What defines the Good News of Jesus? Does the Gospel give us riches, heaven and solve all of our problems? Or does the Gospel reestablish a connection to God? Is it about our success? Or about Emanuel? Simply, is it about the goodies or God? The danger of living in consumer culture with its temples to mammon and the Goddess Success is to fall into the pit of thinking it’s the goodies. God has become another soda pop to hock in the marketplace, and many do it. Like the smell of apple pie baking or at the exhaust of a chevy, the odor is common enough in America.
Over a decade ago, working for banquets at a hotel, I served at a week retreat held by a prominent New Age guru who was charging a group of people with terminal diseases like cancer $5,000 to attend. This didn’t include lodging and food, so they probably paid close to 10 grand for privilege of hearing this guru who made his name on PBS. For their money they got lectures about how their sickness was all in their minds and healing came from changing their negative thoughts. Like good Americans they worship the Goddess Success and his message resonated with their thinking, though not with their biology. He was promising the tools to beat the market, fill the pews and make it in America, only applied to their illness. Most of the participants who paid their way to hear his wisdom must have long passed away by now. This guru can still be found on TV, radio and the Internet. His long list of best sellers also witness to his continuing popularity. Americas love him and his message. The Goddess Success has many temples.
Last year, we were lent a DVD produced by a celebrity Christian pastor from Texas about a miraculous healing of a girl. The DVD with the flare of a made for Lifetime movie told the story of how the little girl’s doctors all pronounced her a lost cause, but through the power of praying warriors (not God, strangely as the glory went to people praying and not God), she was pulled up by her spiritual bootstraps and was completely healed. These prayers had found success with celebrity pastor’s form of Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel just dresses Goddess Success with the garment of Jesus talk. These two “mighty men” of American Spirituality share in defending themselves by pointing to their best sellers and popularity. Unlike Jesus, they sell a popular form of “you can do it.”
The DVD went out of its way to portray her doctors as non-believing boobs. This same celebrity pastor has found similar financial success by proclaiming his fear based prophecy predictions. He too makes the best seller list with his books about a supposed blood moon and coming of the end, which will fail to materialize like his previous predictions. His website drips with slick marketing. Previous failures have not hurt his wallet, so the predicable failure of his latest prophecy hustle will not stop the green from flowing into his pocket. He will continue to succeed. In the world of prophecy hustling, failure isn’t a determent. Hal Lindsey still makes a pretty penny, a shiny nickel, and many crisp hundred dollar bills from hocking discredited fear.
Well, we got this DVD as way of showing us how best to pray for my son Tito’s healing. We pray continuously for Tito, but since their was no miracle on the scale of a Lifetime movie, she thought we needed help in how to better pray for her idea of success. Original sin always wants to play god and if the Goddess Success hasn’t granted the wish, do it differently. Of course, there were problems with the DVD and its theology in terms of traditional Christian and biblical witness. The celebrity pastor’s theology born of American self-reliance which has founded on making one the controller of one’s life or as St. Augustine called it, original sin. Like our New Age guru promising healing by changing your thought, hocking prayer as way of controlling the world will always find many a sucker.
The lady who lent us this DVD was meaning well. I was sad when she recently passed away after a fight with cancer. Yet, she was tapping less into the Christian tradition, traditional faith or Christian theology. She was unknowingly tapping into the America idol of the Goddess Success. Since Tito has been diagnosed, we have been fielding the same pattern of people having the answer. It can take on either the secular flavor of people sharing a rumor of a new medical breakthrough they saw on FoxNews or CNN or a New Age flavor of thinking positive thoughts and having the secret of the universe granting our desires and Tito’s healing or the Evangelical bitter taste of telling us to pray harder for Tito’s healing as if we were in control over God. We love our son. And we know the limits of this American know-how and idol success. God granted us the gift of our son and we do our all for him. God is also with us in everything. The Gospel is real in our lives no matter what criticism we face in certain evangelical circles.
For our son, we have traveled to Seattle, Maryland, Washington D.C, Philadelphia and consulted with doctors in Boston, in Los Angeles and Arkansas. We pray everyday for Tito. We had people praying for our son in places as far off as Africa and Europe. Our son has always been surrounded by love, prayer and God’s presence. And he is thriving in the light of this love. Jesus promises and delivers abundant life, only not in the shape of riches and power that dominate our culture. Many are blind to the abundance God has granted us as Tito may not fit their idea of success, or his appearance does not fit certain people’s model of what constitutes their should be. So, they tell us how to solve Tito. Tito will face trials due to medical condition, we all have our cross. The worse part of the journey, though has been those who indulge in the American version of the original sin. They reject the Bible and tell us how to solve the Tito problem, and are blind the the glories of God. I have no doubt that these people have good intentions, but good intentions pave a different path than love. The real challenge is to pay attention to love that is always around us. The abundant life comes with love, not with money and power.
When my wife published a post on her insight about her prayer life and Gods presence in it, echoing Jesus words before the ordeal of the cross, “thy will be done,” she faced criticism of being judgmental and questioning God’s healing power and “clear teaching in the Bible.” It brought sadness to local pastors, and the claim was she was not being “biblical.” If by biblical was meant that it didn’t bow to the false gods of success and money, I agree. Yet the God who suffered on the cross and resurrected is with us. All the true fruits of thes pirit are in our lives, so much so the the promised goodies of the Goddess Success holds no draw. Jesus was the poor of the poor, and by the world standards he was a failure. He ended as a condemned man, condemned by the same Goddess Success. God’s standards are no mans and God son lives, our son lives and the Gospel is true. We have seen so much of God’s Glory in our journey with our son. God has given us such glory and what really sadden me was how far our contemporary church had abandon the Gospel chasing goodies. May we repent and turn back to the God of love in Christ Jesus.
