I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of the prosperity gospel. I see it so much at my job, this idea that if you accept Christ, then your life will be filled with constant material blessings, if you pray hard enough, or have the right “faith”. This essentially says that you accept Christ to become healthy and rich; I feel it is basically saying that Jesus died on the cross so we could have comfort and pleasures in our earthly life. This has really been bothering me lately, of course because these ideas are not at all biblical, and secondly because of the prevalence of this prosperity gospel that seems to be continually growing. Why on earth do we think that Jesus died so we would be guaranteed comfort on earth? Christ didn’t suffer all the physical pain of the cross and the incomprehensible (for us to even begin to grasp) pain of being separated from God because all the sin of mankind was thrown on him, so that we could have money and not get sick. He endured all that so we could, even though we are worthless and undeserving, have a relationship with the perfect God who created the universe! It honestly hurts and offends me to see what Christ has done for us become so distorted and twisted! So what does Jesus have to say about what we can expect when we surrender to him and follow him? Well I think Matthew 10 as a start, has a lot to say on this question; as Jesus is preparing to send out the twelve apostles, he says in verses 37-39 “”Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” These statements by Jesus do not offer a life of ease; the very phrase “take up your cross” denotes difficulty and struggle. Jesus is clear that if we aren’t willing to surrender everything for him, then we cannot be his followers. But why should this surprise us? If we truly believe that Christ paid our sentence in full, that without Him we could never come to God, because we could never earn it or be good enough, if we truly believe and trust that through Christ we have been given such grace and mercy, then how could we not give everything for him, out of pure gratitude? If Christ sacrificed everything for us, who did not in any way deserve it, how can we expect to just sit back and not give our all for God, who deserves everything we have, not just because of His amazing gift to us, but simply on the fact that He’s God! Jesus again makes it clear that following him does not guarantee comfort when he says in John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Or we can take the passage in James 1, where we are told to consider it pure joy when (not if) you encounter trials, or even taking the life of the apostle Paul in to consideration: he was stoned, beaten, and shipwrecked, just to name a few. Now I am not saying that every follower of Christ will have extreme suffering or difficulty in their lives and I am not saying that if God blesses a Christian materially, that there is something unbiblical about that. What I am trying to get across is that we will still have suffering of some kind in our lives, but as James 1 elaborates, God will use it to draw us closer to Him! There is a purpose in it! The prosperity gospel doesn’t allow for this, it makes Christ’s death into a mockery and makes God a slave to our comfort and beckon call for healing, money, relationships, or whatever other worldly success we might desire, and insults our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world who suffer poverty, imprisonment, torture, and death daily for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ, claiming that any who suffer such things do so out of a LACK of faith! So in the end, the prosperity gospel belittles the suffering of our savior, mocks the hardships of our fellow believers, and trades selfless submission to our Lord for indulgent worship of self.
Ashley
jude.three.blog@gmail.com
