Heath and Wealth Gospel

  • Thread starter Thread starter IGotQuestions
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I

IGotQuestions

Guest
How do certain segments of the non-Catholic world justify this teaching?
 
You’re going to have to define what exactly you mean by “Health and Wealth Gospel” because the term has many different usages, most of which are derogatory. I recommend a respectful initial approach to encourage a respectful thread.
 
God wants you healthy and wealthy, that pretty much sums it up. An AMERICAN theology. Doesn’t go over very well in the third world.
 
jane_doe said:
You’re going to have to define what exactly you mean by “Health and Wealth Gospel” because the term has many different usages, most of which are derogatory. I recommend a respectful initial approach to encourage a respectful thread.
Click to expand...
Does it sound disrespectful? :confused: It is an American invention, and directly opposes the words of Christ. What else is there to say, except that it is very seductive.
meltzerboy said:
It sounds pretty good to me!
Click to expand...
Live long and prosper!
 
It’s cherry picking from the gospels and various other places from scripture.

I’m particularly not happy with this movement as i feel like they are taking grocery money from little old ladies on fixed incomes. 🤷
 
*The Worst Ideas of the Decade
The prosperity gospel
by Cathleen Falsani

In the Gospel of Saint Matthew, we are told that Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and money” and, “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.”

The “prosperity gospel,” an insipid heresy whose popularity among American Christians has boomed in recent years, teaches that God blesses those God favors most with material wealth.

The ministries of three televangelists commonly viewed as founders of the prosperity gospel movement - Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and Frederick K.C. Price - took hold in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the oldest and best-known proponents of prosperity theology, Oral Roberts - the television faith-healer who in 1987 told his flock that God would call him home if he didn’t raise $8 million in a matter of weeks - died at 91 last week.

But the past decade has seen this pernicious doctrine proliferate in more mainstream circles. Joel Osteen, the 46-year-old head of Lakewood Church in Houston, has a TV ministry that reaches more than 7 million viewers, and his 2004 book “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential,” has sold millions of copies. “God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us,” Osteen wrote in a 2005 letter to his flock.

As crass as that may sound, Osteen’s version of the prosperity gospel is more gentle (and decidedly less sweaty) than those preached by such co-religionists as Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes and the appropriately named Creflo Dollar.

Few theological ideas ring more dissonant with the harmony of orthodox Christianity than a focus on storing up treasures on Earth as a primary goal of faithful living. The gospel of prosperity turns Christianity into a vapid bless-me club, with a doctrine that amounts to little more than spiritual magical thinking: If you pray the right way, God will make you rich.

But if you’re not rich, then what? Are the poor cursed by God because of their unfaithfulness? And if God were so concerned about 401(k)s and Mercedes, why would God’s son have been born into poverty?

Nowhere has the prosperity gospel flourished more than among the poor and the working class. Told that wealth is a sign of God’s grace and favor, followers strive for trappings of luxury they can little afford in an effort to prove that they are blessed spiritually. Some critics have gone so far as to place part of the blame for the past decade’s spending binge and foreclosure crisis at the foot of the prosperity gospel’s altar.

Jesus was born poor, and he died poor. During his earthly tenure, he spoke time and again about the importance of spiritual wealth and health. When he talked about material wealth, it was usually part of a cautionary tale.* washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/opinions/outlook/worst-ideas/prosperity-gospel.html

I consider the " Prosperity Gospel" as a materialistic teaching trying to dress itself up in a Christian robe.
 
That’s the problem when people are free to establish their own personal understanding of the Gospel without the mother Church’s guidance. There is no surprise here. They have their own popes to make their own declaration of what Christianity is.
 
Lenten_ashes said:
It’s cherry picking from the gospels and various other places from scripture.

I’m particularly not happy with this movement as i feel like they are taking grocery money from little old ladies on fixed incomes. 🤷
Click to expand...
Yes, this post is spot on. It is indeed cherry picking from the scriptures. I managed an apartment complex and can’t tell you how many of my elderly poor residents in my HUD
sponsored apt complex of 57 were supporting the health and wealth gospel TV preachers.

Given they could not get to their own churches they supported the TV ministries instead.
 
MaryT777 said:
Yes, this post is spot on. It is indeed cherry picking from the scriptures. I managed an apartment complex and can’t tell you how many of my elderly poor residents in my HUD
sponsored apt complex of 57 were supporting the health and wealth gospel TV preachers.

Given they could not get to their own churches they supported the TV ministries instead.
Click to expand...
Yeah, my mother is stay-at- home on disability and loves TBN. 😦

I don’t care for the message but don’t want to poop on the only Christian network that gives her inspiration, so I just shut up.

Too bad they didn’t have a little chapel there in that building you described. I’ve worked in a retirement center that had protestant and Catholic services on site.
 
Are the words, “Give us this day our daily bread,” really so hard to understand?
 
Lenten_ashes said:
It’s cherry picking from the gospels and various other places from scripture.

I’m particularly not happy with this movement as i feel like they are taking grocery money from little old ladies on fixed incomes. 🤷
Click to expand...
Worry not as many of us little old ladies have far too much sense to fall for it… 😉
 
IGotQuestions said:
How do certain segments of the non-Catholic world justify this teaching?
Click to expand...
I am Catholic. There was a time I was not. I present this observation from the time prior to my conversion, (from when I went to a Benny Hinn concert).

It is the unholy alliance. On the one hand you have preachers who get their living from preaching to the masses, on the other hand you have the democratic masses who listen to preachers that they want to hear preach message they want to hear. Already you should see the inherent demise. A mutual dependence. A symbiotic relationship.

If the masses do not enjoy the preaching they move away to another preacher. They build up and they tear down preachers. Therefore preachers atune the message to the masses, to what they want to hear, and the masses stay, hearing what they want to hear, and the preachers earn their living.

It is an Americanism, everyone is happy, and even though it is an Americanism it has spilled out into other countries, including to a lesser degree my own.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top