Joel Osteen you are a Champion.
Even your name sounds like
esteem. You are reassuring,
unable to offend, and I cannot
help but like you. Yet I wonder,
where do you put pain? You
manage headaches and American
depression, but what about big
suffering, like that mentioned in
Hebrews five, verse seven? Are
people who obey God happy and
content? Sinless Jesus learned
obedience by what he underwent.

Well meant are your admonitions.
You believe in good decisions and in
Jesus by whom promises are given.
Don’t forget, as Christians, we
confess best intentions as hankerings
to be a mannequin or a magician.
Listen, one pastor said, you’ll know
you’ve encountered God when
you limp. We are inexorable.
Happiness feels foreign. Oh, to be
sleek like plastic, to live with
faith-expectant. If only our ragged,
souls were not so bent.

Words are power, but
we don’t hear them. Coaxing
can’t turn us, we must be caught!
We have a worship problem.
We won’t receive a gift until
our hands are shaking.
Ask the poet, ask Bob Dylan—
behind every beautiful thing
there is persistent aching.
Where are your sick, your sad,
your malcontents? We read
your books to become smooth and
stiff. Prop us up behind plate glass.
We want to be convinced. But
we must

ask ourselves, do we love the poor;
do we pay attention? Imagine
you visit the slums of Kolkata with
the late Mother Theresa.
You’re both smiling. She sees
the people, you look at them.
You stand straight, full of promise.
She is crooked from leaning into
their faces. You want to
help them, but you’re stuck in that
position. The masses are borne up by
her cracks and creases.
Gleaming teeth shame them. So

let’s close our mouths for a season.
You’ve built an empire on
your congenial smile. Swap it
every so often, for a look of
desperation. Do you want people to
be like you or be forgiven?
If the idol fell you would
get bruised, but you might
stop encouraging belief in
a god who gives his best only
to those who follow the rules.
That god is ruthless and his
face is never at rest.

And yes, the prosperity gospel is idolatry that puts the gifts above the giver.

With that said, my feeling is that Piper is a prophetic voice in this area, that God is using him. Maybe we wouldn’t use the same words, or even would rather him not use words like “crap” from the pulpit. However, I think he’s performing a prophetic function in the church here.

The reason I say that is because the abuses of the prosperity message has become a real thorn in the side of the church, and is doing almost inestimable harm to the cause of Christ. Of of the leading voices in popular Christianity, there have been so few corrective voices in this area. I, for one, am grateful to John Piper for his spirited response.

Grace.

Paul considered those who preached the gospel out of an improper attitude to be nothing to worry about; since the gospel was being preached, he was thankful. He must have known something of what they were saying clearly spoke the revelation of Jesus or he would have stated a clear warning.

The prosperity gospel hides the truth and therefore is deadly in a spiritual sense. It is not about man redeemed to communion with God and then reflecting Him. It is about get what you can out of the Cash-register god, whom they claim is named Jesus. This teaching, in my opinion, declares what is good, bad and what is bad as good. Hatred may be the wrong word for describing being totally and honestly against something, but it is an understandable human response when one counts the cost to human life of turning Jesus into a literal golden cow.

We are in a quandary in this day and time over how to extend acceptance and love for anyone regardless of their value system, while standing against the spirit of the anti-christ. It may be that if we learned through the Holy Spirit how to identify the spirit afflicting a human, we would be better able to love the human while exposing the false god. Just another plug for Christians to leave trusting in religion and become those who seek and know the in-dwelling Christ more fully. ;^)

In the mean time, it seems prudent (and, yes, I may be wrong, so help me sort this out) to be willing and able to expose anything used as a descriptor of the Gospel as suspect. Are we “charismatic” Christians,”systematic theology” Christians,”holiness” Christians, “social gospel”, “fundamental gospel”, “orthodox gospel”, …ad infinitum. The Gospel of Jesus Christ needs no qualifying adjectives or other delineating modifiers. It stands on its own as the Truth.