As I've gone on disability, I've had to downsize a bit. I went to a food pantry today at a Pentecostal church and a minister came up and started preaching. I'm officially agnostic, though I am somewhat open to Christianity, so I didn't really have a problem with this preaching. Where it got disturbing for me though was when he mentioned one time ministering at a hospital with a patient who had leukemia and was predicted to die very soon from it. At first the conversation was based solely on his salvation, which was appropriate. The patient mentioned he had a mistress he lived with, but had not married. He was told that he needed to marry her before he could have relations with her. The patient apparently agreed or something and the leukemia improved, which was attributed by the preacher to the praying for salvation the patient did. However, the patient would steadfastly refuse to marry her, disobeying God, but after some months he would come around to it. However, the day before he was to be married, he died of leukemia. The minister attributed this to his going back on his word to marry his mistress. I found this theology very disturbing, essentially blaming the man for the illness he suffered.
This was an example of prosperity theology, the belief that good things in life come to people who are faithful and that bad things befall those who are not faithful. I said nothing to them about it, but I consider prosperity theology to be a perversion, even if I'm not strong in the faith myself.
The man had done his preaching while we were waiting for our names to be called to collect the food. He spoke of the bad situations we each were in and was basically saying it was because we were deficient in the faith. I found this disgusting.
My name would be called and I would be interviewed by a person who started going down the same track. She asked if I attended church. I answered "no." She preached a lot of stuff to me, but what I remember her preaching to me was another example of prosperity theology: She talked about all the good things that would come in my life if I converted and started attending church regularly, even going so far as to say God would get me everything I desired if I joined the faith. I said nothing to the woman, except to say that I would keep her words in mind.
Prosperity theology is a perverted theology that for some reason has been very popular in the States and there have been attempts to spread it around the world, as the preacher himself who mentioned each of the countries he had converts from immigration detention who had been deported back to their countries who were now preaching.
Here's why I consider it perverted. For one, it's a form of victim-blaming, basically blaming the person for any misfortune that befalls them, and pumping up the pride of the well-off, that they must be extraordinarily good and faithful to be so well off. This is the implication of prosperity theology.
I believe it is also contradicted by the Bible. I don't remember some parts too well, but some parts of the Bible came immediately to mind when I was listening to all this stuff.
First was the story of Job. Job was a very faithful and also well-off man in terms of having a big family, a nice house, a farm that was producing, etc. Well, Satan went before God and accused Job, saying that he was only faithful because he was so well-off. Were he to be deprived, Satan said, he would fall into despair and lose the faith. God told him, NOPE! But God was not content to simply tell Satan that his accusation was wrong: He wanted to SHOW Satan that it was wrong. God then deprived Job of everything, but despite all the hardships Job maintained his faith, disproving Satan's accusation against him. God then rewarded Job by gaining back what he lost. While some may interpret God's reward as being proof that the prosperous are faithful, it contradicts other parts of the Bible, which I will get into. The correct interpretation was that faith and prosperity on earth don't necessarily having any connection to each other, and grave misfortune had befallen faithful Job for a while: Were prosperity theology correct, then that should not have happened.
Another piece of this comes in the New Testament, in the Gospels. During Jesus' ministry, a tower had collapsed in another town, killing a number of people. Jesus was then asked if that misfortune had befallen those people because they were faithless. The gist of what Jesus answered was that faithfulness or faithlessness had nothing to do with it. $#!7 happens to both the faithful and the faithless was the implication, and you need to keep faithful to prepare for the day when you would go. This implication is supported by Jesus' metaphor of his coming like a thief in the night. You know the thief is coming, but you don't know when. If you want to capture him, then you must be awake the whole night to be sure you could capture him. He was saying it was the same for salvation; you don't know when your death is coming: It might come tomorrow, it might come 50 years from now. But if you want to be sure of your salvation, then you need to keep watch, keep faithfulness for the whole time you are on this earth. This shows very clearly that misfortune may strike at any time, whether you are faithful or not.
There was also Jesus' statement that a camel can more easily go through the eye of a needle than a rich man can go to heaven..
I think that prosperity theology, such as I got preached at about today at the food pantry, is a perversion that churches in this country need to correct. I also think that it perverts our politics as well, leaving us to blame those who suffer hardship for those hardships and to put the well-off on a pedestal. That just turns the Bible's message on its head, I think.
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
09 Oct 2014, 3:58 pm
