Religion and Ethics Newsweekly: Pastor David Platt on the Gospel of Wealth

PLATT: I don’t in any way want to come across as anti-America. At the same time there are some ideals and values that are at the core of the American dream that are really contrary, even antithetical to the gospel that Jesus preached, and then the American dream obviously leads us sometimes in pursuits of money and possessions and pleasures in this world.

SEVERSON: What troubled him was the material comfort of his congregation and the multimillion-dollar megachurch they worship in. This was not the picture he had of the humble ministry of Christ.

PLATT: This idea that if you believe God, have enough faith, that he will give you health or wealth or prosperity, I don’t think, first of all, that it is a gospel at all. It’s not the good news that Jesus preached. More than health and wealth, Jesus I think gives us a picture more of a homeless and wounded gospel, and even the New Testament church is not a picture of prosperity theology. It’s a picture of adversity theology, persecution, struggles, poverty, helping one another out.

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