I sat on the couch with my arms crossed while the credits rolled, when one of my friends asked me, “What did you think of the movie?”
“Aside from the sub-par acting?” I replied. “I think it had a terrible message.”
“What do you mean? It’s a movie about people becoming Christian. What’s so terrible about that?”
“Nothing,” I said. “But the movie’s message was that if you accept Jesus as your savior, your car will start running again, your wife won’t be infertile anymore, and the football team you coach will win the big game. But the Christian life doesn’t always work out that way. This movie preached a false prosperity gospel.”
The roots of prosperity theology
Prosperity theology, which is also called the “prosperity gospel” or the “health and wealth gospel,” can be traced back to the New Thought movement of late nineteenth-century America. Adherents of this movement, many of whom were not Christian, claimed that the mind had power over reality that could be used to cure disease or even poverty.
The Baptist preacher E.W. Kenyon (1867-1948) criticized the content of New Thought mantras such as “I am well, I am well, I am happy, I am happy” but not the method itself. He replaced mantras with prayers and taught that because God used the spoken word to create the world, believers could use “faith-filled” words to change the it. According to Duke Divinity School professor Kate Bowler:
Kenyon taught that Jesus transferred the “power of attorney” to all those who use his name. Prayer took on binding legal qualities as believers followed Jesus’ formula: “If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14). Kenyon replaced the word “ask” with “demand,” since petitioners were entitled to the legal benefits of Jesus’ name (Blessed: A History of American Prosperity Gospel, 20).
Prosperity theology became popular among Pentecostals who believed a person could know God favored him through the reception of spiritual gifts (or charisms). These gifts were usually things like prophesy or speaking in tongues, but the gifts of prosperity and comfort became a siren song among televangelists in the 1960s and ’70s.
Preachers such as Oral Roberts (1918-2009) and Kenneth Hagin (1917-2003) promised that God would bless people who planted “seed-faith,” or gave financial gifts, with even more money than they had given. This would happen because of what televangelist Robert Tilton (b. 1946) called the “law of compensation.” According to Roberts, “Luke 6:38 says, ‘Give, and it will be given to you.’ We must first plant a seed of faith so that God can multiply it back to meet our need” (The Miracle of Seed-Faith, Kindle edition).
How much will it be multiplied? Kenneth Copeland wrote in Laws of Prosperity, “Do you want a hundredfold return on your money? Give and let God multiply it back to you. No bank in the world offers this kind of return! Praise the Lord!” (67).
Lest you think Copeland is being metaphorical, his wife Gloria describes the precise return believers can expect from their “investment”:
You give $1 for the Gospel’s sake, and $100 belongs to you. Give $10 and receive $1,000. Give $1,000 and receive $100,000. . . . Give one airplane and receive one hundred times the value of the airplane. Give one car and the return would furnish you a lifetime of cars. In short, Mark 10:30 is a very good deal (God’s Will Is Prosperity, 54).
According to a 2006 Time magazine survey, one-third of Christians believe “If you give your money to God, God will bless you with more money.” Seventeen percent identify as adherents of the prosperity gospel—not surprising, given that tens of millions of Americans tune into prosperity preachers on television, satellite radio, and internet broadcasting.
One of the most popular is Joel Osteen, who eschews the label “prosperity gospel” but told Time, “I preach that anybody can improve their lives. I think God wants us to be prosperous. I think he wants us to be happy” (“Does God want you to be rich?” September 10, 2006). He writes, “Be a giver, rather than a taker. . . . If you are generous to people in their time of need, God will make sure that other people are generous to you in your time of need” (Your Best Life Now, 228-229).
Money cometh!
Before I discuss prosperity theology, I must point out that it’s not a sin to be wealthy. Some people say “Money is the root of all evil” (what St. Paul actually said was, “The love of money is the root of all evil” [1 Tim. 6:10]). Jesus said it was difficult for a rich person to enter heaven (cf. Matt 19:24), but the Bible records several wealthy people who found favor with God. These include Abraham, Job, and Joseph of Arimathea, who was wealthy enough to afford a rock tomb for Jesus’ burial.
The rich in Jesus’ time acquired wealth not through the free market but almost always by extorting or manipulating the poor through unjust taxation or predatory lending. One ancient Mediterranean proverb said, “Every rich person is a thief or the son of a thief.” In today’s world, it much easier for believers to acquire wealth through honest means, but they must still guard themselves against the sin of greed or avarice.
The problem with prosperity theology is not that it teaches Christians may be wealthy. The problem is that it teaches God’s will for all believers is that they be wealthy, or at least free from poverty or infirmity. It also turns prayer and good works into tools that try to manipulate God into bestowing blessings upon us.
In his book Money Cometh!, Leroy Thompson says, “If you’re in the will of God according to Deuteronomy 8:1, you’ll be financially blessed” (13). He also claims:
God wants his children to have money, not to be broke and in poverty. . . . Say this out loud: “Money cometh to the Body of Christ! That means money cometh to me now! God wants me to have plenty of money so I can carry out his covenant. Money cometh to me—today, tomorrow, the next day, every day. Money cometh!” (9, emphasis in the original).
The verses prosperity preachers use to justify their claims are always taken out of context. Consider Thompson’s reference to Deuteronomy 8:1, where God tells his people, “All the commandment which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers.” But God is warning his people that they must keep his commandments if they are to prosper in the land of Canaan; he is not making a promise of prosperity that applies to all believers.
Another out-of-context Old Testament verse forms the backbone of Bruce Wilkinson’s New York Times bestselling book The Prayer of Jabez. In ninety-two short pages, Wilkinson promises to teach the reader “a daring prayer that God always answers” (Preface). That prayer comes from 1 Chronicles 4:10: “Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not hurt me!’ And God granted what he asked.”
Wilkinson gives some helpful advice in his book, like not being afraid to ask God to give us more opportunities to spread the gospel or to keep us away from temptation. There is also nothing wrong with asking God to provide for our material needs. After all, Jesus taught us to ask God for “our daily bread.” But Wilkinson has turned a single request God graciously answered into a formulaic prayer that God always answers.
No one in Scripture or Church history, including Jabez himself, prayed this prayer every day, as Wilkinson recommends believers do. Wilkinson also makes no biblical argument to show that reciting this prayer always leads to prosperity. His book mostly consists of anecdotes involving people facing seemingly impossible situations, asking God for help, and then having the situation resolved beyond their expectations.
But no one doubts that God answers some of our prayers in accordance to how we would like them answered. The question is, does he answer all of them in accordance with our will, provided that we follow a special formula? The Bible and common sense tell us the answer is no.
Ask and receive?
Some prosperity teachers cite Jesus’ promise that “your Father who is in heaven give[s] good things to those who ask him” (Matt. 7:11). Leroy Thompson uses the analogy of a multimillionaire who has so much money that he doesn’t bat an eye at buying his adult children a home with cash. He then asks, “How much more is God willing to do for his children? Do you believe God is at least a multi-millionaire? [emphasis in the original]” (16).
First, Jesus is talking primarily about God giving us spiritual gifts, not material blessings. This is evident in the parallel passage in Luke, where Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (11:13).
Second, Thompson’s own analogy undermines his argument. Some wealthy people might buy their children whatever they want, but others raise their children to be self-reliant. A 2014 story in the Washington Post describes how billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates refuse to leave all their wealth to their children in order to help them develop good character. If God is at least as wise as a billionaire, then maybe he will not automatically give us wealth—he wants something for us that money cannot provide.
We’ve seen in the preaching of the Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and Oral Roberts that Luke 6:38 and Mark 10:30 are favorites among prosperity preachers, but these verses also do not contain unconditional promises of prosperity. Luke 6:38 is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain that teaches about being generous with mercy and forgiveness. At the end of the verse he says, “The measure you give will be the measure you get back,” which parallels what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “With the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:2).
In Mark, Jesus promises, “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands” (10:29-30). But if we aren’t literally going to have hundreds of new family members in this life, then why should we believe we would literally have hundreds of new possessions? This verse is about God’s care for those who have sacrificed their lives to serve him. It is not about promised rate of return on a tithe or “seed gift.”
Others cite John 14:14 where Jesus promises, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” One prosperity preacher says, “When we pray, believing that we have already received what we are praying, God has no choice but to make our prayers come to pass” (“Prayer: Your Path to Success”). But God will grant only what we ask in accordance with his will. That this is the meaning of John 14:14 is made clear by the evangelist in his letter to the Church where he says, “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14, emphasis added).
I must also point out that the claim “God has no choice but to make our prayers come to pass” comes from the prominent televangelist Creflo Dollar, whose name proves true the Latin saying Nomen est omen—“The name is a sign that speaks for itself.”
The fatal flaw
The ultimate argument against prosperity preachers are impoverished Christians. Why don’t sincere believers have “plenty of money” or “their best life now?” Rather than face the obvious truth that God doesn’t always bless us with material prosperity even if we strive to do his will, prosperity teachers end up blaming the individual for his poverty.
Wilkinson writes, “You do not have because you do not ask, said James (James 4:2). Even though there is no limit to God’s goodness, if you didn’t ask him for a blessing yesterday, you didn’t get all that you were supposed to have” (27). Of course, I doubt that the reason Christians in sub-Sahara Africa go hungry is because they simply failed to ask God to bless them.
This facile answer to the problem of evil reminds me of Zophar’s argument that Job suffered because of his wickedness. Job said in reply, “Your platitudes are as valuable as ashes. Your defense is as fragile as a clay pot” (Job 13:12, NLT).
Wilkinson also leaves out the next verse where James says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” If we pray with selfish motives, or even for a good thing that contradicts God’s will, then we might not receive it. God knows what we need before we even ask him (Matt. 6:8), so he will not fail to care for us just because we don’t explicitly ask for a certain blessing. Rather than preach a gospel of prosperity, James exhorted believers, “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you” (4:9-10).
Thompson claims that some Christians are poor because they do not tithe, but the New Testament does not require Christians to tithe. That was an obligation under the Old Covenant, which is no longer in force. The New Testament does teach that we should give to the poor, but it does not teach the law of compensation, that God blesses us with more than what we give to others. St. Paul praised the Corinthians for their gift to him but said, “Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7).
The poor are rich
When prosperity preachers claim that God blesses the faithful with money, they resurrect the attitudes of Jews in Jesus’ time who believed wealth signified a person’s favor (or lack of favor) with God. But Jesus said God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45) and that the eighteen men who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them were not worse than the other inhabitants of Jerusalem (Luke 13:4).
Who will be blessed with wealth or called to endure poverty? That is not decided simply by the use of a special prayer or commitment to tithe. Rather, it is decided by the sovereign will of God that providentially orders our freely chosen acts according to his divine plan.
Sometimes people are poor because they have made foolish financial decisions that brought them ruin. But other people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control, such as illness, economic downturns, or natural disasters. Being impoverished does not mean a person failed to do something to secure a blessing of prosperity. God has a special concern for the poor (Psalm 34:6), and believers have a special obligation to help the poor (Luke 14:14, 1 John 3:17). James says, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?” (2:5).
Instead of praying for success or comfort, let’s pray for God’s will to be done in our lives and for the strength to follow Christ in whatever circumstances he presents us. St. Paul put it well: “I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:12-13).