Does God Want You To Be Rich?

That is the title and cover story of this weeks Time Magazine. The authors of the story are reporting on the new prosperity preachers, folks like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyers and others. But the intriguing thing to me is that all of the people they solicited critiques from are well off, influential, white guys who certainly are not poor. How about a Michael Eric Dyson or a Tony Evans eh? But hey, those two guys are well off, influential black guys. Now don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of prosperity preaching, most of it in my view is rank heresy. But here is the thing, if poor people actually followed the precepts of the Bible to a “t”, most of them would probably climb out of poverty. When you work hard, play by the rules, and don’t have kids out of wed lock, you tend to do okay in this society. It is as simple as that. And don’t we want poor people to get out poverty and enter the middle class? What is exactly wrong with that? In fact, I have heard Osteen preach some pretty sound, biblical concepts on loving your enemy and doing good to those who want to do you dirty. And I have heard Dollar call poor people out of a victim’s mentality and to become more responsible and reliant on God, not the government. So I really cannot fault them for this kind of message.

Here is the thing, the only people who really have to walk by faith in this country are poor people. If you grew up middle class and have decent skills, you can make your own way. And you probably don’t need God so much. The fact of the matter is that many of those speaking out against the health/wealth gospel are pretty healthy and wealthy themselves. It is one thing to deny yourselves nice cars and clothes if you grew up middle class and have always had access to those sorts of things, but is a whole other thing growing up poor with no trust fund as a safety net, and no real hope to own nice new cars and clothes through honest labor.

So when those guys sell everything that they own and live amongst the poor, then they can say something. But even so, they first need to really understand what it means to be poor, and giving all your earthly pessessions away does not help you to understand one bit, because you first have to have something to give away.