- Valson Thampu
‘Twenty years ago,’ said a young lady over the phone to me the other day, ‘when I was a student at Women’s Christian College, Chennai, the Christianity dished out to me by an evangelical group was all about ‘Health, Wealth and Prosperity’. Now, as I face the challenge of living as a believer, I lament the silliness of it’. She is not the only one saying this. She represents the other side of the prosperity-gospel-hype about which a furtive silence prevails among us.
Prosperity gospel banks on miracles. And because it does so, the impression spreads that it is divine in a dramatic sort of way. That happens thanks to the stereotypical assumptions we harbour about God, about what he wills, and about how he does what he wills. Despite his Cross, most Christians tend to imagine Jesus as the Super-Miracle-Wizard accessible to them via Christian godmen. This arrangement is mistaken as a function of faith. But faith in who? Surely, not in Jesus, or in the Way of the Cross; but faith in miracles, never mind who does them.
This is not hard to understand. The attractive part of prosperity gospel is not ‘gospel’, but ‘prosperity’. Greed is the engine of prosperity. Greed is the love of the world that is, as most Christians would agree theoretically, enmity to God. As a Tamil film song puts it, ‘If whatever we wish is readily got, we’ll care two hoots for God’. Prosperity gospel not only deifies greed, but also sanctifies short-cuts to feed Christian greed. That this is contrary to the Way of Jesus remains unnoticed. Truth to tell, the way of the prosperity gospel and the Way of the Gospel run in opposite directions.
Greed is the mother of irrationalities. It has the power to turn reality into an endless series of illusions and delusions. Faith, seen through the eyes of greed, is the sure-shot means to gain unmerited advantages. Then, faith becomes subservient to greed. As a result, the way of greed seems identical to the Way of Jesus. Once a person attains this outlook, all evidence contrary to this distortion gets blanked out. A skewed version of the Gospel remains. The prosperity gospel fuses the way of the world and the way of Jesus Christ into a devious carnival of enchantment.
All the same, this contradiction is too fundamental to be overlooked. This necessitates a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ which is mistaken for faith. In the prosperity-gospel-mode, faith is deployed precisely to that end. It is faith against faith – faith, not in Jesus, but faith in miracle-workers even if they are Mammon’s on myrmidons. The meaning and scope of miracle itself is corrupted in the process. Prosperity gospel prostitutes the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus is distinguished by love of God and neighbour. Prosperity gospel is distinguished by love of self. It is inimical to one’s spiritual growth. You don’t understand the lure of prosperity gospel, if you don’t understand this. Consider an illustration to be clearer about this. Say, you want to pass a job eligibility test. Two ways are available to you. The first is to acquire the necessary merit and pass the test, fair and square. The second is to resort to unfair means, making sure that you are not caught out while copying. The latter method works; but only for the time being. You get exposed at the stage of the interview. You fail.
Prosperity gospel functions on a shallow, consumerist idea of life; life as a written test here and now. At best, it may help you to deal with the immediate plight. But it fails you as regards life. Do we really believe that life is only a screening test? The trauma that the young lady shared with me, quoted at the outset, pertains to the post-screening test part of life.
That brings us to Jesus as the Truth. That Truth does not involve the affirmation of ‘faith’ as the way to miraculous possibilities, but faith as the way to life in its fullness. Miracles are superfluous to this state, because greed is utterly alien to it. The Temptations Jesus faced comprise the three tiers of the prosperity gospel: greed all the way from stomach to global affairs.
The tragedy inevitable in what seems an alluring provision is that it corrupts the human. The way of miracles and quick-fix solutions makes one depend on what is external to oneself. It shuts the door against personal growth and empowerment. The more you depend on an agency external to you, the more inadequate and vulnerable to manipulation you become. It ensures that you never ‘bear fruit’. One has to choose between being a bearer of fruits, or remaining a consumer of fruits. You can’t be both at the same time. Prosperity gospel reduces a so-called believer to a religious consumerist which, besides, degrades God into a cosmic means of wish-fulfillment.
In contrast, the Way of Jesus is the way of personal growth and empowerment, distinguished by the need to be patient and to ‘endure to the end’. It excludes short-cuts. Jesus said, ‘He who endures to the end shall be saved.’ It is by enduring that the parabolic ‘mustard seed’ grows and sends its branches to the end of the world so that the birds of the air may build their nests in it. The mustard seed of the prosperity gospel, in contrast, crackles in the frying pan of your kitchen, caressing your taste buds for a fleeting moment, to be seen no more thereafter.
