Via: Naked Pastor

Earlier this week an unidentified man was caught on security camera footage praying with a woman before he robbed her [HERE]. Those familiar with the prosperity gospel see this all of the time when a wolf such as Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, or Benny Hinn pray with people before raping them for every dime they can get.

However, where this story takes an unfamiliar turn (especially to the High Priests of Mammonianity mentioned above) is that the man in the surveillance video was so overcome with guilt he turned himself in to the authorities.

Police said Smith apologized to the cashier for his actions but went ahead with his robbery even after praying with her.

“He said that he hated to have to do this, but times were hard and he had no choice,” cashier Angela Montez, 43, told police, according to a police report. Montez began crying when she realized the man’s intentions, she told police. She began to talk to the man about God, she said, telling him he still had a chance to refrain from committing the crime.

The man told Montez he had a 2-year-old child to support and then asked her to pray with him about overcoming his hardships. The two got down on their knees and prayed, remaining there for nearly 10 minutes, police said.

In response to the woman’s kindness, the man took a bullet out of his handgun and gave it to her, according to the report, telling the clerk it was his only bullet and promising not to hurt her. He then asked Montez for a hug.

Despite the heart-to-heart talk, the man was not dissuaded from his plans. He took the woman’s cell phone and told her to go into the restroom and to refrain from calling police for 20 minutes.

OK. I’m going to leave alone the fact that dude prayed with a woman before robbing her, gave her a bullet, and asked for a hug, because that’s so messed up it hardly needs commentary. And just how much supporting of a two-year-old can you do with 20 bucks?

However, I will dream that one day “pastors” like Dollar, Hinn, Copeland, and their ilk will either be outlawed or have heaping coals poured on their heads until they have a crisis of conscience so drastic that they repent in sackcloth and ashes for the many persons they have raped and pillaged for their “ministry” in the name of Jesus.

This story about a woman who is accused of stabbing a priest at Holy Cross Catholic Church started me thinking.

At the time of her arrest on April 26, Josephine Gatchell, 57, said the priest, the Rev. Michael Massaro, was the devil. Of course, the logical response to such a reasonable conclusion is to stab said priest… or not.

The mug shot:

If you want my body, and you think I'm sexy...

It is absolutely shocking to me how much she looks like our resident psychiatrist Jake’s ex-girlfriend, but I digress…

Anyways, perhaps the greatest scam in North America, or at least the greatest scam I am aware of, is the prosperity gospel. I mean, think about it: God wants you to give me money and if you do he will bless you. If you can convince people of this then your stealing earning potential is greatly increased.

Of course fleecing the sheeple isn’t necessarily easy. There are some key ingredients.

A dash of biblical illiteracy: This is a must for the hawker of heavenly riches. People must be unaware of large portions of their Bible, and most of all, must be completely unaware of the context of their Bible. They have to be completely ignorant of their own presuppositions, and that “money” and “needs” meant something entirely different during biblical times than it does in our opulent society. This is important as the prosperity pimp can then use the Bible to convince greedy sheeple that God wrote the Bible to them–just to them–to tell them how he wants to make them rich… because it’s a biblical principle.

A dollop of lack: This is, in my estimation, the most important ingredient in many recipes of the prosperity gospel: creating a sense of lack in the victim. This is where the skill of the con-man comes into play. You have to convince the mark that God is holding something back on them. This is insidious in its brilliance, and made easier in our materialistic society characterized by the social attitude of relative poverty. When you can take people who are in the top 1% of income earners in the world, and the top 0.01% in history, who have access to food, lifestyle, and health care that is simply beyond the imagination of billions and convince them that somehow God is holding out on them… well, simply put: it’s evil, but brilliant in its effectiveness.

A pinch of middleman: Once the sense of lack has been created the swindler can move on to the next vital stage: convincing the dupe that he can access what God has been holding back only through his ministry. This can take a variety of forms: a love offering, a “seed”, a donation for a green handkerchief, etc., the versions are only limited to the creativity of the scammer. The only thing that is necessary at this point is something tangible that the person can do to access what God is holding back.

A mountain of immediate and future blessings: Maybe this is the most important ingredient, if not, it’s close. Perhaps, only those who have adopted the sort of heart disposition that cannot be thankful and grateful for the many ridiculous blessings they have to live in the twenty-first century on a continent like North America, but instead have filled their heart with greed  for more ’stuff’, could fall for such an obvious scam. If you give to me and my ministry–which is really giving to God–then God will give you more, bless you abundantly, pressed down, shaken together, one-hundred fold. He will bless you until your cup overflows.

In ‘faith’ the mark hands over their money and the fraudster drives the Mercedes home to his mansion laughing all the way to the bank… literally.

Which brings me back to Jake’s fiancee. Oh yeah, he called me during the writing of this post. They’ve patched things up and are walking down the aisle next spring. Congrats man. But I digress again…

Anyways, I was wondering: if things continue to go poorly in the US economy. People continue to lose jobs. Unemployment continues to grow. The national debt gets larger and larger. Home prices keep going down. Foreclosures continue. Etc., etc. What happens if people start to wake up to, and recognize, the prosperity pimp’s scam?

Will they be angry?

Will they try to harm them?

Will someone try to hurt a well known televangelist?

Will they recognize that if any prosperity shill–Copeland, Dollar, Osteen, Bentley, White, Hinn, et al–actually believed anything they said from the pulpit they would give away everything they had and wait for God to give them a hundred times more?

And then I realized that the answer is, unfortunately, probably not. And that’s why the prosperity gospel is such a great scam. Why you ask? Well it’s simple.

The sense of lack the fraudster creates in fleecing the sheeple endures. So the reason they have not received God’s blessing is not that God’s Word returns void, or that the “man of God” has somehow been deceitful, but because… wait for it… wait some more…

They didn’t have enough faith (or some variation thereof, such as everybody’s favorite: unconfessed sin). That’s right: it was your fault before you gave that God hadn’t blessed you more, and because you didn’t receive his blessing, it’s still… your fault!

And that’s why it is the greatest scam ever. You can bilk people out of their money, have none of your promises even remotely fufilled, and people think it’s their fault, and the cycle continues.

The funny thing is if you tune in right now you will see a different pastor doing the exact same schtick!

The next time I preach I’m going to try the intro…

Quite simply: it is unbiblical, man-centered, and frankly, would have horrified the authors of the New Testament.

Some people probably need more than a context free statement to be convinced. Allow me to oblige.

As a follower of Christ there are many reasons to hate and fight against the Prosperity Gospel. In fact, as I have mentioned before, the prosperity message should not be allowed in any way an association with the word gospel; it should be identified as an entirely foreign belief set alien to that of Christianity. A different faith that does not follow, believe, or put its trust in Jesus, but worships Mammon and hopes that somehow a person might be able to manipulate Jesus or God into bringing more Mammon into their life.

However, like any good heresy it has some kernels of truth. These small kernels are then multiplied with faulty assumptions, incorrect beliefs, and horrendous exegesis. When that formula is summed up one arrives at wrong conclusions which, of course, lead into erred belief sets and practices. Let’s briefly look at just one–of many–incorrect conclusions of Mammonianity. One of the ‘creeds’ of prosperity proponents is that if you are faithful, and trust God, and give him money, he is good and faithful to bless you out of his abundance and riches more than you could ever give him. God loves us, and created us to bless us, and wants to prosper us.

In the world of the New Testament it was common to give gifts expecting to get something in return. In fact, this pattern dominated much of life in ancient times: family life, social life, and political life. This expectation was natural because the people of that time lived in a limited goods society; therefore, if you gave something to someone it was proper to expect something back. This seems to fit in with the view of the Mammonians. If we give to God then he will give back to us, and not only that, but God is so awesome he will give us much more than we would ever dare ask or hope. Right?

There’s one GIANT problem with that theology however: it is man-centered. The only ‘gift giving’ that ever occurs between a believer and God is God giving unwarranted gifts to undeserving people. The only indebtedness that is ever accrued between a person and God is on the side of people. God has given us every good and perfect gift through salvation in Jesus Christ. Period. No addendum. No relative clauses. Every good and perfect gift and we are indebted eternally. God is the patron and we are the client. Any attempt to reverse those roles is fundamentally wrong. No man can ever do anything to place God in his debt.

This is of course not how a Mammonian would phrase things, but don’t be fooled. When your ‘faith’ is characterized by being not only a child of God (which again if you look at first century context Mammonians use incorrectly: it is not the spoiled American brat child they proclaim) but is also deeply rooted in the awareness that you are an indebted client and slave who could never repay God then you have a God centered theology: God gives and we are eternally indebted to him.

However, if your ‘faith’ is characterized by an equal partnership between you and God, or worse yet, characterized by God being some impersonal ATM force that you can act upon, or even worse yet, like some senile benign father whom you can petulantly stomp your foot at and say, “I want more Daddy, MORE,” then you have a false man centered religion of entitlement. No matter what you might argue, or what you might say, or what Scripture you twist out of context: you are no longer a follower of Christ but a lover of Mammon.

So the next time you hear some Mammonian using Christianese that sort of makes sense remember: their message is false, unbiblical, man-centered, and would horrify the authors of the NT.

“For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.

And that’s just the beginning of the problems with the Mammonians! Read more.

Man, I wish I would have thought of this: The Prayer Hour. This is just a funny and brilliant sustained parody of the Mammonians. Well done Pastor Shepherd. Well done.

Apparently McGrath is still wrong. Obama IS the Anti-Christ:

Gary Busey may be proof that aliens are living among us:

Watch them all and subscribe; and remember: DON’T LIMIT GOD!

Here’s the problem that I have with so many churches in the North Atlantic part of the world today: they are so individualistic and me centered I fear their existence as they become increasingly useless in the economic world we may soon find ourselves in the North — and that our brothers and sisters around the globe do find themselves in. Let me give a couple of quick examples.

Neo-Montanism. No matter how I read the biblical text there is one conclusion I can’t avoid when I consider the earliest church: after the upper room experience the disciples left the upper room! I could only imagine some “leaders” “preachers” and “theologians” of our generation if they had been part of that experience. They would have tried to stay at God’s “special portal” and “get more of the Spirit,” sending letters to Corinth, Ephesus, and Philippi to “Come Get Some.” I know you can imagine the Christianese right now, “Lord we just invite you into this place today, Lord God. And God, we just want more of your pillar of fire; release your pillar of fire in this place Lord. Fill us Father, we ask Lord God” (repeat ad nauseum no matter what God does). This sort of repeated focus on self experience is epitomized in the famous line “they are so focused on heaven they are of no earthly good.” Me, me me; more of you giving to me.

Mammonianity. You may have heard that the economy is not doing so grand. Oil is up, gas is up, food is up, and foreclosures are up 120 % over this same time last year. For some, and maybe very soon, for the majority, life is not one of economic surplus. Christians and Non-Christians are losing their homes and their jobs. Life is hard. Guess what the lovers of Mammon are selling? That’s right so much economic prosperity it can only be called gross opulence. Please god (Mammon gets a little “g” no matter what they say) and you will be rich. Give to god and you will be rich. Are you rich? Our god will make you richer. Me, me, me; more of you giving to me.

Julian the Apostate came to power in Rome in 360. Despite His predecessors Christinization of the Roman empire Julian hated Christianity, withdrew Christians religious freedom, and rigorously attempted to create a religious alternative. Julian attempted to persuade his followers to adopt a religious organization and practice of charity modeled on Christianity, and famously lamented about the successful spread of the Christian faith, “Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done the most to increase Christianity.” Let those that have ears hear. In 250 CE the church in Rome has records where they are feeding 1500 distressed persons a day. The worse thing that the church’s greatest enemy can basically say at this time is, “I hate Christians, all they do is help people! Let’s get rid of them by emulating them.”

We are entering a time where it is very probable that we will be asked to bring the Kingdom of God into North Atlantic areas in ways that will be challenging and unique. How do you minister to the “least of these” that are still among the world’s elite? If a family has lost the ownership of a house and their nest egg, but still has their health, food, and a roof over their heads (which makes them very rich by global standards) how do you minister to the broken heart of those experiencing relative poverty?

What then? Should we give everything and live a life of poverty to help them attain prosperity? I don’t think that, but I do think churches such as these are creating a model of how to use their resources to help others and not grossly indulge themselves over and over again that other churches will have to follow if they are to impact our world during economic crisis.

Greg Boyd has a wonderful quote that has become part of the manifesto at Jesus Shaped Spirituality

There is a beautiful and powerful grassroots Kingdom movement arising all over the globe …. Millions of people are abandoning the Christendom paradigm of the traditional Christian faith in order to become more authentic followers of Jesus. From the Emergent Church movement to the Urban Monastic Movement to a thousand other independent groups and movements, people are waking up to the truth that the Kingdom of God looks like Jesus and that the heart of Christianity is simply imitating him.

I’ve got my eye out for these people that simply imitate Jesus, and I’m keeping my ear to the ground as we enter uncertain and difficult times listening for the complaint “All those Christians do is help people.”

The kingdom of God is among you. Spread the word.

You’ve probably heard or read this joke somewhere as it was voted the funniest religious joke of all time on Ship of Fools:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”

I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

———————————–

In the neo-gnosticism that can characterize much of modern evangelicalism there can be such an emphasis on what we think that the above joke proves Homer Simpson’s adage, “It’s funny because it’s true.” Within this emphasis on what we think perhaps no combination of words had been thrown around more haphazardly than “doctrine of demons.” If you prefer contemporary worship to hymns: doctrine of demons. Seeker sensitive? Doctrine of demons. Emergent? Oh boy, from the deepest, darkest pit of hell doctrine of demons. The list goes on for a long time, but I think you get the point.

However, never being one to shy from giving an opinion I give you my two cents:

In a world that is broken nothing characterizes secular humanist culture like money, war, and sex. I can think of no way that these actions and values reflect Jesus who is “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

War: Jesus is the “Prince of Peace;” the wars and staggering deaths around the globe are characteristics of another kingdom not his. Sex: something that should be a sacred celebration in which two souls meet in an indescribable intimacy has become a selfish act to have an orgasm which treats the other person as a disposable object. Treating persons as means to an end and dehumanizing them to the extent that they are merely an object, “an apparatus for an orgasm” is in no way representative of the life and teachings of Jesus. War and sex are simply the dominant reality in much of the world. We have these in spades in the west, but there is a third characteristic that is maybe even more superior: materialism.

Need more, want more, have more, get more that’s the materialism that is secular western culture. Money making money to make more money; accumulate, accumulate, accumulate. This is really the dominant aspect of western culture; an excess and a greed for more. To store more and more resources while others have less and less. This materialistic cultureis not in any way representative of the kingdom of God that Jesus so radically preached into his own social world. And here we get to the point and to the over used words “doctrine of demons.”

If the world  is broken and that world is characterized by actions and values that are outside of the teachings of Jesus who or what do we say influences that world? There have been different answers to that question. But what if we take those actions and values and we superimpose them onto the biblical text? Whose doctrine are we then teaching?

Jesus lived and taught in what scholars have called a ‘limited good’ society. Basically this meant there was only so much stuff; there was a roof on goods. Generally, this meant that if you had too much stuff the understanding was that you had taken it from someone else. This was bad; very bad. The idea of money making money, unlimited resources and wealth just did not exist in the time of Jesus and is condemned severely in his teachings:

“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ‘

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”

The doctrine that Mammonians preach is the doctrine of the rich fool that Jesus criticized so harshly. They tell their sheeple, “Tear down your barns and build bigger ones,” and if they say it just the right way they can make it sound like it is a biblical truth. But don’t be deceived. Jesus is firmly opposed to that attitude. This is why we do not call them Christians or call it the prosperity gospel. It is Mammonianity.

And if materialism is the dominant characteristic of our sinful broken culture then we can call the doctrine of the Mammonians what it is: a doctrine of demons.

‘Nuff said.

Mammonian Monday

Mammonian Monday: May 12 2008

Mammonian Monday: Gustavo Rising

In one of my classes I had to review a book by theologian Gustavo Gutierrez. I had read about “Liberation Theology” and had some nice ready made preconceived notions about what I was going to read. However, instead of labeling and dismissing Gutierrez I actually listened to what he had to say and over the course of a weekend he challenged me more than I had been challenged in a long time.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1988.

In Gustavo Gutierrez’s book On Job the author wrestles with the problem of how a person speaks of God in the face of suffering; specifically, innocent suffering. To solve this problem Gutierrez uses the book of Job as a model for directing our understanding of God, our subsequent talk of him, and worship of him in the face of suffering. In undertaking this task Gutierrez is keenly aware of his own presuppositions in his dealings with extreme poverty and injustice within his Latin American situation.

There are many excellent arguments in Gutierrez’s book that are worthy of further discussion, but the reason I bring him in for Mammonian Monday is this: There is a challenge that Gutierrez lays at the reader’s feet at the beginning of his work that cannot be answered from within the idolatrous framework of Job’s friends when he argues that the only real religion is disinterested religion, and only disinterested faith is the correct response to the God of gratuitousness (pp.5; 13).

The opening pages of Gutierrez’s book offer some of the most incredibly devastating critiques to Mammonianity when he states that for the satan a religious attitude can only be expressed by the expectation of rewards, therefore this sort of reciprocal understanding of religion has something satanic about it (pp. 4-5).

I gladly stand beside Gutierrez against the materialistic, syncretistic, and nationalistic, and satanic nature of Mammonianity and declare that “message” to be more in line with the thinking of satan than the Kingdom of the gratuitous God.

Two things for consideration pertaining to Mammonians today:

First, I would like to introduce (some) of you to a term that sociologists came up with: relative poverty. Relative poverty relates poverty to the overall standard of living that prevails in a particular society. OK, you say, but why is that a problem?

Here’s the deal. According to the 2000 American census the average income in the United States was $42,158. That may not seem like much money to some, but in fact it would put you in the top 2.54% income earners in the world. If you were to merely double that–think two income household–it would put you in the top 0.76% in the world. This is where relative poverty comes in. We have people that compared globally are filthy, filthy rich but they compare themselves to the richer or richest sections of a society that is already grossly abundant and they feel poor. All their needs exceedingly met and they feel desperately unhappy and poor.

This my friends is what the prophets of Mammon prey upon. People that are unaware of how blessed they are and want more. The prophet of Mammon promises them that he has a formula to get more. Their heart makes them susceptible long before the prophet of Mammon ever speaks. Which leads to the next point.

The heart disposition that is adopted to make one susceptible to the lies of the Mammonian prophets leaves absolutely no margins for joy, contentment, gratitude, or thankfulness. There is literally no room for these thing, especially in relation to a God that is holding back on you because you do not have enough faith or haven’t “seeded” enough. A heart full of envy, covetousness, and greed cannot be thankful for the many blessings that have already been recieved just by being born in a North American society.

There may be no sadder commentary on the North American church today than the sector that already has incredible blessing and abundance but sits around desperately unhappy, conniving how to get more from God.

Those heart dispositions and actions are not Christian. They are Mammonianity.

I beg you whenever you run in to this plague that you not only say what it isn’t (it’s not the gospel) you say what it is: Mammonianity.