A Ramble About Prosperity

I tried to find the reference to this passage this morning so I could attribute it to the Saint who said it, and I couldn’t locate the exact phrase, so I hope you will forgive me for paraphrasing it. He said that God has ordained that everything which is truly needful and necessary for spiritual growth, and progressing in our prayer, and knowing God, everything which we need to move from sinner to saint is God has given to us freely and in abundance; poverty, solitude, hard work, tears, prayer, Grace, and more. But he also said those things which hinder our spiritual growth and obstruct our prayer, and can throw us off and lead us away from him, these things God has made very difficult to obtain; money, comfort, ease, security, and so on. He said you actually have to work very hard to obtain the things which will poison your relationship with God, while you practically have to do nothing at all to receive the things which can strengthen it. I don’t remember which Saint said it, but I wish I did, because it was one passage that keeps coming back to me.

“But God wants me to be rich!” This seems to be the battle cry, and the main message, of a great many preachers and pastors today. Their “churches” look much more like concert halls, and their congregations number in the tens of thousands. Their sermons often sound more like financial seminars aimed at helping people achieve financial security, personal wealth, and independence. They write book after book teaching people how to feel better about themselves, how to acquire more possessions, and how to satisfy themselves and they do so all because “God wants me to be happy.”

God loves us dearly. There is no question about that. But like a good parent, He wants what is best for His children. He wants them to be healthy, mature properly, have a good education, and enjoy the best He has to give. He also wants to keep them away from anything which can harm them, these include anything which can become addictions, poisons, or those things which can ruin their relationship with Him. In short, like any good parent, He doesn’t want us to do anything which could harm us.

And like most children, we have no real idea what is actually best for us. We want what feels good to us. We want the candy. We want the toys and more of them. We want to be first in everything. If we get a cut we want Him to put a band-aid on it and make it better even if we got it doing what He told us not to do. And we throw temper tantrums when we ask Him, and He says “no.”

Jesus didn’t go around teaching people how to play the stock market, or how to be financially successful. When someone asked to follow Him, He told him to sell everything he had, give the money to the homeless, and then come and follow Him. The New Testament is very clear about Jesus’ own financial state. He was homeless, and He and His disciples were provided for by the financial means of a few women. After Pentecost, it was a regular practice of the Church for its members to sell any property they had and give the proceeds to the Apostles who then distributed the money to anyone who needed it. In the writings of the Fathers, voluntary poverty is always encouraged for Christians to follow as the preferred financial state.

One of these Fathers, Evagrios the Solitary (4th century), wrote passionately about this. He said that the “demon” of avarice is particularly deceitful because it will come in pretending to be concerned about the poor, and then suggest to you that you need to somehow acquire more money and more income so that you can help the poor. But then once you start focusing on that, then it turns your mind away from Christ and on to the matters of acquiring more and more money, and thus the downward spiral continues until you are Christian in name only, and eventually, even this is lost. These Fathers taught to give until you had nothing left, and were poor yourself.

This “prosperity gospel” teaching is nothing short of a demonic heresy designed to pull people away from Jesus Christ, not bring them towards Him. It profoundly contradicts both the teaching and example of our Lord, and perversely does it in His name. It throws the gates of avarice, gluttony, and self-esteem wide open for all the demonic passions to run through and paints a smiley face with a cross on them. It is a trap which leads not to Eternal Life, but a curt “I’m sorry, who are you?” from our Lord.

God gives His good gifts freely. But like the child looking at the plate of broccoli, we don’t always see it that way. We want the bag of candy, and damn the stomach ache and vomiting to follow!