This much should be obvious to anyone attending most big American churches: on Sunday mornings, those lots are covered with expensive vehicles. If you doubt me, just go out and check them; most American churches, any Sunday. Do we need expensive vehicles to get from here to there? Absolutely not.
Is there hypocrisy in the air? Most churches are “country clubs with steeples,” according to a friend of mine who believes deeply in God but deals with his God privately, not as part of an organized religion.
Hey, why am I picking on churches? Well, maybe it’s because church-goers repeatedly claim to me that they are morally superior to me because they are church-goers. They also tell me that it’s the teachings of Jesus that make them morally superior. Now I am quite aware that a teaching often attributed to Jesus [1] is that one needs to first sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor before following Him. This passage makes me think: “Hey, church-goers, if you are all so morally superior, show it.” That’s what I think when I see all those unnecessarily fancy vehicles on the church parking lot.
Where do all those church-goers park those vehicles? Here’s where: in their big garages attached to their expensive houses. Here’s the issue then: these holders of substantial wealth are often the same people who profess to believe literally in Biblical scripture. Yet the New Testament isn’t known for encouraging people to acquire wealth. Or is that still the case? To put the question another way, how much material wealth may one keep for oneself and how much must one donate to the poor. Where do you draw that line?
“What line?” say many church-goers. A recent article by Time (“Does God Want You to Be Rich? A Holy Controversy”) explores this issue. (The article is available to subscribers only at time.com).
“Why not gain the whole world plus my soul?” according to a Christian cited in the article. In a poll conducted by Time, 61% of Christians “believed that God wants people to be prosperous.” Material prosperity is a key part of Joel Osteen’s 4 million-selling book, Your Best Life Now. In a recent interview with Time, Osteen says “I think God wants us to be prosperous. I think he wants us to be happy.”
Osteen promotes the accumulation of material wealth, even though his site asserts that his followers believe that “the entire Bible is inspired by God, without error and the authority on which we base our faith, conduct and doctrine.” Some parts more than others, it seems. Publisher Weekly has this to say [2] about the book: “Theologically, Your Best Life Now’s materialism and superficial portrayal of God as the granter of earthly wishes will alienate many Christian readers who can imagine a much bigger God.”
According to the Time article, prosperity is taught by numerous conservative Christian churches. Here’s a reader’s comment from Amazon [2]: “Joel Osteen’s book teaches men to love money and self, and leads them astray by a false gospel.”
Other well-known preachers are cited in the Time article:
“Who would want to get in on something where you’re miserable, poor, broke and ugly and you just have to muddle through until you get to heaven?” asks Joyce Meyer, a popular television preacher and author often lumped in the Prosperity Lite camp. “I believe God wants to give us nice things.” If nothing else, Meyer and other new-breed preachers broach a neglected topic that should really be a staple of Sunday messages: Does God want you to be rich?
Do Christian preachers talk about this important topic of wealth from the pulpit? Not much:
“Jesus’ words about money don’t make us very comfortable, and people don’t want to hear about it,” notes Collin Hansen, an editor at the evangelical monthly Christianity Today. Pastors are happy to discuss from the pulpit hot-button topics like sex and even politics. But the relative absence of sermons about money—which the Bible mentions several thousand times—is one of the more stunning omissions in American religion, especially among its white middle-class precincts. Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow says much of the U.S. church “talks about giving but does not talk about the broader financial concerns people have, or the pressures at work. There has long been a taboo on talking candidly about money.” In addition to personal finances, a lot of evangelical churches have also avoided any pulpit talk about social inequality.
Thus, here’s another example of a massive communication dysfunction in our society. We already know that politicians refuse to address critical issues of the day [3]. Time has dared to state that the church-emperor has no clothes. The above-cited Time article has illuminated that numerous churches, all of them self-proclaimed teachers of morality, refuse to frankly and clearly discuss church-members’ obligations to the desperately poor people of the world. It’s as if they’ve allowed they’ve allowed their sacred Gospels to be rewritten by Wall Street. It’s as if dollars were not fungible. [4] It’s as if they’ve convinced themselves that the same dollars used to buy that Chevy Tahoe or that big-screened television could not also have been spent to save the lives of dying children.
Churches know full well what they are doing. They know that if they required their members to donate most of the wealth that they currently spend on frivilous things and luxuries, their members would have to say good-bye to their dreams for fancier houses, cars and vacations. Those churches that actually tried to follow the eye-of-a needle lesson would then experience huge drops in attendance.
That would mean that they couldn’t afford those fancy new steeples.
Addendum
Here are six important statements about wealth from the Bible, courtesy of http://www.godisimaginary.com/i20.htm [5] :
Matthew 6:19
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:24
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Money.Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”Hebrews 13:5
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”Phil 2:3
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.Acts 2:44-45
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
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