May 2007

The prosperity gospel, in my opinion, is not the gospel at all. What is the prosperity gospel? Well, it is the idea that God wants Christians to be successful in every way, including being healthy and financially prosperous. Some bible verses used to support this gospel are 2 Cor 8:9 which says, “Yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich” and Deut 8:18 which says, “God gives you the power to get wealth to establish his covenant”. Yikes, talk about taking verses out of context. And how about this one? “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25). I know that one is ripped right out of the text, too, but the ideas of living simply, sacrificially, and generously seem to run deep in the bible and directly counter the prosperity gospel.

Churches that proclaim this prosperity gospel claim that you will become more prosperous in every area of your life when you follow God and claim that God wants all Christians to prosper. You may have heard of T.D. Jakes or Joel Osteen, both mega-church pastors in the US that are preaching the prosperity gospel. “The Church Report” named Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes as the #1 and #4 most influential Christians in America based on over 200,000 online voters- it shows just how influential this movement is in America. Joel Osteen starts each service with his signature line “This is my Bible: I am what it says I am; I have what it says I have; I can do what it says I can do.” This just stinks of the prosperity gospel. One simple way to tell? Is the gospel more about you or about Christ? Does the gospel balance both receiving from God and asking for your surrender and your sacrifice? Or is it just all about you?

I understand why the prosperity gospel is so influential. Who doesn’t want to hear that they can be prosperous in all areas of their life simply by being a Christian? It’s a very tempting idea to buy into. Unfortunately it distorts the gospel. Are we raising up true Jesus followers if they are seeking personal prosperity before they are seeking the Kingdom? I doubt it…

This false gospel seems to be preying on some of the most vulnerable Christians in the world. Mike King recently visited Africa where he saw these two billboards:

These billboards are of Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar, both well known pastors that preach the prosperity gospel around the world. They are now preaching it in Africa… which is so so dangerous. People were lining up many hours in advance to hear the preachers. As Mike King said:

Much more disturbing than inconveniencing us westerners is the reality that Benny Hinn is running a stinking prosperity gospel sham on the poor people in Africa. His message is clear - bring an offering to sow a seed of faith… God wants you to be rich and healthy. This is a crime against humanity. A huge majority of Africans live on $1 per day and are vulnerable to this un-biblical message. This is a new form of Colonialism. God have mercy. Benny Hinn isn’t the only charlatan pulling off this cruel scheme. Right after we passed the stadium (with thousands of Africans lined up in the rain to get in the stadium a full seven hours before the meeting was scheduled to start) I saw a poster of Dr. Creflo Dollar. Check the news story below if you don’t believe he is up to no good. Another one of Creflo’s billboards said, “Come meet the man whom God has anointed to lead you out of poverty.” (something to that effect).

Here is that news story about the prosperity gospel, including some interview with Creflo. It is definitely worth watching:

Here is a video montage from Benny Hinn’s “Miracle Crusades”. It makes fun of him (which may be deserved) and is a little twisted, but gives you an idea of what this guy is all about:

Scary, right? But the prosperity gospel is just as scary for me. Especially when it is being used to exploit the poorest of the poor by disguising itself as hope for the future.

So there it is… a dangerous twist on an amazing message. But how do we confront the prosperity gospel? I don’t want to become an “anti-Christian” that goes around fighting against other forms of Christianity, but this needs to end, right? I think they crossed the line when they cross the Atlantic and started spreading their message among those most vulnerable to the message. Is this simply a matter of theological education, helping people identify false gospels and discovering the real one? Or do we need to specifically try to stop the prosperity pastors and crusaders who are making millions off of their message? Or do we just quietly allow the prosperity gospel to go on, because as Christians we are to be unified and that is more important than extinguishing this twisted message? I feel the need to do something, and I hope you do too, but I don’t quite know what. Share your ideas and thoughts… and maybe we can form a anti-prosperity-gospel-superpowered-fighting-team!

It’s 11am on a Monday and I am home alone. I don’t do well alone. I get bored or sad or start to feel like I have no purpose in life. Being home alone isn’t easy for me. Worse still, I have a hard time staying motivated when I am home for too long. I already watched an episode of Friends and read some blogs, and worked on some stuff for PACT (a social justice/political activist group in Chicago that I am getting involved in) and read some of “The End of Poverty” (great book, btw). I have things to do but it is so much easier when other people are around. It’s harder to stay disciplined and work hard when it’s just me. Old habits, laziness, and wasting time seem so much easier when it’s just me.

I miss living in community. I lived in intentional community when I worked for YouthWorks in Duluth and for Center for Student Missions in Chicago. And I lived with several wonderful girls all through college. But now that it’s just Mike and I something is missing. There are great things about having a place to ourselves sometimes, and when life is busy I enjoy coming home to a peaceful and quiet place, but often I wish there were more people around. This is especially hard when Mike is off to work all day and I’m not. Maybe that will change when I start working full-time in July.

It’s about more than just taking away the chances of being left home alone and lonely; living in community has so many benefits. Lindsey, my friend in KY, lives in a Christian community with 10ish people who are all volunteering with the Christian Appalachian Project. They all live in the same house and share the same bathrooms, living room, and kitchen. They eat big dinners together most nights and everyone helps clean up. They spend evening together in the living room and weekends together traveling. They do evening devotions together and spend most of their non-working time together. It was amazing to be part of their communal life for just one week and it made me long for those times that I was in intentional community. Life in community gives so many opportunities to build deep relationships, to serve one another and sacrifice for the good of the community, to set a pace of life with the rest of the community and learn from everyone else, and to simply break your own habits and grow to be a more healthy person. Living apart from community allows so much more individualism, laziness, bad habits, consumerism, and selfishness creep into our lives.

Living in community can have its drawbacks and it is definitely not easy, but I know that I was made to live in community and so was Mike. As much as we want that it is so hard to find it. There are no housing co-ops in Chicago that look even half-way stable and we can’t find any Christians in the city who seem to be building large intentional communities that we would fit into. Yet I think that this need for community is built into all of us, and unless we have already suppressed our need for community by our desire for individuality, we all probably want to be part of a close community. Who doesn’t want to be one of the Friends who promise “I’ll be there for you”? So why is it that we all have this need for community (although some of us may feel it more than others) and yet it is so hard to become part of a community? Why are their no housing co-ops? Why have we all chosen to live alone only to find ourselves wishing their were more people around?

If I was loaded I would by a huge old house in Chicago and start a housing co-op. It probably wouldn’t be Christian but it would definitely be cool. I’m guessing that there are at least a handful of other people in this city who want to live in community as much as I do.

Would you live in community? Do you feel the need to live in community? Do you do better living alone or in community? Do you have lots of money and would like to buy a big house in Chicago as a housing co-op? (please?)

I have some time on my hands. I graduated on May 12th from North Park and don’t start working until July 10th. Between now and then I have a lot of weddings and showers and possibly a week-long job, but I have a lot of free time. I decided that I wanted to go visit my friend Lindsey in KY where she is working for a year with the Christian Appalachian Project. Linds has been a very close part of my life for the past five years and I miss her like crazy now that she is down in KY, so I decided to go visit her for a week.

We only have one car, and anyways I didn’t want to drive to KY. Flights are too expensive, and anyways I didn’t want to fly… so I decided to go Greyhound! To get down there I had Mike drop me off at the Greyhound station at midnight on Sunday night. I slept there until 3am when I caught my bus. I rode through the night with two one-hour stops, one in Indianapolis and the second in Cincinnati. I finally arrived in Lexington KY at 1pm on Monday. Greyhound is the poor-persons airlines. Those who cannot afford flights travel around the country in a bus at all hours of the day and night, constantly getting off at major cities and standing in line for an hour to board the next bus.

The way there and back were definitely an adventure. At the Chicago bus depot I had to sleep with my legs through my bag straps so my bags wouldn’t walk off while I napped at 2am, and I was woken up every once and a while buy a security guard who wanted to see my ticket and make sure I belonged in the station. Sometimes I got the three seats in the back of the bus by the bathroom and could sleep well and stretch out. Another time I didn’t get a seat at all and spent that leg of the trip lying on the ground in the aisle. The two times I had to wait an hour to transfer buses on each trip I both met amazing people and was harassed by creepy guys. And on the very last leg of my trip home I had to sleep next to someone while everyone in the front of the bus talked loudly at 3am and the snoring of the big guy behind me seemed to echo around the bus.

So do I recommend riding greyhound? Definitely! It’s pretty cheap and it’s sure to be a huge adventure… plus you get to see the country without worrying about driving or navigating. Just make sure you travel with a small pillow and blanket and be prepared to be flexible, get a horrible nights sleep, and meet some interesting people.

So, I have to admit that I am a little addicted to technology. I guess that may come with the territory of being a college student, but I am often attached to my laptop, I’m enjoying the free Palm I scored last summer, and I listen to my iPod probably every other day.

I know there is a dark side to all this technology, though. Last semester I learned about coltan, a very sought-after substance used in most cell phones and some other electronic devices. As we’ve become more addicted to technology the price of coltan has skyrocketed. A large percent of the world’s coltan is found in the war-torn country of the Congo. Unfortunately rebel and militia groups are taking over the coltan mining and using the 6-billion-dollar a year industry to fund their warfare. Plus, fighting occurs over the coltan supply, people are enslaved to mine it, and the environment is being severely damaged in order to extract the coltan in the cheapest and fastest ways possible. (you can find more here or search online). So unfortunately our cell phones may be partially funding guerrilla warfare in the Congo. Makes you feel great about making that next call, doesn’t it?

Good magazine put out a youtube video about another dark side of technology. Check it out:

So I have to say that I love technology, and I believe that I need technology (although I think if I did some serious soul-searching I would discover that I absolutely do not need technology), but I know I need to do some serious re-thinking about the role of technology in my life… because clearly it can do some major damage.

So it’s 12:30 at night (or in the morning i guess) and i just got done turning in my last paper which was my last assignment of my last semester of my undergraduate years… and i just had my last class today… so that means i am DONE with my year and DONE with my undergraduate studies. I don’t even know what to do with myself! I am DONE!

If you want a better WORLD, Composed of better NATIONS

Inhabited by better STATES, Filled with better COUNTIES

Made up of better CITIES, Comprised of better NEIGHBORHOODS,

Illuminated by better CHURCHES, Populated with better FAMILIES,

Then you have to start by becoming a better PERSON 

- found in “Divided by Faith”

I liked this quote a lot. I tend to focus on systematic problems/issues/sin instead of personal problems and sin, yet I know that both personal and systematic needs to be fixed before this world is going to become a closer reflection of the kingdom. This quote was a cool reminder.

I’ll be back soon… my undergrad career is almost over and then I’ll have a whole lot of time!