Embracing The Prosperity Doctrine

 

n my second year at Michigan Tech, I managed to contact family from my biological father’s side who lived a few states away. I did not personally know them due to my age when my parents divorced and effectively severed ties. I stayed with my mom and she soon remarried a man who became known as dad. I came to understand that my newly found relatives were very spiritual people who made Christianity their life. Excited to find people who were potentially as devoted to Christ as myself, I looked forward to a visit with them when they invited me over.

My newfound aunt and uncle taught me that all Christians who had the proper faith would be rewarded financially in this life in order to better fulfill God’s will here on Earth. I distinctly remember their custom license plate on their expensive car reading Money2Me. Such riches, they explained, are a testament to God’s goodness. Who would not enjoy a message like that? If I became rich, no doubt I would be able to restore the true faith of Christianity and thus pour out support and love to everyone who suffered in this life and to prepare them for the one to come. I had dreamed of helping everyone in such a way as a child. I longed to ease the world of pain and suffering and this revelation might very well help make it occur.

             The prosperity doctrine appeared to go against the teachings of Jesus who said we ought to sell everything and give to the poor, but such verses were used as an indication that you give in order to get. They defined a lot of Greek and Hebrew words which made it seem fairly studied and legitimate to my untrained eye. I merely had to work in the details and resolve some apparent contradictions and then I had a wonderful new dogma.

As the super-rich leaders professed, we should demonstrate our faith by giving away all of our money—to them. They had a most excellent motto that you cannot out-give God; if you give, then God will give back tenfold. By giving so much, we would become rich ourselves as God blessed us due to our demonstrated faith and trustworthiness by giving our money to rich people. Well, I mean, it is a lot like giving to the poor vicariously through the rich since the rich servants of God then provide a building in which they take the poor people’s money. But only in order for the poor people to prove their own faith, of course, by similarly giving the rich people their money which God so obviously blesses.

Okay, well, it sounds dumb when written on paper, but the foolishness of God is wisdom and the wisdom of man is foolishness as it is written of in 1 Corinthians 1:25 and 3:19. So it all truly made sense when you think of it that way. It just required more faith to understand. Evidently, this is God’s will since all the adherents of the church are just as rich as all the pastors whom they are giving their money to. Strike that, a quick fact check shows that those giving away their money tend to become poorer while the ones receiving it are becoming noticeably richer. It almost seems like it follows exactly as man’s wisdom might predict.

There is, of course, perfectly rational and faithful explanation for this. Perhaps the poor people are not giving enough to the rich. Unfortunately, enough people believe such ridiculousness that it seems less foolish when one is surrounded by such people who believe it. I was initially taken in myself given my predisposition to trusting in God’s miracles. My aunt and uncle seemed like good people and I did not believe they would be purposefully lying to me about these things, but that is clearly because they, too, were deceived. They were not the ones requesting everyone’s income to prove their faith, after all.

             My aunt and uncle recommended that I read Rich God Poor God and The Image of Righteousness: You’re More Than You Know. They even gave me the latter book which guided me through all the verses about our cups overflowing and defining the original Hebrew and Greek words indicating monetary wealth with such statements. I read the whole thing on the way home on a Greyhound bus. I glued my eyes to the pages of the book as I drank in every word. The author, Creflo Dollar (humorously enough), wrote about his amazing personal story. He started out as a poor kid and became an extremely wealthy leader of a church through his wondrous faith in giving. He gloated about all his personal possessions and was not shy in the least. He explained how he saw the promises in the Bible and he simply claimed them over himself while remaining true to a spirit of giving. God took care of the rest. The name of the game in the prosperity doctrine is “name it and claim it.” You name what you want, you claim that it is yours, you give away all your money to rich people, and God will bring it about.

             This prosperity doctrine seemed too good to be true—a common indicator that it is not, by the way—but my aunt and uncle told me of their own story that had riches en route to their door any day now. I kid you not, the very prince of Nigeria of all things wanted to share his wealth with them in exchange for help in reaching the United States to obtain asylum from those who would have his head and who recently murdered his family. It had to be legitimate because it came in an email from someone they did not know and my uncle had actually been to Africa recently. Surely, someone had passed his name along as trustworthy for the task and God got them together.

             Boy, I thought, God sure works in mysterious ways! I simply could not wait to obtain my own millions so I began looking forward to my very own Nigerian scam to enter my email inbox someday. I later learned that they lost thousands of dollars in this transaction as the thief continually explained his need for more money in order to bring about the riches and to allow him passage into the states. They never did meet the prince, but they remained undeterred by this simple test of their faith. They still knew that God would provide riches even if this one time happened to be a scam artist.

The prosperity doctrine opens people up for these kinds of scams given that the whole doctrine is a scam to begin with. Unfortunately, I took hold of such false teaching for a time and I even tried to sway others. It was a pretty happy message after all, and so I tied it in with obedience to make it complete. Since few people seemed to be obedient, this helped explain all the poor Christians who gave their money freely—God might have been fine with their giving, but absolutely not fine with their disobedience.

The new insight of the prosperity doctrine took sway of my understanding of life, the universe, and everything. I even used the Prince of Nigeria story for a paper I wrote in my Revisions class to emphasize the awesomeness of the doctrine. I am sure that must have yielded some riches in laughter if nothing else. My ultimate understanding from the teaching was that God would provide riches in order for us to do his work—not to live a life of luxury. I took hold of the giving to get idea but I never really desired to live a relaxed and wealthy life. Too many souls needed saving, after all. I figured this made me all the more worthy of receiving the riches, but I tried to be sure not to consider myself any better or more worthy than anyone else. I simply kept my focus on serving God.

The prosperity doctrine also focuses heavily on faith healing since faith-giving can supposedly bring about miraculous health. One proves their faith by giving money and in return God rewards such faith by curing deadly diseases. This is quite an important part of the doctrine because truly sick people are desperate and also have little to lose if they fear for their lives. What is a life’s savings when one fears dying of cancer? Some people will give it all to prove their faith in hopes that God will heal them. It is truly a cruel thing and absolutely must be stopped somehow. Many people die due to such false hope. Some people think they are cured and thus stop taking their medication which leads to their death. Others prove their faith rather than seeking medical attention and get worse or die. They even prove their faith with their children and gamble their children’s health on the trustworthiness of their deity. The thieves keep getting richer by preying on the weak, the poor, the sick, and the fearful.

I remember being quite taken in regarding healing since I had already believed in God’s power as the Bible made fairly clear should be present. The arguments in the The Image of Righteousness: You’re More Than You Know provided even more ammunition to share with everyone when I got back to campus. While such a message is undoubtedly a cheery one, I was not welcomed with my newfound learning. Nobody liked the message of God’s healing at all.

At the time, I did not really understand why it upset so many people that God would want to heal us. The message so uplifted me and brought me hope that I asked Pastor Lonnie, for some time to speak before his church. I offered to share my endeavors with a trip he had sponsored me going on along with “what I had been learning.” He obliged and I put together some PowerPoint slides to really drive home the point. I briefly discussed my trip but then went straight into the prosperity and healing doctrines. I regurgitated all the Greek and Hebrew words from the book along with all the verses that supported God’s willingness and desire to heal us if only we would trust him and remain obedient.

When I finished presenting, I offered to remain on stage in order to pray for anyone who wanted healing. I had extensively hoped and prayed for one person in particular to come up after the presentation. I longed to pray over him and see a miraculous healing take place. If I recall properly, Seth damaged something in his neck or spine as a kid when falling from a ladder or a tree. This damaged the signals from his brain to his muscles and permanently destroyed his ability to move properly.

This ailment caused him great difficulties in walking, manipulating objects, and even talking. He would draw out each word for about two seconds a piece and his voice sounded much like a deaf person’s voice who never fully learned how to articulate speech. He was the skinniest guy despite the amount of food he would eat likely because it took every ounce of his effort to merely walk across the floor. His muscles were tense and strong, but uncoordinated. I worked with Seth at McDonald’s where he cleaned tables and swept floors part-time. We considered each other friends, but it could be strenuous and draining to communicate with him at times.

             I looked forward to this day with great anticipation hoping that my faithfulness and willingness to stick my neck out would reap a harvest of healing. I would prove via scripture to a captivated audience that God wants to heal us, and then Seth would come up full of hope and faith to be prayed for and healed. The healing would become the talk of the town and everyone would seek more after God and his love. It seems I have always been a bit of a romantic with my ideas but I saw this as a good thing since it showed faith like a child. Unfortunately, the truth could only have been less glorious if someone were struck dead at my prayers of healing. Seth talked with me but did not request any healing. I asked him why he did not request my prayers to which he replied that it had never worked before so he had no hopes that it would work now. He decided that his ailment must be within God’s plan. This saddened me deeply and I felt quite dismayed that the evidence I provided proved insufficient to increase his faith and to make the healing all the more possible.

Everyone else in the church simply ignored me as I sat at the front hoping someone would ask for prayer. Then came Pastor Lonnie. He looked at me and shook his head. “You broke our deal,” he started. “You said you were going to talk about your trip.” I countered that I agreed to talk about my trip along with what I was learning and this is indeed what I had done. This did not seem to ease the tension, but I had made sure to explicitly mention that I would speak of my learnings so that he could not hold it against me when the time came. I had a feeling he would not approve, of course, but I saw the risk as entirely worth taking in order to convince people of God’s love and to see miracles reborn to the world.

             Lonnie explained to me that someone had just passed away due to cancer. The family of the man had been listening to my presentation and they had certainly been praying for healing during the entire battle. My message that God wants to heal if only we obeyed or had enough faith directly insulted the entire family and everyone in the church. It accused everyone present of not being faithful enough or good enough. It put the blame of the man’s death on the heads of all of the family and congregation rather than on random circumstances or God’s divine but unknowable will. In short, I called them sinners. I called them unfaithful. And to some extent, I called them murderers. Pastor Lonnie assured me that God allows these things to happen apart from our faithfulness and he has a plan despite it. We may not understand, but it is all within God’s plan.

             I could not bring myself to agree with him. The Bible seemed quite clear that God would give us anything we ask for in Jesus’ name. It further said that we would do greater miracles than Jesus himself had done. It had to be our fault—God is no liar. As terrible as it sounded, God did not truly want that man to die of cancer. Well, actually, that part sounds fairly good even if God did not get his way. The bad part is that humanity must be at fault for causing his death. It had to be human error that allowed such a thing to happen. It being offensive had nothing to do with it being true. I felt badly for the people but I grieved more at the loss of faith than I did for their loss of life. I had no trouble recognizing why their prayers for healing did not work given that the church did not believe in such things to begin with. Why even pray if healing is not something God does? As far as they were concerned, the power of God pertained to a time past and it no longer pertained to today. They had only themselves to blame for their lack of faith.

             It should be easy to recognize that such a position is absolutely ghastly if it is not true. To accuse the loved ones of the deceased person as being at fault for the death is heaping sorrow upon sorrow. If, however, the position is true, then there is no greater thing to do than to speak it in order to prevent future similar outcomes. After all, his death could have been avoided if indeed I spoke truth and people had truly obeyed. For this very reason, I spoke openly and unashamedly. I believed what I spoke and thus I believed I could help the world by so speaking.

             Atheists, of course, see cancer as being entirely unrelated to faith and sin. Good people contrive cancer just as much as bad people. Diseases and viruses do not discriminate between the religious and the atheist. Christopher Hitchens—a renowned atheist author and debater—died of cancer just as much as this religious man. Such crap happens. But to have the audacity to tell people that their actions or faith justified their diseases and deaths as if they had received their just desserts, that is purely despicable. It is one of the lowest things any person could do. And I had done just that to an entire congregation while believing myself to be truthful and caring.

             In this way, certain flavors of Christianity are extremely revolting to an atheist as well as to adherents of an opposing Christian flavor. These different worldviews create polar opposites of what is a moral act with no real way to reconcile them apart from changing the baseline assumptions of faith. As a Christian, and even now, it seemed extremely hypocritical to me to claim belief in the Bible and yet not come to the same conclusions as I had. I saw it akin to claiming that only water will quench thirst and prevent dying of dehydration and yet refusing to ever drink any water. In my eyes, such Christians were more like atheists than anything else. They claimed to believe but did not live as if they did.

Oddly enough, I now see such hypocritical faith as being much less destructive than a radical faith lived and breathed in sincerity. I used to see the hypocritical faith as the enemy, but now I recognize that I and other radicals like me produce the most harm. The main problem with the false Christians is that they encourage people like me to seek truth in a book that they only claim to trust while denying it with their lives. It breeds radicals even if they are not themselves radical. If the false Christians did not proclaim the book as God’s word, I would not have turned to it to begin with and thus begin my terrible journey nearly destroying my own life and perhaps that of others. My passionate faith insulted and harmed people, but their false faith had created me. Personally, I find the latter to be far more grievous a sin. I find it better to operate honestly in line with our beliefs as best we can rather than to lie and so delude ourselves.

I would not sit idly by while true faith died, and for this I would soon be rewarded with the magic of God pronouncing my anointing for his special missions.