Health and Wealth

I'm realizing that one of the quotes that has impacted me the most from Shane Claiborne's book Irresistible Revolution, was one of his chapter titles: When Comfort Becomes Uncomfortable. When you read the statistics from "Miniature Earth," or hear the stories from local doctors working in Niger, when you see with your own eyes the material poverty on the streets of America, and then compare that to the excessive consumption you live in, the excessive comfort you possess: comfort becomes uncomfortable.

Is this the life God has called His children too? The life of Joel Osteen? I agree with Mr. Osteen in one area: God wants good things for us. But treating God like a genie in a bottle who is going to answer your prayers and give you material wealth is faulty and misleading theology. True, God has blessed many of His children with material wealth. The apostle Paul writes that he has learned to be content with much and with little, so you can make the assumption that Paul, at some point in his Christian walk, lived in abundance. He blessed King David with material wealth, eventually Job is given "twice as much as he had before," and the list of God's blessings and abundance goes on and on. Wealth is not wrong. God did not condemn the rich young ruler because of his wealth, he condemned him because his wealth had become his god. And, as I mentioned, God wants good things for us, maybe even riches. But we live in a country that is so caught up in wealth and possessions, buying and consuming, that our perspective is skewed. We are constantly barraged with material comfort and consumerism that developing a healthy and Godly perspective on wealth is nearly impossible. Then we have the health and wealth theology that comes along and gives an over-consumptive society an excuse to continue to ignore the death, poverty and injustice throughout the world.

Many of you know that I teach high school social studies. One of the topics that I teach each year to my history classes is imperialism in Africa in the late 19th century. One of the justifications of imperialism (the domination of a weaker nation either politically, socially, militarily or economically) was social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was the belief that Europeans had a duty before God to "civilize" the people of foreign lands by teaching them new and “better” ways, and without this "help," the inferiority of that people group would ensure it's demise and eventual extinction. More importantly it gave developed nations the justification to continue the political, social and economic injustice.

If I could make the connection, I believe the health and wealth theology does something very similar: It allows Americans to believe that those struggling in the vicious cycle of poverty are somehow bringing it on themselves (much like Job’s friends thought about Job); while the prosperous in the United States today are somehow favored by God – and have nice shiny smiles to show for it!

This is flat out unbiblical.

This past weekend I finally listened to the lyrics of a song I had rocked out to in college, and the words fit right with my thoughts today. The song is titled “Health and Wealth” and is by the O.C. Supertones (yes I was a Ska fan – and still am!).

HEALTH AND WEALTH
by the O.C. Supertones

Poor men bound in persecution,
God's their portion everyday.
But we don't know anybody
who lives that way.
There the church grows stronger,
under politics and chains and whips.
They can't explain how they
slipped right through their grip.
in the politics of Mao Tse-Tung.
I think they got it right,
so maybe we got it wrong.

Health and wealth, we help ourselves,
and let them play the hand
that they've been dealt.
Health and wealth, indulge ourselves,
a big fat belly underneath our belts.
Health and wealth, we help ourselves,
and let them play the hand
that they've been dealt.
We'll never understand
the Christ they've felt,
if we keep on chasing
health and wealth.

Here we sit so comfy, rich.
use, me and you, the USA...
so far away from C-h-i-n-a.
We think they need freedom.
We're the ones in prison.
We don't have the time
to change the world.
It doesn't take long to figure out,
where all our money goes.
We're the poorest billionaires
Jesus knows.

And we ask God to refine us,
and pray that we would be freed,
from all our comfortable gods,
our straining and striving and
chasing the wind.