Statement on social justice & the Prosperity gospel?The Social Justice Gospel: The New Prosperity Gospel
This post is not written lightly. My heart is heavily weighted by the reality that the very voices in modern evangelicalism that brought me out of the snares of the Prosperity Gospel by God’s great grace and mercy have released me into the snares of a new form of moralistic therapeutic deism disguised as the Gospel: the Social Justice Gospel. What I do not want you to hear is that I reject personal responsibility for loving others more than we love ourselves (Phil. 2:3). Part of the quicksand that is opposing this ideology is that it so disguises itself as Scripture that denying it is a quick way to be labeled as anti-Christ and stubbornly committed to a conservative political party over my identification with Christ. I can assure you that these two things could not be further from the truth. And I challenge you to listen to my warning as one who cares deeply about the preservation of the true Gospel above any other thing in this world. Why I care… My motivation to vehemently oppose this new ideology stems not from a desire to be in the good graces of the Republican party, but from a desire to save people from the fallacy that we can have one foot in the world and one foot in Christianity. Colossians speaks sharply of our death to this world and the importance of rooting ourselves in Christ so as not to be taken captive by the things we have died to: philosophy, empty deceit, human tradition, and the elemental spirits of the world. In other words, what the world imposes on us has no application. We live according to Christ as our head, growing with a growth that is from God. The world cannot condemn what Christ has saved, though it may proclaim our treason to their kingdom of worldliness. I also come from a deep understanding of the damage of false gospels. I grew up in a prosperity-preaching, name-it-and-claim-it church and the amount of people deceived into a life of moralistic captivity still makes my stomach turn. It was by the grace of God that I heard the true Gospel preached in a sermon by Pastor Matt Chandler of the Village Church in Texas and immediately gave my life to Christ. Since then, I have been impassioned with keeping the Gospel untainted by worldliness and have found myself often indignant in issues of deceptive teachings. This is why I cannot sit back any longer and allow my own brothers and sisters to be deceived. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) As many Christians are familiar, moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) is a huge problem in our culture rooted in Judeo-Christian values. One cannot grow up in the United States without at least once hearing the word “God.” So while Atheism is oftentimes a rebellion against this assumption of God’s existence, many others opt for the MTD option in which they can keep the things they like about God and throw out what they do not. Albert Mohler, in quoting Christian Smith, outlines five common beliefs in MTD: “1. ‘A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.’ 2. ‘God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.’ 3. ‘The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.’ 4. ‘God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.’ 5. ‘Good people go to heaven when they die.’” (albertmohler.com) While the leading voices in modern evangelicalism would refute these ideas profusely, many of them do not realize that their disproportionate teachings on social justice are often compatible with these kinds of worldly assumptions. Allow me to give some examples:
The Prosperity Gospel I recently watched the great documentary called “American Gospel,” which attacks the issues in the Prosperity Gospel being preached. What I ascertained based on the film and my own experience in churches that preach these false messages is that teaching anything that detracts from the Gospel as a means to appeal to fleshly desires is damaging and pollutes the beauty and glory of the Gospel. Here are a few observations I have made as a comparison between the Prosperity Gospel (PG) and SJ Theology:
While it is obvious to most evangelicals that the PG emphasizes this, as made clear in the documentary, apparently it is not so clear in how evangelicals teach about social justice. The premise of social justice is that the world needs to be reformed so that everyone has the same access to health-care, wealth, and happiness--whatever the individual deems that to be. A problem with these two perspectives is that they both distract from the security of the Gospel and demand that we keep one foot in the world. In the PG, our hope is predicated on our own ability to muster up enough faith to call God into action to provide a respite from the effects of living in a sin-filled world. In SJ Theology, our hope is predicated on the ability within ourselves to make the world a better place and give ourselves the benefits of prosperity through the means of the government. Whatever happened to learning to abound in poverty and riches (Phil. 4:12)? In these two camps, with Christ not ALL things are possible (Matt. 19:23-30). Some things we have to make happen for ourselves if we want it badly enough. 2. The PG and SJ Theology both teach that if bad things are happening that seem out of your control, it is probably your fault. In the PG, the bad things could mean sickness or financial problems and if these things are not going right for you, it is because you did not have enough faith and therefore need to repent and pick yourself up by the bootstraps and be better. In the SJ movement, the bad things are inequity in the world, people uncomfortable in your worship services, and a multitude of other things that are getting in the way of people having good things happen to them. According to SJ Theology, these bad things are happening because you are doing something sinful that you cannot even recognize because it is subconscious. The expectation, like the PG, is that you will repent of these bad things that you did not know you were even doing and you will pick yourself up by the bootstraps and be better. In both cases, there is a false call to repentance, a measure of ungodly guilt, and the expectation that if you conform to their teachings and do better, all things will get better in the world. 3. The PG and SJ Theology both use Biblical passages as analogies for modern social problems and throw out the main purpose for which they were written. Whether it is misusing Isaiah 53 to say “by Jesus’s wounds, claim your healing right now,” or misusing Ephesians 2 to mean that Christians justify racism and do not even know it, the problem is that we miss Christ and the glorious truths in the Scriptures when we read our own agendas into it. When we misinterpret the hostility in Ephesians 2 as the racism between ethnicities instead of as the relationship between the human and God, we miss the wonderful point Paul is making when he says that we are no longer condemned by the Law, but that we are at peace with God. We cheapen Scripture when we use an illustration on the Gospel for an illustration on social change that is clearly not in the context of the passage being taught. 4. The PG and SJ Theology both champion successful people who are not Christians as moral leaders for Christians to follow. We have seen it for years. Televangelists like Joel Osteen are promoted by prosperity preachers as examples of the success possible for Christians who have enough faith to pull themselves out of an average life. Martin Luther King Jr. is championed by SJ Theologians as the image of Christianity even though he rejects key components of the Christian faith including the resurrection. While we can be immensely grateful for the common grace of God to bring our brothers and sisters out of the bondage of slavery in our nation--including using a Pseudo-Christian like MLK--we should not base our lives on the life of a man who rejected the true Christ. Concluding Thoughts For a long time I have wrestled with the undermining of the Gospel seen through the Social Justice Movement in evangelicalism. The same people I loved to turn to about Scripture have dedicated a disproportionate amount of their time to preaching racial reconciliation as opposed to the reconciliation we find through Christ to God. While I affirm in a body of believers that prejudice against someone for the color of their skin is sinful and should be dealt with, the type of social changes required in the SJ Theology are not found in biblical categories and require more conversation than a quick jump to conclusions proposed by the world. I signed the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel very soon after it came out, not because I am unsympathetic to victims of real evils in the world, but because I am unsympathetic to false gospels. It pains me to know that anyone is treated unfairly because of the color of their skin or bullied because they struggle with understanding their gender. But the solution is not to team up with the world to teach people how to be morally good. The solution is for people to be saved. The Gospel is not forcing people into molds to make life better. The Gospel is that individuals are responsible for repenting of their own sins and for turning to Christ for grace. The Gospel is not that we seek to fill quotas in our pews of gender or ethnicity. The Gospel is that Christ is building his Church and the Holy Spirit is what dictates the “quota.” The Gospel is not marching in the streets to proclaim racial and gender equality. The Gospel is walking the streets proclaiming that this world is going to pass away and if you are reconciled to God through Christ, you will not face the wrath of God because Christ took on His wrath in your place, became sin, and clothed you in his righteousness. There is no other Gospel. Because nothing else could possibly be “good news.”
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