PunkIsrael

Doug Wilson gets Owned

Finally, a blog that acknowledges that Federal Vision, but more specifically Doug Wilson, is a bunch of nearly-heretical bologna.

It's amazing how insidious this brand of chest-pounding, pseudo-Anglophile, revisionist theology is; his books are even being carried in the Covenant Seminary bookstore.

My favorite part of a Wilson book: in "The Federal Husband," he creatively misapplies 1 Corinthians 11:14 to imply that long hair, in men, is sinful. (See a good interpretation here)

My favorite part of this blog is actually a link to another blog: Wilson's prized student turns out to be a criminal. Instead of disciplining him, they wisely threatened the father of his victim with discipline.

Priceless.

Prosperity Gospel

A few months ago, I published a critique of Joel Osteen's teaching. Here's another piece I wrote about the prosperity gospel preachers.

---

Their followers call them ministers. Their critics call them frauds. The media calls them televangelists. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa calls them “Nonprofit Media-Based Ministries,” and he wants to know the real financial landscape of ministers Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn. In early November of 2007, stories broke about the Senator’s demand for financial statements from the ministries within a month’s time.

The preachers, all of whom preach a “prosperity gospel”—the idea that Jesus wants his followers to flourish materially —responded in various ways. St. Louis-based minister Joyce Meyer, who had already been criticized in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch feature series in 2003, pointed to audited financial statements that were available on her website for the last 3 years. Creflo Dollar and Eddie Long refused to provide documents. Kenneth Copeland, Paula White, and Benny Hinn provided answers that Sen. Grassley found to be insufficient.

Some ministries have questioned Grassley’s authority to conduct such an investigation, arguing that the IRS, not Congress, is the proper umbrella for such projects. Others suggest that Grassley’s attention to these ministries might be borne of a common distaste for their theology. Texas-based televangelist Kenneth Copeland even launched a website to fight Grassley’s probe.

Grassley dismissed these claims, insisting that the purpose of the investigation is to probe whether these organizations are using their tax-exempt status according to law. As of late May 2008, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar continue to resist the probe. At the time of this writing, Grassley has also refrained from subpoenaing the documents, but has pointed out that all other organizations he has approached in the past have surrendered documents voluntarily.

The theological movement we call prosperity gospel represents a marginal theology that has gradually moved into the mainstream. The seeds of prosperity gospel, also known as the “word-of-faith” movement, were sown in the late 1960’s with a small group of ministers led by Kenneth Hagin Sr., and it apparently began to take root in the mid 1980’s with ministers such as Hagin, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland (currently under investigation), and John Osteen (father of Joel Osteen). In fact, the six ministries Grassley targeted are not the only ones considered to be prosperity gospel ministries. Other popular media pastors exhibiting traits of prosperity theology include Joel Osteen, Fred Price, T.D. Jakes, and Randy White (husband of Paula White).

While the three major strands of Christianity—Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant—have separate traditions regarding the use of wealth, it is not surprising that the Protestant ethos is the most prevalent in the US. The traditional Protestant understanding of money and wealth is at loggerheads with the new prosperity understanding. Shayne Lee quotes theologian James Cone as saying:

My job as a theologian is to tell Fred Price and T.D. Jakes that they cannot really be true to the gospel of Jesus if they preach a message of prosperity that contradicts it. I would say what they are preaching is very interesting and meaningful to people at some other level, but it is not meaningful at the true gospel level.

Ironically, Cone is an advocate of liberation theology, another marginal theology that has interesting parallels with prosperity gospel.

Even so, the movement is multimodal and difficult to define. Prosperity theologians and pastors often draw from self-help psychology, marketing, and coaching techniques to augment a biblical message of health and happiness. Indeed, their appeal of some is so wide that it transcends the church. Boxer Mike Tyson stated, “I am a Muslim, I pray five times a day and even I love T.D. Jakes” . In a recent article about Joel Osteen in Good magazine, a Jewish atheist was quoted as saying, “I look at him like a motivational speaker. I don’t think people get that until they see him [on television]. Yes, he’s a pastor and does it in a church, but the underlying [message] is just to live a good life, love yourself, and be happy. He pretty much doesn’t preach religion.”

What, then, do these pastors preach? Ken Sarles writes:

Perhaps the major emphases of this movement can best be summarized by rewording the old adage about being healthy wealthy, and wise. In this case the good news of the prosperity gospel is how to be healthy, wealthy, and demon-free.

While all of its figureheads promise “blessing,” some are more coy than others about what that means. Joel Osteen for example, in books such as “Your Best Life Now” and “Become a Better You,” urges followers not only to grasp their full financial potential, but to embrace physical healing through faith . Benny Hinn’s ministry emphasizes deliverance from demons, and even markets demonology materials on its website (www.bennyhinn.org).

However, the emphasis is often on the second member of the trio: wealth. As noted before, prosperity theology asserts God’s desire to materially bless His worshippers in this age. Shayne Lee unpacks the deeper implications of the theology:
"Word-of-faith teaching asserts that Christians have the power to control their physical well-being and financial fortunes through their faith. The underlying assumption is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provided Christians with the ability to live in total victory, financial prosperity, and perfect health. However, God's "hands are tied" from blessing many Christians who lack faith and misappropriate biblical principles, thus explaining why all Christians are not experiencing prosperous and healthy lives. Word-of-faith preachers argue that once believers strengthen their faith by memorizing and confessing scriptures, they are able to live in total victory and control their physical and financial fate. The prosperity gospel is a central part of word-of-faith teachings and suggests that God wants all believers to prosper financially and will bless them according to their faith ."

At its core, it is fair to say that prosperity theology is a restless mix of biblical teaching and good, old-fashioned, American entrepreneurship. To a person, prosperity gospel preachers are charismatic and compelling, from the simple folksy styles of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer to the theatrics of Benny Hinn. They have their own television shows. The books they author often feature full-color photos of the preachers on the front covers, leading us to the unsurprising realization that the consumer buys the messenger as much as the message.

Yet Baptist Christian ethics professor David Jones finds fault with the theology, arguing that it incorrectly applies Old Testament scriptures like the Abrahamic Covenant, when God promises to bless Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. He critiques the theology on several fronts, including prosperity theology’s inadequate understanding of biblical giving and wealth. Indeed, for Jones, the theology misses the teachings of Christ entirely. He writes:

A second error of prosperity theology…is the misinterpretation of 2 Cor. 8:9. Without exception, this is the verse to which prosperity teachers appeal in order to support their view of the Atonement [Christ’s sacrificial work]. The verse reads, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” This problem with this interpretation is, of course, that in this verse Paul was in no way teaching that Christ died on the cross for the purpose of increasing anyone’s net worth materially. In fact, Paul was actually teaching the exact opposite principle (brackets mine).

Evangelical author Randy Alcorn is even more incisive:

Are material wealth, achievement, fame, victory, or success reliable indicators of God’s reward or approval? If so, then he is an evil God, for history is full of successful madmen and prosperous despots. Was God on the side of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and other prosperous butchers of history during their rise to power and at the apex of their regimes when they were surrounded by material wealth?...If wealth is a dependable sign of God’s approval and lack of wealth shows his disapproval, then Jesus and Paul were on God’s blacklist, and drug dealers and embezzlers are the apple of his eye (76).

Even so, not everyone believes that material prosperity and Christian devotion are poor bedfellows, and no one can ignore the simple fact that God is big business. Media convergence and messages of hope and healing have brought millions into the coffers of prosperity gospel ministries. Eager to invest in the invisible kingdom of God and reap the benefits in the here and now, virtual and actual parishioners write checks and wait for promised blessings. Meanwhile, television personalities build multimillion-dollar homes and zip around in private jets. Unlikely salaries and excessive lifestyles, it seems, are not limited to Fortune 500 CEO’s.

The fact that Jesus himself owned practically nothing rarely enters the discourse.

Alabama

I'm still not sure whether I love or hate this place. But 18+ years living here makes it seem like home, despite myself. I know, for instance:

1) That Alabama women are programmed to go crazy when Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" or AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long" come on, and to swoon when Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" comes on, and everyone goes nuts when "Sweet Home Alabama" comes on. It's true.

2) How to crack peanuts with my bare hands and eat them from the shell.

3) That 100 degrees is a "mild day."

4) The difference in 4-5 different dialects, from "Chisolm/Slapout" to "Old Montgomery" and what socioeconomic stratas they represent.

5) That every kind of soft drink is a "Coke." I know, a Pepsi isn't a Coke. Doesn't matter.

6) That the manners that were liable to offend progressive women up North are expected down here.

7) That whiskey makes Southern men expansive and ready to raise the South again.

My Therapist Says I Need to Learn Grace

When young, you will think the world balanced
on the sharpened tip of a pencil, changes tracked
to the decimal point. It will seem as if time inches
rather than unfurls, and that love is sure as gravity.

Older, you learn the answer to everyone's question:
good enough? is not always yes or no, sometimes no, but--
and in that very but rides the long energy of grace,
where things seem more like improvisation than arithmetic,

where the moon pulls shuttles toward her in welcome,
and everyone you wronged is winking fondly
behind your back. This conspiracy of mercy baffles
more than heals, yet something rings clear

in the way her body adjusts to yours, tiny surrenders
in dance, blast of rain seconds too late to ruin the day,
the way the world makes room for you, only you, mismatched,
forgotten part, and grace the secret grease of a grinding world.

Previously published in Relief! magazine

Becoming Un-Ironic, Appended

You said that irony was the shackles of youth... (REM)

If modernism is characterized by a rigid handling of Truth, postmodernism dissolves all truth claims in the solvent of irony. It makes sense. If all truth claims are merely perspectival, or worse, wills to power (ala Foucault), what is left but a playful collage of little truths that can be cleverly manipulated but never taken seriously?

I like irony. I'm a writer; irony is a tool. I think irony is occasionally really funny. But I'm afraid of it, too.

Do we use irony because we fear committing to any kind of truth claim?

Stuff-ology

Every time I start to think about moving, I think about my stuff, and how annoying it is to have all of this stuff.

Then I think about getting rid of most of my stuff.

Then I feel righteous for wanting to get rid of my stuff.

Then I realize that my spiritual sensibilities are not as precious as I think, and that I am merely lazy and don't want to move all of this stuff.

---

Randy Alcorn wrote a book almost 20 years ago called "Money, Possessions, and Eternity." He says there's two errors we can fall into when it comes to our stuff. One is blatant materialism, popularized by the health and wealth preachers, whose basic message is that Jesus died on the cross so we can have better stuff. The goal of the Christian life, it seems, is to make Jesus look good by acquiring more and flashier stuff.

Another error is asceticism, which teaches that having little or no earthly stuff earns us spiritual money to buy heavenly stuff. This one is subtler than the previous one. We see someone who has given up stuff entirely, and we think, "aren't they spiritual?" But God made stuff, and He doesn't mind our having stuff. We're just not supposed to worship it.

Here's a poem I wrote about the desire for stuff we don't have:

Introit

My dog’s dearest wish: squat legs and fishhook claws
to mimic the zero-gravity antics of squirrels.

My wall’s dearest wish: better bone structure,
to halt this swayback travel downward.

My rug’s dearest wish: a trip to Arabia,
to sample pedigree and aviation.

My roof’s dearest wish: a hurricane, to suck it up
into the storm for once, instead of crouching in dread.

My car’s dearest wish: shocks tense as prayer,
to bound over potholes and railroad tracks.

My heart’s dearest wish: a poem that strikes
at forever so squarely, and money to buy it with.

Metanarrative

Reading Tim Keller's new book, I was especially struck by his simple yet penetrating critique of Foucault: he points out that Foucault's central thesis (all truth is will to power) is itself a power claim. Despite Foucault's constant efforts to demote his own thesis, to enter the discourse without exercise of power, the thesis re-emerges, which leads me to believe that even postmodern culture, with its "suspicion of metanarrative" cannot entirely avoid metanarrative.

We cannot avoid synthesizing our experience into overarching claims to truth. For instance:

Marx: "All truth emerges in the midst of class struggle"
Science: "Rational inquiry will lead us to greater truth"
Secularism: "Truth emerges from justice and education"

If Foucault's reluctant thesis is subject to its own critique, then it occurs to me that metanarrative claims are subject to their own critique. This may sound elementary to some, and I freely admit I'm a slow study when it comes to philosophy. But it opens some interesting doors.

Marx: "All truth emerges in the midst of class struggle"--itself is a class-based claim, available only through education and the ability to critically analyze culture.

Science: "Rational inquiry will lead us to greater truth"--depends on a rationalistic idea of rational inquiry. Rationality begs the question, "what is rational?"

Secularism: "Truth emerges from justice and education"--like Marxism, depends on education. But at what point did education become available?

These are preliminary thoughts, and not fully-orbed critiques, so please be gentle. But I had a seminary professor who used to say, "all arguments are ultimately circular."

I'm beginning to understand what he meant.

Gossip

Sitting in the library this morning with my students, I overheard one distinctly say, "this is stupid. This class is a joke. I'm glad he's not going to be here next year."

My first impulse was to call her out in front of the class, say something like, "you need to work on your sotto voce, my friend." But I realized that wouldn't be professional, so I bit my tongue.

It's pretty easy, as a student, to sit in a class and critique the professor, the assignments, the class, the school, the world. It's far harder to partipate in it, to try to create instead of critique.

I hope she has that opportunity someday.