Import jQuery

Health, Wealth, Prosperity...is this the gospel?

There is a religious doctrine with a large Evangelical Christian following in the United States that claims success and financial prosperity in your life is a result of God's favor. This is called the Prosperity Gospel.

The list of adherents to this theology, according to Wikipedia, reads like a religious all-star line up:

  • Kenneth Copeland
  • Benny Hinn
  • Nasir Saddiki
  • Robert Tilton
  • T.D. Jakes
  • Paul Crouch
  • Joel Osteen
  • Creflo Dollar
  • Mike Murdock
  • Joyce Meyer
  • Jesse Duplantis
  • Juanita Bynum
  • Kong Hee
  • Eddie Long
  • Brian Houston
  • Paula White
  • Peter Popoff
  • Phil Pringle
  • Chris Mentillo

Does God prosper righteous folks? Maybe, but not in the same way many of us would like to believe. The gospel makes no guarantee that folks who try to live righteously before God will be financially successful, for instance. On the contrary, empirical evidence from the gospel suggests that those who lived righteously before God were often very poor, having little or no possessions!

Living a right life before God doesn't guarantee riches or prosperity, and unfortunately many in the Prosperity Gospel movement stumble on this point.

A friend recently pointed me to the video below which harshly confronts this theology. I found it quite moving.