The “Prosperity” Gospel.

Q. I have a question about (a popular TV preacher). What concerns me very much is what he is preaching, “God wants you to have lots of money, get the job, get the girl, etc”.

How many people have been extremely discouraged and even feel like failures when this doesn’t happen for them? Maybe they even think God is punishing them by preventing them from attaining all that (he) says they should have.

Would you please comment on what this man (and others like him) are teaching so many people?

A. The Lord said that we should be living full, abundant lives (John 10:10), but there’s a basic flaw in the Prosperity Gospel and it has to do with motive.  Many of the Bible verses upon which this gospel is built are being referenced incompletely or out of context, and because of that they appeal to our materialistic human nature instead of to our spiritual one.

If prosperity gospel preachers would add the rest of the story, about God using the same measure in blessing us as we use in giving to others (Luke 6:38), about storing up treasure in Heaven instead of on Earth (Matt. 6:19-21) by using our wealth to advance the work of the Kingdom, and about being made rich so we can be more generous with others (2 Cor. 9:11), think of the good that would result.

But since they don’t, they are by and large the only ones who benefit from their message.  And that makes them more manipulative than motivational, selling a distorted form of the gospel by appealing to mankind’s greed, promising us something for nothing.