well, Luke’s gospel, in the Beatitudes says ‘poor in spirit.'” Yeah, well Matthew says “Blessed are the poor.” And I think James, kind of like Matthew’s version there, because in James 2:5, the scripture says… To James, he’s writing to those who are honoring the rich and putting them up in the front pew and the poor were in the back. He says, “Hath not God chosen the poor to be rich in faith?”
Tim Staples:
And look at verse six, he says, “Isn’t it the rich who oppress you? And you’re going to honor them?” There is a preference for the poor in the New Testament. But see, when you look at texts like 2 Corinthians 8:9, “He became poor that we might be made rich.” And you have that Old Testament mentality or you have this false theology.
Cy Kellet:
Rich means stuff. It means you’ve got a lot of stuff.
Tim Staples:
It means stuff. It means “By His stripes we were healed,” everything belongs to Christians. “It’s our inheritance. The world belongs to us. The cattle on a thousand hills belongs to the Lord and He’s given it to us. This is ours, baby.” You get carried away in that, so that when you see Luke 6:38, and I used to preach these folks. Right? Give, and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Like if you put a bunch of things in a jar, if you shake them together, they fall down a little bit. Well, God’s going to fill that back up and then it’s going to be running over. And of course we’re talking about money, aren’t we?
Tim Staples:
And the answer is no.
Cy Kellet:
No.
Tim Staples:
What is so sad, is when you go down that road, all these verses that talk about blessing become dollars, and kind of ancillary, “Yeah. Well, God’s going to bless you spiritually, too.” Whereas actually, it’s the opposite. And here’s what I toss out to folks. If you know folks, maybe family members that are caught up with this, here’s some things you can do to really help folks, and I’ll tell you what helped me.
Tim Staples:
When you look at 1 Peter chapter 2:22-24, the very text that quotes Isaiah, “By His stripes we are healed.” What you will never hear the TV preachers say is verse 21, because verse 21 comes right before 22. Am I right, or is my math off?
Cy Kellet:
I think you’re still good on that. Yeah.
Tim Staples:
All right. I think 21 comes before 22. St. Peter had just said, “We are called to walk in His footsteps, who though He was the Son of God was beaten and tortured. And by His stripes we were healed.” We’re called to be beaten and tortured. How often does Jesus say it? In Luke 9:23, right? “Unless a man take up his cross daily and follow me, he cannot be my disciple.” Not one time, but daily. How many times does Jesus… We could go through so many.
Tim Staples:
But in Luke 9:57-62, we have some of the plainest words from Jesus. You remember when a man comes up to Jesus and says, “Jesus. I’ve seen you heal. What must I do? I want to follow you.” And what does Jesus say? “Oh, come follow me. All you got to do is say the Sinner’s Prayer.”
Cy Kellet:
Nope.
Tim Staples:
“And God’s going to bless you.” No. He says, “Foxes have holes. Birds have nests. The Son of Man hath not a place to lay His head.” The implication being, “If you follow me, this is what awaits you. Are you sure you want to follow?”
Cy Kellet:
Right. Yeah.
Tim Staples:
And then, two more come up to Him and say, “Lord, I want to follow you. But first, let me go back and say hi to the folks at the house.” And He says, “No, man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the Kingdom.” But the one that really gets me is the second one where the guy says, “I want to follow you, but let me first bury my father.”
Cy Kellet:
I know.
Tim Staples:
And Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead. You come follow me.” This is the gospel. The gospel calls us to a gospel of suffering. St. Paul obviously got that memo, because in Romans 8:35-39, St. Paul says, “Nothing shall separate us from God.” Right? But what does he say? He says, “We are,” especially in verses, what is it? It’d be about 35, 36, 37, 38. Right? Where He says, “We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. We are killed all the day long.” Right? But He says, “In all of these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who has loved us.” In what things? Being slaughtered all the day long. This is Christianity. Welcome to Christianity, folks. It’s called taking up your cross and following, and offering your suffering.
Tim Staples:
See, there’s this false understanding that Jesus, especially rooted in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Jesus became poor so that we could be rich.” “So Jesus, yeah. He had to be beaten and crucified. Thank God I don’t.” No. We’re called to walk in His footsteps. We’re called to take up our cross. In fact, St. Paul says in Colossians 1:24 that, “We are called to join our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ.” He says, “We’re called to fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, in our bodies.” I’m putting in the plural. Paul puts it in the singular. “In our bodies, for His body, which is the church.”
Tim Staples:
What you have in the prosperity gospel is so absolutely opposite to what St. Paul, to what Jesus teaches in the New Covenant. You can see how folks can skew some verses and just ignore all of these others, and come up with that prosperity gospel. But folks, that gospel, trust me, as one who used to believe it, it is weak. It is poor. And I will guarantee you this, that gospel simply does not work.
Cy Kellet:
Nope.
Tim Staples:
When a mother has just held her baby that is gasping for its last breaths after just being born, and that baby dies in her arms, and she has been calling out to God, “Please heal my baby.” Where does “By His stripes we were healed” fit in that scenario? What ends up, and you said it earlier, what ends up happening, it’s your faith. Your faith.
Cy Kellet:
It’s cruel.
Tim Staples:
Your faith is the problem. It is so cruel. It’s contrary to the gospel. It’s contrary to even the Book of Job. It’s contrary to what St. Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 12:6, and following where St. Paul talks about how “The messenger of Satan was sent by God to buffet him.” That’s what he said. “The messenger of Satan was sent by God.” Just as in the case of Job, it was God’s idea. Right?
Cy Kellet:
Yeah. Right.
Tim Staples:
The devil doesn’t do anything without God’s permission, and Paul knew that. And so, when he said “The messenger of Satan was sent by God to buffet me, lest I be exalted to the abundance of revelations I’ve received.” St. Paul prayed three times. He said, “Lord, please remove this.” He called it the thorn in the flesh. We don’t know what it was, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t want it. He said, three times, “Please remove this.” And Jesus said, “No, no, and no.” And the words Jesus used is, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for in your weakness, I am made strong.” And St. Paul could say, and please hear me. He said, “I will therefore glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell upon me.”
Tim Staples:
As one who has just been through a major stroke seven months ago, I can testify to this, that God is at work in the midst of the suffering. God calls us to suffer. He calls us to the cross, but we also know justice with the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, there was a fourth man in the fire. Jesus doesn’t say, He’s going deliver us all of our trials. He says, “I will be with you in the midst of the fire.” And the blessing, Cy, I told you about the article. In fact, it’s two articles ago on my blog at timstaples.com. I wrote an article, I recommend y’all read it, called The Blessing of Having a Stroke, where I’ve experienced in the last seven months just a little taste of what St. Paul is talking about. How that God sends the thorns in the flesh. God blesses us.
Tim Staples:
As Bishop Sheen says, and I’ll recommend to y’all, “Do your own penance.” Okay? “Do it now and do lots of it.” Because as Bishop Sheen says, “If you don’t, God will assign you some penance.” And believe me, He loves you lots. He’ll give you lots. All right? Because God has ultimately our good, though. We can know that in the midst of the cross, it’s in the midst of the suffering. It’s “Yea though I walk through the valley of death.” That’s what we’re called to. That’s Psalm 23 in the Old Testament. It’s walking in the valley of the shadow of death, where we realize, Ecclesiastes 9:5, right? “The living know that they must die.”
Tim Staples:
When we really have that understanding of what we’re called to, ultimately, it’s to suffer and die with Jesus on the cross so that we can experience resurrected life. You begin to see that it’s in the suffering that the real transformation takes place, because as Bishop Fulton Sheen once said, “Any theology or any spirituality that attempts to bypass the crucifixion to get to the resurrection is a sign of the demonic.” That’s what Peter said. “No.” When Jesus said, “I’ve got to go to the cross.” “Oh no. Didn’t you get the memo? We’re going to take over the world.” “Get the behind me, Satan.” We’re called to the cross. And isn’t it something? Peter didn’t know it, but he was called to that same… At that time, he didn’t know it.
Cy Kellet:
No, he didn’t. Right, right.
Tim Staples:
But he knew and he would later embrace his cross. St. Peter would understand, you better believe it, that it’s in the crucifixion that we experience resurrected life. And the sad thing is, that woman with that two-day old baby dying in her arms, when she understands that, she has a reason for hope, even in the midst of that pain. She has a reason to even experience what the inspired author of Hebrews says, in Hebrews chapter 12, referring to Jesus on the cross, it says, “Who endured the cross, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down now at the right hand to the Father.”
Tim Staples:
This is a great mystery, Cy. But it’s in the midst of the suffering that transformation is taking place. And you and I, as Christians, of course, when people suffer terribly, we need to be like Jesus and be with them, to hold their hand, to pray with them and pray for them. But to encourage them to suffer well, to embrace that cross, because ultimately, that’s our salvation. If you look away from the cross to material prosperity, to all of that stuff-
Cy Kellet:
None of this makes sense.
Tim Staples:
… you are missing the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ that says we must take up our cross to be saved.
Cy Kellet:
Tim, thank you for that, because I do think this is an affliction in the world, this name it and claim it prosperity gospel. But nonetheless, I want to return to one thing that you said before we close. And quoting St. Paul, that “He did become poor so that we can become rich.”
Tim Staples:
Yes he did.
Cy Kellet:
So I just want you to give me the Catholic view. What does that mean that we become rich?
Tim Staples:
Yeah. What it means, and I think St. Paul describes it so well in Philippians 2:5-10, one of the most, I say the beautiful of all the Pauline pericopes. It says, “Christ, though He was a Son, thought not His equality with God something to be clung to, but He emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a slave.” That Greek word there is kenosis, self-emptied. He emptied Himself of all of His divine prerogatives. Right? In the fact that He had the beatific vision from the moment of His conception, He was the one who was owed Heaven from the moment of His existence because He merited it. Right?
Cy Kellet:
Yes.
Tim Staples:
He was owed not just Heaven, but the glory of Heaven, because He already possessed Heaven by nature, from the instant of His incarnation. But He emptied Himself of all of the glory, all the divine prerogatives, and the impassability, and everything that was His by right. He emptied Himself in order that He might suffer and die for us. Because remember, as God, He can’t suffer and die. And even as a man with the beatific vision, He could not suffer and die. He had to give up that glorified, the fullness of the manifestation of a glorified body, because that’s why the catechism says, “He took upon Himself our wayward state so that He could suffer for our redemption.” Right?
Tim Staples:
So that’s becoming poor, emptied of all those divine prerogatives, so that you and I could become rich. And by His grace then, He calls us through, the sacraments. The sacrament of baptism, we become incorporated into His body, so that we are called to live what He lived. As the catechism says, “His obedience becomes our obedience. Our disobedience is transformed by our entrance into Him and allowing Him to live in us, with us, and through us,” as St. Paul describes it in Galatians 2:20.
Tim Staples:
And that’s why we have to understand, we’re called to be configured to His life, death, burial, in order to experience the resurrection. We must do what Jesus did. And the odd thing, and I know I mentioned this before, is by saying, “He became poor so that we might be made rich” means we don’t have to become poor, is missing the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor.” Obviously, Jesus got it wrong, because “Blessed are the poor, why would He say that?” Because “No, no, no. Jesus, don’t you know? You became poor so that-”
Cy Kellet:
So that we don’t have to be.
Tim Staples:
“So we don’t have to be.” No. “Blessed are the poor.”
Tim Staples:
“God chose the poor, rich in faith” says James 2:5. See, this distortion is so profoundly contrary to the gospel, and dangerous as I’ve pointed out. But in the end, the last thing I really want to communicate to folks is that it’s weak and it’s shallow. When you really understand the gospel of suffering and what we’re called to, yeah, it’s daunting. Yes, it’s, “Wow. I’m called to take up my cross.” But guess what? Look around in the world, folks. People are suffering all around the world, and at all times.
Tim Staples:
This is our lot as the result of original sin, and the sin that is really in this world. We are called to be heroes like Jesus, to say, “Bring it on. Bring it on. I am going to join my sufferings with the sufferings of Christ, not only for my own salvation, but so that I might be an instrument to bring salvation to others as well.” That understanding transforms your entire life, gives you a reason to get up, whether you’re in a hospital bed or whether you’re getting up in the morning to go to your work as a bank president or a janitor, it does not matter. We are all called to the same cross, to take up our cross and experience life here and now, so that we can experience it for all eternity.
Cy Kellet:
Tim, thank you very much. God bless.